Advancing the standard at Eastern Washington University

By JOHN McCALLUM

Managing Editor

As it has every August the past several years, the West Plains Chamber of Commerce’s monthly breakfast on Aug. 21 took up a sports theme with a trip to Eastern Washington University’s red turf at Roos Field.

Guest speakers Athletics Director Lynn Hickey and head football coach Aaron Best outlined what fans, alumni, residents and business leaders can expect as the Eagles take to the fields and courts of athletic competition this fall. For football — the centerpiece of Wednesday’s meeting — that means setting and achieving some high goals.

“We want to maintain and sustain being the dominant force in the Big Sky Conference,” Hickey told the crowd filling most of the tables in the south end zone at Roos.

Hickey said the three “value” words making the rounds in the EWU Athletic Department these days are grit, grace and gratitude. Grit meaning people who truly believe they are winners and grace embodying the aspect of teamwork.

“Grace means you can hand the ball off,” Hickey said.

As for gratitude — Hickey asked everyone to look around them and take in the scenery from where they sat on a clear, warm sun-drenched day.

Best also pointed to the idea of Eastern continuing to be the dominate football power in the conference, something he said if you’d told him years ago would be in the future would have given him a good laugh. The university’s athletic facilities aren’t nearly up to the level of other programs such as the University of Montana and Montana State, but the Eagles have made do with what they have.

What they Eagles do have, Best added, is a persona unlike other programs. That starts with the unique red turf looming behind him as he spoke.

“That changed not just football, but athletics,” Best said. “We aren’t everybody else, and that started in 2010.”

The Eagles had a rare break in a run of playoff appearances in Best’s first season in 2017, snubbed by the selection committee despite a 7-4 record and tough schedule. That led to last year’s team moniker “Leave No Doubt,” which Eastern didn’t, going 7-1 to share the Big Sky title with University of California-Davis and Weber State and eventually finishing 12-3 with a loss in the national title game to North Dakota State.

The Eagles lost a number of starters to graduation on both sides of the ball, but that didn’t leave the program looking at a rebuilding year, but rather how to keep moving forward. For Best, that also meant not panicking with once again receiving high expectations for his team.

“There’s no panic, ever, ever, ever,” he said. “I don’t touch the (letter) P on the keyboard because that reminds me of panic.’

So the Eagles moniker this year embodies what both Hickey and Best spoke to about the program: Advance the standard.

Best said that’s accomplished by not panicking when things go wrong, and having the grit to respond when faced with that adversity. That also requires the desire to be more than average by continually challenging oneself. Best and his coaches face this particularly with their new players, who were standouts in high school but come into the college game as just another talented athlete.

“When you’re challenging, that means you’re thinking,” he said. “You’re not a failure because you lost or had a bad play.”

Not only does this attitude set Eastern’s program apart, but Best said it is also emblematic of what has taken place in the economy of the West Plains, which is growing much as the Eagles program is growing as people see something special in the region, and what to be a part of it.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].