Columnist Adam Candee: Respect for LV’s Pool runs deep

Adam Candee

Friday, Dec. 6, 2002 | 9:51 a.m.

Adam Candee covers high school sports for the Sun. Reach him at (702) 259-4085 or by e-mail at candee@lasvegassun.com.

You're Chad Pool and you live football through every fiber of your body.

At 5-foot-8 and 175 pounds, you have physically, mentally and emotionally willed yourself into becoming the best linebacker and best competitor in the city. Your future is not in the pumped-up college game, at least not immediately.

Your future is your next crushing tackle. No more, no less. And you like it that way. It's what you want to do, and it's what you do better than anyone around you. You don't care if you have to drag around a separated shoulder all year. Your team needs you more than you will ever know.

When people head toward the Friday night lights every fall weekend, that little chill that still shoots down their spine is the hope, the dream that they will see a player just like you that evening.

And now, your invincible Las Vegas team, made up of invincible teenagers, just saw its 24-game winning streak stunningly ended in the Sunrise Region final. The season is over. There will be no second state title. You gutted yourself through an unfathomable 42-18 loss on one leg because you rolled your ankle trying to help your team on offense in the first quarter.

You turn in your pads and high school football unceremoniously does the only thing that feels out of your control -- it ends.

Now, understand that this young man sat just four days removed from one of the toughest moments of his short life. The pain and the shock still fresh, Pool could easily have chosen to shut down and wait for the disappointment to pass in the solitude of his own mind and body. No one would have blamed him one bit.

He didn't. Instead, Pool belied his age and much of his sporting generation last week, showing a maturity and resolve far beyond his years. At the request of Palo Verde coach Darwin Rost, Pool addressed the Panthers three days before they were to face McQueen.

"I told Chad that of all the awards he's gotten, that's probably the greatest one," Las Vegas coach Kris Cinkovich said.

Here is Rost, a coach with a Nevada state title and years of coaching experience, asking a kid who looks exactly like the dozens he has in his own locker room to be a motivating factor. Pool, still dragging his heart behind him, accepted. Ask yourself if you could have done the same at his age.

He told Palo Verde to cherish every precious moment it had on the football field, because it would only learn how much it truly means once those moments were out of reach.

Pool already knew this.

He told them to stand up to McQueen and not let the powerful team intimidate them. Pool already knew this, too -- his Wildcats went up to Reno last year and beat the Lancers for the state title.

What amazing respect Pool commands within the city's prep football community. To be able to get up in front of that Palo Verde team under those circumstances, and to hold their attention and deliver his message, speaks volumes of the mutual love that exists between Pool and that community.

"He's a special kid," Cinkovich said. "Whatever he does in the future, he won't surprise me."

Ditto.