Eureka's Mike Poovey was one-in-a-million athlete in the 1970s

Former Times-Standard sports writer Sean Quincey's observation about how everybody views all-time top athletes and teams based on their own age, the era they remember most clearly, etc., is accurate.

That's what makes putting my All-Time North Coast Baseball Team together fun and challenging. I had to go back well before I played baseball at Eureka High in the 1970s and then jump to add players who starred up there from about 1995 to date. I couldn't just fall back on my era as the best era because it's the era I most remember.

Perfect example of "Best of..." being so wildly personal is my own little list of all-time great Humboldt-Del Norte League athletes and, in particular, football players.

I would argue, after writing about H-DNL sports for 20 years and following them for 45 that the best athlete and most explosive football player ever on the North Coast was a guy who is totally forgotten on the North Coast today. It's a former Eureka guy ... a guy I played Midget Leauge with ... went to Winship Junior High with ... from a sports family that folks who remember 1965 to 1980 would've insisted was a family that would never be forgotten.

I intend to introduce the most impactful football player, from Eureka High School Class of 1975, to folks here. I hope you'll remember him.

Eureka High's Rob Harrison was as good as any running back in America as a senior in 1980. Everybody's thinking now of NFL linebacker Ray Maualuga who starred at USC. It'd be stupid not to list one of them as No. 1, right?

Wrong.

Hey, woa! You can disagree ... but, you can't call me names! I know what I saw with my own two eyes and I those two greats and ...


Mike Poovey was a running back at Eureka High in 1974 and 1975. He was a 100- and 200-meter H-DNL sprint champion. (And, I played with him on Belcher's Giants in the Eureka Midget League for 3 years. He was a quiet, cocky kid who often left the impression that amazing baseball talent was wasted on him in a game he seemed to find boring.)

Poovey was a touchdown machine. He ran over people. When he hit somebody, Albee Stadium rocked. (I once saw Harrison hurdle defenders. Also impressive!)

Poovey was just so much faster than defenders I found his performances on the field breathtaking -- even as a guy who viewed him as a peer and sort of a pal. He was a sprint champion who hit like a ton of bricks.

Think a minute. How good does a guy have to be to have a peer, 40 years later, say, "He was electrifying!" He has to have been great.

When Poovey hit somebody it made that explosive sound, then the would-be tackler fell straight backwards. And, yeah, I saw him meet defenders at the goal line and knock them on their ass.

If he got a half-step on the defense, he was gone. God, Mike Poovey was a great football player!

Then...in the middle of what would've been an historic senior season, he blew out his knee and his spot in the middle range of all-time rushers and TD scorers hides the fact he was the biggest impact player I ever saw on the North Coast.

Kids didn't play for NCAA Division I scholarships in 1974-75. Poovey didn't have state of the art medical techniques to repair his damaged knee. He came back and played football at College of the Redwoods, but he was never the same ... still good, though.

Mike Poovey. Eureka High Class of 1975. The best I ever saw.

I last spoke to him 12 years ago or so. He was in Sacramento. His brother Dale "Butch" Poovey is a lawyer up there. I remember arguing with an older pal that Butch Poovey was a better quarterback and baseball player than younger brother Mike would ever be. Tom Poovey played baseball with us as kids, the youngest of the clan. John Poovey (EHS Class of '72) was a basketball star on one of the best teams in Loggers' history. He passed away too soon not long ago.

I tried to track him Mike Poovey down, through his family, about a year ago. No luck. He's still impossible to catch.