Click for Original Article

MAPLE VALLEY — He grew up watching his idols win state title after state title and told himself, one day that will be me.

First it was Aretha Hill and Travis Coddington in the mid-1990s, then Shannon Rance, Korion Morris and Jason Harris. All were Renton throwers groomed by coach Keith Eager, who happens to be his father.

Derek Eager, who got his first javelin on his 12th birthday, seemed destined for track-and-field stardom when he reached Tahoma High School.

“My goal was to win state many times and have a great high-school throwing career,” he said.

But injuries interfered and Eager is still in pursuit of his first state crown as a senior. A torn rotator cuff cost him most of his freshman season, although he threw left-handed just to stay busy. Last year he broke his right tibia wrestling in mid-February and competed wearing a boot most of the season, ultimately placing sixth at state in the javelin and 10th in the discus.

“Injuries did kind of hold me back a lot,” Eager said. “But I’ve worked hard just to overcome all the injuries. I definitely trained a lot to be where I am now. Obviously, it would have been nice not to have any injuries at all, but it’s taught me a lot. It made me stronger.”

The hard work and extra training — along with giving up football and wrestling to avoid injuries — are paying big dividends. Eager, who’s 6 feet 5, 230 pounds, recently set a state record in the javelin at 218 feet, 7 inches, which ranks No. 1 in the nation this season. (Tom Sinclair of Peninsula set the “old-style” implement state record, 239-1, in 1975, when the weight of the javelin was distributed differently.)

Eager also leads the state in the discus at 181-6 (No. 8 nationally) and sits fifth in the shot put (53-5).

His javelin record came on his third throw at the Kent-Meridian Invitational on March 27, a sunny day that started with a premonition — as well as his usual can of pineapple for luck.

“I had a feeling it was going to be a good day when I woke up,” said Eager.

He opened with a toss of 207, then threw 212-5, just two inches short of the state mark. His dad asked him if he could squeeze out two more inches and Derek told him, “I’ve got this.”

When the event official dialed up the numbers, the crowd — which had steadily grown — cheered. His throwing coach at Tahoma, Jennifer Gosnell, got tears in her eyes. Derek’s big celebration was a smile.

“It was a good feeling, I was happy,” he said. “It wasn’t really excitement, it was more relief that I finally got the record I’ve been going for for a long time. Everybody was waiting for me to be like shocked, like jumping up and down, but I kind of expected it for a long time.”

The seeds of expectation were planted early. He wasn’t even in preschool yet when his father began working with Aretha Hill, a big-sister figure who is currently training for yet another Olympic run.

“I’d go down (to practice) and throw Tupperware lids around, anything light that was discus shaped, I’d throw it,” Derek said. “And as I grew up, different throwers would come in, like Korion Morris and Shannon Rance. I was always with good throwers, throwing stuff around, and it kind of got me motivated to be like them.”

Keith made throwing fun when Derek was young. Dad would heave a tennis ball off the porch of their Maple Valley home, which sits on four acres, and Derek would try to spear it with a javelin. If Derek threw a certain distance, he’d be rewarded with a Slurpee. When Keith took his Renton wrestlers to throwing camps, Derek tagged along.

Sports have always been a family tradition with the Eagers. Keith also coaches wrestling at Renton and mom Sally is the volleyball coach at Tahoma. Sister Kylie, a 6-3 freshman, plays volleyball and also dabbles in track and field, and brother Brock, an eighth-grader, already talks about breaking all of Derek’s records.

Derek, a 3.73 student, trains with former Olympian Duncan Atwood, a UW graduate who won a pair of Pan American gold medals. He also works on his flexibility with Mark Neal at the Tiger Mountain gym.

“He’s fully committed to doing this,” Gosnell said. “He hasn’t even started to peak yet. I think we’re just seeing the beginning of what’s to come.”

Derek, who took a recruiting visit to UCLA last week, hopes the hard work pays off next month with that elusive state championship — actually, three of them: javelin, discus and shot.

“My goal is to win the triple crown,” he said.

And that would make his wait all worthwhile.

Click for Original Article

KIRKLAND — The alarm jolts Brian Sinclair. He pulls himself out of bed.

He thinks about football practice. He is nervous, a sophomore making the jump from middle to high school, a baptism by blocking sleds.

Then he hears noises coming from his parents’ room.

His mother and brother have already left the house. Even before he opens the door, he knows the sounds are coming from his father, Tom. Then he sees him, convulsing and incoherent.

“Dad!” shouts the teenager as he runs toward his father.

He tries to wake Tom up. No response. Brian runs into the kitchen to grab the phone. He stays calm long enough to call 911.

Suddenly the bedroom is full of paramedics asking questions. Is he a diabetic? Where is the medicine kept? What is his date of birth?

