This Kamiakin High star running back commits to where he’ll play next fall

Kamiakin senior Tuna Altahir knew his friends Woodley Downard and Messiah Jones were going to come at him.

“And they did for sure,” said Altahir, who finally relented to their requests to join them at Eastern Washington University to begin playing in the fall of 2021.

Altahir, last season’s Offensive Player of the Year for the Mid-Columbia Conference, announced Tuesday that he has agreed to play at the Big Sky Conference school in Cheney.

But as much fun as it’s going to be joining both Downard and Jones, both wide receivers, it was the Eastern coaching staff that convinced him to sign.

“It was the relationship I’ve developed with the coaches,” Altahir said. “They called, texted, Zoomed with me, Zoomed with my family, talked to (Kamiakin) Coach (Scott) Biglin. Their running back coaches are great. It’s just a great program.”

And when he gets there next fall, he won’t certainly be alone.

“There are six of us now,” Altahir said, referring to the Kamiakin pipeline to Cheney.

Besides Altahir, Downard and Jones, there are three other Braves already on the roster: redshirt sophomore wide receiver Champ Grayson, redshirt junior defensive back Darreon Moore, and redshirt junior offensive lineman Wyatt Musser.

Altahir has had a number of schools interested in him and has received plenty of offers to play in the last nine months.

It’s easy to see why.

The 6-foot, 215-pounder led the MCC in 2019 as a junior in rushing, with 1,406 yards on 188 carries. That’s 7.5 yards a carry.

He was also No. 1 in all-purpose yards, with 1,613. And he was No. 1 in finding his way into the end zone, scoring 20 touchdowns and one 2-point conversion for a league-leading 122 points.

Besides the Offensive Player of the Year award, Altahir also was named first-team running back, and honorable mention at defensive back.

In both 2017 and 2018 — his freshman and sophomore years — Altahir was named second-team All-MCC running back. He also was an honorable mention pick as a DB as a sophomore.

For Altahir, all that is left is to finish his high school career. And hopefully that can happen in February with a condensed season, thanks to the pandemic.

“(Committing to Eastern) helps a lot, with all of the stress about making a decision,” Altahir said. “We’ve been practicing outside since November. We’re in pods of six, and we can’t do team stuff. But we’ve been putting in new plays, doing new drills.”

Just with six players at a time.

The 21 in 21

Back in 1999, as the sports editor at the Herald, my staff and I embarked on an ambitious project called the Top 100 Mid-Columbia Sports Stories of the Century.

It was a project I thought about early in 1999.

I was a serious sports history buff of the Mid-Columbia. I personally followed my father’s high school career at Richland High through newspaper clips, then my brother’s sports career at Kamiakin in the early 1970s.

In fact, I freaked out my dad’s classmates at a 40th high school reunion when I told each of them what position they had played back in 1951 on the Bombers football team for Fran Rish.

I got to know the names of the athletes at all of the Tri-City high schools over the years.

So for four months, I talked to old timers around here, compiling story ideas. By June, I had a list of almost 200 stories, with short synapses. Then I went back to those old timers, and some present-day sports personalities, and asked them to give me their top 100 by rank.

I took all of those votes, compiled them, and had our top 100.

Then, for the last 100 days of that year, we ran a story a day, starting Sept. 23 with No. 100 being former CBC wrestling and golf coach John Howard.

My staff absolutely hated this assignment at first, mainly because it added to their workload in an already busy fall.

But it didn’t take long for them to get excited. I never told them what numbers the stories were except for maybe the next five that were scheduled — especially if they had one of those assignments.

By the time we got to the final days of December, everyone — the writers and readers — were wondering what or who would be next.

Here were the final five: No. 5, the first Atomic Cup hydroplane race in 1966; No. 4, Walla Walla’s Drew Bledsoe as a top-notch NFL quarterback; No. 3, Prosser Olympian Kelly Blair; No. 2, Richland’s Gene Conley, who played in the NBA and Major League Baseball; and No. 1, Kennewick’s Ray Mansfield, who played for the Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers.

I still have the scrapbook of all 100, and every once in a while I’ll look at it and second-guess certain rankings, or wonder why this story was included and this other one wasn’t.

So now we’re in the final month of 2020, and I got to thinking, maybe it’s time to do a Top 21 stories of the last 21 years. So I will, although I may not run them daily, but run a couple of them in a column at the same time.

But I’m much older than I was in 1999, and while I can still remember what happened locally in sports 15 years ago (my wife calls this useless information), I sometimes forget what I had for dinner the night before.

I’m researching, but I could use some helpful reminders.

If you have any suggestions, please send them to me at sports@tricityherald.com, or to mrsported@aol.com.

Hockey

Here’s an interesting note from the esteemed Kamloops sports columnist Gregg Drinnan that came out late Tuesday night: “So could the WHL or (Ontario Hockey League) end up in some kind of bubble environment?

Well, the WHL, which has said it will open its regular season on Jan. 8, apparently is on the verge of shifting that date into February. The OHL is aiming for Feb. 4. According to (Canadian media sports personality) John Shannon in the above tweet, the WHL pooh-bahs were to meet on Tuesday.”