So what's the word on those new kids playing football at Inchelium?
On the sun-drenched gridiron there the word is "Ooof" or "Owww" as cousins Eti Ena and Aifala Ama crash into opponents.
At the college level, the word is prospect.
(PHOTO: Eri Ena paves way for Aifala Ama in Inchelium's backfield.)
Recruiting mail is finding its way to the tiny outpost on the Colville Indian Reservation.
Brigham Young University wants game film pronto. Washington State, alerted by the Samoan grapevine of Jack Thompson and Tali Ena, has sent a cordial welcome.
Can you imagine eight-man prep football game films from rural Eastern Washington making their way to major college coaches?
Ama, a 6-foot-1, 240-pound fullback and defensive end, and Ena, a 6-0, 220 tailback-linebacker, have made a huge impact at Inchelium since arriving late last month.
What sort of an impact? Listen to this:
"There were a couple of times when I'd be making a tackle and trying to bring a guy down when all of the sudden one or the other of those two would laser into us from the other side and it was like getting hit by a train.
"You could feel the impact through another body."
And this is from Mike Heath, a teammate.
(PHOTO: Eti Ena brought more than a desire to level opponents with him when he arrived in Inchelium)
The cousins were a big hit – and big hitters – Friday as the Hornets, two-time cellar dwellers of the Northeast B-8 League, rose up to sting defending eight-man state champion Almira/Coulee-Hartline 44-6.
Ena rushed for 115 yards and two touchdowns on 10 carries and was in on seven tackles. Ama rushed 15 times for 123 yards and was in on three tackles.
To be fair, ACH has but one returning starter from its state championship team, but the Warriors are still proud and were 1-0 coming into Inchelium.
Two plays early in the third quarter told the tale of the game.
ACH was driving with the second half's opening kickoff when Ama crashed through a double-team as if his blockers were a set of swinging doors. An instant before Warrior quarterback Brad Isaak disappeared under the onrushing senior like Tokyo under Godzilla, he wobbled a pass out to the flat that was picked off by Hornet Ryan Stensgar and returned 32 yards for a touchdown.
Ama took a pitchout to the right side and sent a would-be tackler tumbling head-over-heels on the two-point conversion.
After forcing an ACH punt, Ena took a handoff on Inchelium's second play of the half, bolted through the middle of the line and thundered 56 yards for a touchdown. Along the way he jolted the last Warrior defender into the turf with a full-speed stiffarm.
This last score put the Hornets up 44-0 – tantalizingly close to eight-man's 45-point mercy rule – with little more than five minutes gone after halftime.
"We're in the fourth quarter, aren't we? Is this only the third quarter?" a stunned Inchelium coach Ron Washington asked himself aloud on the sidelines.
"We were 45-pointed about four times last year," said Inchelium senior end Duke Finley. "It's a nice change to nearly 45 the defending champs. Eti and Aifala have helped us a lot."
More impressive than their feats on the playing field may be the cousins' attitudes off the field.
(PHOTO: Hornets have a lot of stinging power in Aifala Ama
Pat Ena, who is Eti's father and Aifala's uncle and legal guardian, was offered the job as Inchelium's principal late in August.
The boys were in Orem, Utah, already in fall drills for their senior seasons at Orem High, a Class 4A school.
"It was only three weeks before our first game," Eti said. "It was tough to move. We had played with the guys for a couple of years and had good team unity. Orem had a really good football team. As sophomores we went to the inter-regionals (state quarterfinals) and we go knocked out of the semifinals as juniors."
Orem also had four or five players recruited by colleges last year and historically sends two or three players a year off with scholarships.
So on the brink of their senior seasons, the cousins were forced to leave their longtime friends and a highly visible – to college recruiters – and highly successful football program in the Provo-Orem area with a population base roughly the size of Spokane for tryouts on a once-proud, last-place team playing eight-man football– a game the cousins had never heard of – in a tiny town that's connected to Spokane by ferry boat and 97 miles of twisty road.
They could have been the moanin' Samoans.
Instead they've done their best to make friends and to be just another Hornet on the local football team.
"We tried hard to stay (at Orem), but the family is more important," Eti said.
After painful family discussions, Eti decided not to mope.
"You've got to make the best of it," Eti said.
"There were a lot of tears. It was a hard decision to make," said Pat Ena. "I think they finally decided it would have been nice to play for Orem, but if dad wasn't there it wouldn't be that great."
"The coaching staff at Orem offered homes for the kids to live in but I thought football is not that important. Education is important," Pat said. "If we were to leave the kids down there, it would be for something more important than football."
Football was suddenly important talk around Inchelium.
"There was big talk around town about the new principal having football players Heath said.
"But we didn't know if they were coming or not. Everybody was waiting to hear the right word," added Finley. "They're easy to get along with. They're not, like, snobbish or anything. They want to meet friends and eight-man is fun – it puts a smile on their face."
Aifala said he panicked a few times when he only counted eight men on the field, but, "Eight-man is great. I love it."
And the offense – a power I – is familiar.
"In Orem we run option out of the I," Eti said. "It's not anything new to us. There's less holes to run through."
There's an enthusiasm at Inchelium that was palpable during Friday's game. Hornets were swarming to get in on plays – 17 players made the tackling chart – and players and fans were cheering happily for each other.
The ACH players were treated to a pizza feed before the long ride home and then Inchelium folks gathered at the Ena house for a luau.
"Talent-wise, Eti and Aifala have helped us a lot," Washington said. "But their attitude is the bigger feature, I think. They've made kids work harder and maybe have given them a spark that, 'Hey, we can win.'"
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