REXBURG – At the conclusion of Pocatello’s opening fall practice, seventh-year head coach Dave Spillett stood over his kneeling team and offered a message through transition.
“We still have all of our history,” Spillett said. “We have a new name. We have a new logo – which is fine. It really does represent who we are and what we’re about.”
City-wide debate sparked last fall after the District 25 school board voted to change the Indians nickname at the Gate City’s oldest school. At the request of the local Shoshone-Bannock Tribe, the nickname that had been synonymous with the school and city for over 100 years would be no more.
When Thunder was voted the new nickname, Spillett searched for something to intertwine the new era of Poky High with his football team, something that could turn a devise issue into an inspirational calling.
He found it through a Google deep-dive of bison, the animal picked to be Poky’s new mascot and part of its logos. As the first day of camp wound down, he handed every player in his program a white sheet of paper that contained Pocatello football’s new slogan: Into the Storm.
“Instead of running east away from the storm, (bison) run west directly at the storm,” the paper read. “By running at the storm, they run straight through it. Minimizing the amount of pain and time and frustration they experience from that storm.”
“It’s such a great metaphor for all of us because all of us are dealing with some types of storms.”
On Saturday, Poky did not need to run into the storm. It was the storm – and it engulfed the Ogden football teams with a passionate fury. In its first game as the Thunder, Pocatello collected arguably its most-dominant victory in Spillett’s tenure with a 49-0 thrashing of the 4A school from Utah.
The Thunder scored on their first five offensive possessions. Defensively, they didn’t allow a first down until crunch time. They were more physical, more athletic, more determined. This didn’t look like the Poky of recent memory – which seems like the perfect way to begin a new era.
“Probably for the first time in my seven years, it was the guys up front on both sides of the ball who completely dominated,” Spillett said. “I felt like this was our chance to just kind of shift and get into that mode of ‘This is who we are. This is what we’re going to do.’”
If the Tasmanian Devil was cloned, it would spawn Hunter Killian and Kaden Hottel. The Pocatello linebacker and defensive end hardly let Ogden quarterback Chino Furniss catch the ball before they were in his face. It was a constant barrage that produced quarterback sins of throwing while backpedaling and trying to lob the ball over a defender’s head over and over.
In all, Pocatello held its opponents to under 100 total yards and accounted for seven tackles for loss.
“We put the work in and we knew we were the better team,” Killian said. “We came out and showed it.”
The Thunder defense made a statement to the rest of 4A on Saturday. Yet, no coming-out party was grander than Ryken Echo Hawk’s. Spillett had touted the sophomore in the offseason, admiring how the small running back was able to gain 30 pounds in the offseason and manage to only get quicker.
The hesitation to fully believe Spillett’s advocacy for his running back was easy. The extra 30 pounds only boosted Echo Hawk to a lean 165 and, after all, he’s only a sophomore.
Then the first drive happened. All of a sudden, it seemed Spillett had been underselling his tailback all fall. Echo Hawk started the game with a barreling 30-yard gain, then just kept chipping away. In its 13-play opening drive, Pocatello handed the ball to Echo Hawk seven times and watched him collect 53 yards and a sprint into the end zone.
Even without playing a single second-half snap, Echo Hawk finished with 131 yards and a trio of scores. A nimble target as a freshman, Echo Hawk couldn't run at defenders. Thirty pounds later, he showed on Saturday the newfound ability to steamroll a linebacker with lowered pads.
“Now I can start running kids over,” Echo Hawk said with a chuckle, “and be a real running back instead of running outside every play.”
“If you break down too easy and give him your chest, he’s going to go right through you,” Killian said of Echo Hawk. “He has every tool in the toolbox.”
He also has reverence for the Pocatello Thunder name.
Echo Hawk is Native American, a part of Pawnee Nation that was once strong in numbers. His family – including his grandfather Larry, a former Idaho Attorney General, and his dad Paul, a Pocatello-based lawyer – had spoken out about their disdain for the Indians’ nickname. They cited all of the reasons you’ve heard about for years and one more: Cheering for Ryken meant cheering for this Indians nickname.
It made Friday nights conflicting and uncomfortable, emotions that were absent as Ryken led the Pocatello Thunder to their first win.
“Maybe not everyone liked the change,” Ryken Echo Hawk said. “But they can definitely roll with a 49-0 win.”