Teammates, rivals but friends forever: From Lewis and Clark to the Apple Cup, Lynch brothers and Ray Cattage share gridiron bond
This is a story about how rivals became teammates and teammates became rivals.
And how friendships last.
The 1978 Lewis and Clark Tigers finished second in the Greater Spokane League football season then rode their standout defense to the state semifinals. There, the Tigers lost what has to be considered an epic defensive battle to eventual state champion Snohomish, 3-0 in overtime.
That LC team featured three first-team All-City defensive linemen, as chosen by The Spokesman-Review – seniors Mike Miller, Pat Lynch and Ray Cattage. Two would go on to standout careers in the Pac-10, Lynch at Washington State and Cattage at Washington. Lewis and Clark also had Lynch’s younger brother, Dan, a junior who in 1984 would be a first-team All-American offensive lineman at Washington State.
The LC-Snohomish semifinal was played at Memorial Stadium in Seattle in a November rain storm, of course. Neither team scored in regulation, although Dan Lynch recalled dominating the game between the 20s.
“We had 430 yards of offense to their 40. It was raining and we couldn’t punch it in,” he said.
In overtime, Lewis and Clark took the ball first at the 10-yard line in what was then called a Kansas tiebreaker. First team to lead after equal possessions would be declared the winner.
The Tigers gained a few yards on their first three plays, then decided to go for the end zone on fourth down, Pat Lynch recalled. LC quarterback Darrell Andrews threw to Don Hopkins in the end zone.
“Hopkins is sitting in the middle of the end zone and Robby Treece comes out of nowhere and knocks it down,” Lynch said.
With Kevin Morris, a future college kicker, on their side the Panthers knew what to do.
“They did nothing play, nothing play, nothing play and he kicks it,” Lynch said. “Game over.”
Rivals become teammates
Pat Lynch recalls the irony of going from that agonizing loss to Snohomish to being teamed with the Snohomish kicker, quarterback, and defensive star when they were teammates at WSU.
“So, I play with Kenny Emill, their star player, at WSU. I play with Kevin Morris the guy that won the game. And I play with Robby Treece,” Lynch said.
There were times, Lynch noted, when “we reminisced about the game and one of the things that Kenny Emill said was that our game was the state championship game. Because they just annihilated Ingraham.
“He said they just destroyed ’em. It wasn’t even close. He said that semifinal was the championship. Whoever won our game was going to win the state championship.”
Cattage said he couldn’t grasp how his team had dominated so thoroughly, yet somehow lost.
“It’s the one game that stains – if that makes sense. It stains me the most. It’s the first time I felt that in any sport we had completely dominated a team and did not win,” he said.
“It did not make sense in a lot of ways. I remember being on the bus after the game and crying because I did not understand how we played so well and lost that game.
“It’s probably one of the two hardest losses that I ever suffered as an athlete.”
The other one?: “Losing to Wazzu my senior year.”
Teammates become rivals
“That was the ’82 year,” Dan Lynch said. “That was the game we won in Pullman.”
The Cougars had two wins and the Huskies were No. 5 in the nation. Washington State won 24-20.
“We were just a bunch of freshmen and sophomores and we beat them. That was probably one of the greatest wins of my career,” Dan Lynch said.
Cattage was a senior on that ’82 UW team. The Huskies spent six weeks at the top of the Associated Press Top 20 poll before losing to Stanford and were ranked No. 5 with a 9-1 record when they came to Pullman.
It was the first time since 1954 that the game was played in Pullman. The Huskies left bitterly disappointed after their eight-game Apple Cup winning streak came to a halt.
“We lost to (John) Elway down there, at Stanford,” Cattage said. “That was tough, but I can truly say that even if we won that game the only game that ever really bothered me in four years was losing to Wazzu.
“It didn’t matter what their record was because we knew they would play at a whole different level when it came to that rivalry. That was the whole thing.