Sinclair tries to answer. He can’t concentrate. He can’t take his eyes off his father, who is suffering a ruptured aneurysm.

Several years later this moment is an all-too-vivid nightmare, a vision that still doesn’t seem real.

Tom’s chances of survival were slim, but he is still alive.

By being the only one home, by calling 911, by persevering through the pressure, Brian Sinclair saved his father’s life.

It was a moment Tom still can’t remember, something Brian will never forget, an instance that forever changed the relationship between a father and his son.

It is a picturesque afternoon, a pleasant change of pace during this soggy spring season. As the sun paints Lake Washington with a late-afternoon shimmer, Brian and Tom Sinclair finish a workout behind the visitor’s bleachers at Lake Washington High School.

At 53 years old, Tom is no longer the teenager who set the state javelin record (239 feet, 1 inch, old-style implement) or the University of Washington standout who won an NCAA title in 1979. He is a man living his second chance, blessed with a renewed passion for track and field.

Brian, now an 18-year-old senior with one of the top throws in KingCo 4A this year, is in the final months of his senior year. He enjoys these spring days where he can learn from the man who doubles as coach and father.

“It’s something that we just do and can share,” says Brian, who was a three-year starter on offense and defense for the Kangaroos’ football team. “It makes it unique.”

Father and son sit down on a bench, and Brian looks back to 2007, to that August morning when he grew up faster than any teenager should. Brian tells the story, and Tom relives the moment he can’t remember.

Elizabeth Sinclair gets a call from paramedics, and her first thought is that her husband, Tom, tumbled while trying to change a light bulb at the top of the stairs.

Craig Sinclair receives a call from his brother, Brian. He assumes the sophomore forgot something he needed for football practice.

“It’s like you’re living your regular life and being taken to another planet,” Elizabeth says. “It’s like being plunged into some whole other parallel universe.”

Tom is taken to Overlake Hospital Medical Center and later Harborview Medical Center. The family is told he might not make it through the night. He lives.

There is a chance he won’t make it 48 hours. He survives.

There is the possibility he won’t wake up. He not only wakes up, but the experience stirs the passion that began to fade when a shoulder injury forced him to stop throwing 30 years ago.

Tom undergoes surgery and ends up in the ICU. In the days that follow, Brian goes back to football practice. He keeps a cellphone in his pocket just in case his mother calls with news.

One day, while pushing a blocking sled, he gets a text.

“Dad’s up, awake and breathing,” the message reads, “and asking where the remote is.”

Brian says, “It took a huge weight off my shoulders.”

Tom and Elizabeth Sinclair fell in love in the weight room. Tom was a track and field standout at Washington, and Elizabeth spent some time on the crew team.

“You know how those hormones get going on in the weight room,” Elizabeth said with a laugh.

She was drawn to his passion for throwing.

“He was so good at what he did and he was so passionate about throwing the javelin,” she said.

The couple built a life and a family in Redmond. Tom, an investment adviser, coached Little League and, through sports and church, they developed a close social network.

When Tom suffered the ruptured aneurysm, that network rallied behind the Sinclairs. Even after the family’s freezer was full, food continued to arrive at their doorstep.

Now, several years later, Tom feels normal. He doesn’t remember much from the experience. He woke up in a fog and felt an inexplicable urge to fight toward the front of a line.

“What line? I had no idea, but I had to get to the head of everybody else in line,” Tom said. “I was pulling tubes out of myself, trying to get up and get ahead.”

Elizabeth said she has noticed the change.

“We’re one of those lucky 12 percent, but Tom is different from he was before,” she said. “He’s more impatient. Sometimes I say it’s a lot like being married to someone who is exactly like Tom, but not quite Tom.”

One thing did come out of this experience: Tom started throwing again.

He had been coaching the throwers at Lake Washington, but he couldn’t demonstrate the techniques because of his bad shoulder. After three surgeries, he can throw again. Competing in Master’s meets, he finished last year with one of the top 10 throws in the U.S. for his age group.

“It was a wake-up call,” Elizabeth said. “He was drawn back to that thing that had sparked that passion in him when he was younger.”

Tom and Brian threw against each other twice last year in competition. Brian beat his father twice, barely.

“That was big,” Brian said. “We were jawing back and forth the whole time.”

“You were lucky,” Tom replied.

“I was not lucky,” Brian said.

When Craig, a senior at Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., returns home from school, the nights spent by his father’s bedside in the ICU seem like a dream.

Everything feels normal again. He thinks back to that beautiful summer morning in 2007 and remembers a day that never felt right. He wonders what would happen if he had left the house 10 minutes later. He could have been the one to find his father.

Instead, it was Brian.

“It’s really terrible that your 15-year-old son who is on his first days of high-school football practice, on his way to leaving junior high and starting high school, has to all of a sudden grow up really, really fast and deal with those kinds of issues,” Elizabeth says.

