Dayton’s Henderson Stays In The Game

PULLMAN -- Former Bulldogs running back Dain Henderson once had a dream to join the football team of a small to medium-sized college .

He didn't exactly fulfill his dream the way he had originally envisioned: as a player. But he did join one of the best-known teams on the West Coast.

Since he graduated from Dayton High School last year, he has been on the PAC 12 Cougars football team as a manager.

"I've played football since second grade -- 12 straight years and I still have the itch to play," Henderson said during a recent interview over his winter break from Washington State University.

"So, not to getting to wear a helmet is tough," he said. "But it has been a pretty satisfying outlet because I'm still around it. I'm on the team. I'm getting to see a lot of cool things."

Henderson was a successful football player, clocking some 600 yards during his junior year and more than 750 yards as a senior running back. That performance and his leadership as a team captain triggered numerous inspirational awards from fellow Bulldogs. His positive mindset in the classroom and on the team made Henderson popular among many DHS students.

Those credentials weren't enough, however, to advance his future as a football player. Neither did his interest in or performance on the golf course land him a scholarship in that sport.

But quite serendipitously, Henderson found a way to stay connected to one of his favorite sports and help pay his way through college.

One of his cousins, Miles Lytle, who graduated as a Bulldog in 2009, was a freshman at WSU when he found out they were hiring managers for the Cougars and landed a job with the team as a sophomore.

Lytle mentioned it to Henderson, who promptly applied, and put in a good word for his relative with Milton Neal, the managers' supervisor. "The rest," as Henderson noted, "is history."

Lytle said his cousin has "fit in well," particularly as one of four managers who grew up in small rural eastern Washington towns and worked on farms.

"The boss likes to hire them," he said about the rural high school graduates who seem to have an edge when it comes to resourcefulness. "We're put on a lot of handson jobs, fixing things on the spot."

So what's it like for Henderson to be a team player on the sideline? He didn't quite know where to start when asked that question. There's the 700 - 900 pounds of laundry to wash after every practice, a task made easier by the huge $50,000 worth of industrial washing machines. There's the careful preparation and maintenance of all the gear for a team that has at least 100 players who suit up for each game.

There was the loading and unloading of all the equipment during the one away game Henderson got to attend in his "Red Shirt" (rookie) year as a manager - the Cougars' game against the Oregon State Beavers at Century Link Field in Seattle.

Henderson even gets to take the field once in a while, when he helps the players do warm-up drills at practice before the coaches come out.

"Basically, we're responsible for everything that goes unnoticed by the public," Henderson said about the work he and the other seven Cougars managers perform. "Some managers (particularly more experienced ones) have coach-like responsibilities."

Henderson is close to the players, whose dorm he shares and whom he discovered are "just kids whom God blessed with a bit more athletic ability and 50 extra pounds," after spending many years as a high school athlete "putting them on a pedestal."

But a brush with fame still impresses Henderson, who said he had a short conversation with Stanford quarterback and two-time Heisman Trophy runner-up Andrew Luck after the California team's game against the Cougs in Pullman.

When Henderson and the other managers are actually on the sideline, they don't have as much to do -- they better not or they didn't do a good enough job at preparing all the gear and the equipment, to Bulldog said.

Snowbound games are the exception because the managers have to keep the players' and coaches' gear dry, and be ready with more clothes for the players on the sideline. The young manager experienced two of those games: against the Utah Utes and the Arizona Sun Devils.

Having worked on farms for many years, Henderson isn't daunted by an of the managers' tasks or hours, which can add up to 50 per week outside his academic schedule. But in his second year as a manager, he the prospect of graduating from taking out the garbage and traveling with the team by plane to their away games. His "full-ride" scholarship kicks in at the same time.

Henderson, 19, who hasn't declared his college major yet, hasn't decided if he's going to pursue a sideline NFL career like some of the recently graduated WSU managers. One of them is already working for the Seahawks.

Being from the Touchet Valley, he also has a keen interest in exploring the possibility of studying agriculture and returning to his stomping grounds, perhaps as a seeds specialist or an agronomist.

"I'm pretty wide open," he said. "A job in professional sports sounds cool, like, say, working for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But I'm not much of a big city person."