One thing everyone agrees on is they were lucky Brian was home.

“I’m just really grateful he was there, because I wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t,” Tom says. “I owe my life to him.”

When he finishes his thought, Tom looks over at his son. They share a moment of silence, punctuated by a fist bump.

Mason Kelley: 206-464-8277 or mkelley@seattletimes.com

Click for Original Article

ELLENSBURG — Emily Quatier and Ryan Endresen keep going faster. Natalie Nobbs keeps going farther.

All three of those Seattle Pacific athletes, along with veteran Jennifer Pike, found the win column on Saturday in their respective events at the Spike Arlt Invitational on the campus of Central Washington University.

Sophomore Nobbs (Yakima, Wash./Riverside Christian HS) enjoyed what undeniably was her best day of the spring. Nobbs went 17 feet, 2¾ inches to win the long jump. It was a PR by 5¼ inches from the 16-8½ she went last year as a freshman, and was a 1 foot, 3 inches farther than her season best of 15-11¾, which she set just last week in Spokane. It put her from nowhere in terms of GNAC qualifying onto the automatic list.

Seattle Pacific freshmen Trinna Miranda (Tigard, Ore.) and Kelly Jenkins (Hillsboro, Ore.) combined with Nobbs for a 1-2-3 finish. Miranda went 17-2 for second; Jenkins went 16-7 3/4 for third.

Nobbs also sliced more than a full second off her previous best time in the 400 hurdles, placing second behind Falcons teammate Jennifer Pike with a 1:05.27, thus moving from provisional to automatic qualifying status for GNACs. Pike (Vancouver, Wash./Skyview HS), a junior, won in 1:04.19.

Freshman Quatier (Portland, Ore.) ran a personal-best 58.10 seconds to win the 400 meters. That’s a drop of nearly half a second from the 58.53 she ran a week ago at War III in Spokane. And it represents a continued improvement in that race for Quatier, whose first time this season in the 400 was 59.43.

Quatier already was on the Great Northwest Athletic Conference automatic qualifying list for the 400, and the moved up to the automatic list in the 200 on Saturday, finishing third in a personal-best 26.10 seconds.

Endresen

Freshman Endresen (Portland, Ore.) continues to emerge as a strong 400-meter hurdler for SPU. He won that race on Saturday in 54.86 seconds, a career best and the first time he has broke the 55-second mark. Already a GNAC automatic qualifier, Endresen is starting to close in on the NCAA Division II provisional qual time of 54.00.

Freshman Katy Gross (Everett, Wash./Cascade HS) moved off the provisional and onto the GNAC automatic list in the high jump, clearing a personal-best 5 feet, 5 inches for second place. That was two inches better than her previous mark and brings her within in inch of the 5-6 NCAA provisional standard.

Kira Lewis (Yakima, Wash./West Valley HS), another Falcon freshman moved into the conference picture in the 100 hurdles. Her time of 15.49 was good for second place, was 68 hundredths of a second faster than her old best of 16.17 and put her on the provisional qualifying list. She is within range of the GNAC automatic time of 15.19. Pike (15.60) and Gross (15.69) combined with Lewis for a 2-3-4 finish.

MEN MOVING UP IN JAVELIN
All three Seattle Pacific javelin throwers continued their steady climb up the yardstick.

Junior Jace Derwin (Snoqualmie, Wash./Mount Si HS) became a GNAC automatic qualifier with a toss of 180 feet, 4 inches, giving him eighth place. It was just last weekend at War III when Derwin set his previous best of 177-3.

Freshman Nate Johnson (Boise, Idaho), obliterated his former best mark by nearly 18 feet. Johnson, coming off a throw of 150-3 in the decathlon at the Ralph Vernacchia Invitational on April 9, threw 168-0 for 12^th place on Saturday. He is now a provisional qualifier for GNACs.

Senior Nate Wagner (Olympia, Wash./Northwest Christian HS) also PR’d at 167-6. He already is a conference provisional qualifier.

Freshman Andrew Van Ness (Bellevue, Wash./Bellevue Christian HS) ran a strong second in the 1,500 meters, stopping the watch in 4:05.15. That was a career mark by almost five seconds and moved him into GNAC provisional status.

Also notching a second-place finish with a personal-best time was freshman AJ Baker (Au Gres, Mich.) in the 3,000-meter steeplechase. Baker crossed the line in 9:45.6. Baker has trimmed nearly 20 seconds from his season-opening time of 10:05.26.

Freshman Will Harrison (Tucson, Ariz.) took his first shot at the 10,000, and wound up fourth in a GNAC provisional time of 33:03.47.

Team scores were not kept.

The Falcons return to action next Friday in the Western Washington Twilite meet at Bellingham’s Civic Field. First events start at 2:45 p.m.