“I’ve always rooted for Wazzu. I always wanted them to beat whoever their opponent was when they weren’t playing us,” Cattage said. “Those guys are that good. We knew it, we never took it lightly – that, oh, it’s the last game of the year and we’re playing Wazzu. No. Wazzu played at a whole different level when it came to the rivalry. So you didn’t sleep well, you practiced harder, you concentrated more. Because it was never easy.”
Cattage did not redshirt at Washington, thus he was a senior on that ’82 team. Both Lynch brothers redshirted at WSU, so Dan and Pat were on the field in Seattle in 1983 when the Cougars dominated defensively and left Husky Stadium with a 17-6 victory.
“In ’83 we were the better team, there was no question that we were the better team,” Pat Lynch said.
He said the defense, the front line in particular, was clearly the strength of the WSU team.
“Of the five of us on the d-line four of us went pro. Keith Millard goes to play for Minnesota, Eric Williams goes to play for the Redskins; Milford hodge goes to play for the New England Patriots and Eric Howard goes and plays for the Giants. If you add up the number of years those guys were in the pros, it’s 30-plus years. We had a really good d-line that year. We went in there with the sense that we ain’t losing this game. And we beat ‘em. I wouldn’t say handily, but we beat ‘em.”
A star is made
Dan Lynch petitioned the NCAA for a fifth-year of eligibility and played in the Apple Cup in ’84. The extra-year of eligibility was an unexpected bonus that led to honors and accolades on a national level.
Lynch was in Alabama preparing for the Senior Bowl after the ’83 season when he heard about the new NCAA rule that allowed athletes to petition for what he described as a retroactive redshirt season. It was intended for players who did not redshirt as freshmen but saw only a little playing time.
After the Senior Bowl he turned down the money that goes to the players, returned to Pullman and got ready for spring practice. He said it was sometime during spring ball that approval came from the NCAA.
To say he made the most of his second senior season would be an understatement.
“I was a lot stronger and more confident. And when they elected me team captain I also felt that burden of leadership,” he said. “And having gone through one senior year where we beat the Huskies in Seattle in ’83, I felt we were quite good. We had Reuben Mayes as a running back and Rypien as quarterback; I knew we were going to be good.
“Plus, every football player always wishes they had one more year.”
The Cougars were 6-4 heading into Apple Cup week and Lynch wanted to impress upon his teammates the importance of beating the Huskies.
Thus came “The Quote.”
“I think it was a Lewiston Tribune reporter who was following me up to the training table after practice. I wanted to say something, with a little bit of hyperbole in order to show the weight of the game and emphasize how big a game it is,” he said. “And that came out.”
“There are four important stages in your life. You’re born, you play the Huskies, you get married and you die.”
It nearly worked. The Cougars had the Huskies on the ropes, leading 26-16 in the third quarter, but Washington scored 22 points in the final 20 minutes and won 38-29. The Huskies, at 10-1, went on to play in the Sugar Bowl against Oklahoma. Washington State, at 6-5, stayed home.
And Dan Lynch went to Hollywood.
Lynch was named first-team All-American by the Associated Press, and with it made a national television appearance on the Bob Hope Christmas Special wherein Hope, as was the tradition, introduced each player.
“It was actually fun. Before we started filming, we were all kind of standing there, milling around. And I got a chance to chat him up for a few minutes,” Lynch said. “We talked about how Bing Crosby – his best friend – was from Spokane. We got a chance to talk for a few minutes, just one-on-one before we started filming.”
On the annual All-Star tour, Lynch had the rare experience of playing in the Senior Bowl a second time and also appeared in the East-West Shrine Game. In the spring, he was drafted by the Denver Broncos.
A rare disease
Life seemed good when he arrived at summer camp with the Broncos but soon he noticed something was drastically wrong.
“My body started deteriorating when I was with the Denver Broncos,” Lynch recalled. “And I kept losing more and more weight, I lost my appetite and I couldn’t eat. My skin was turning orange and my hair was turning white. I was 23 years old… and I knew something was really wrong.”
The Broncos had no choice but to release him. He was staying with his mother in Seattle where brother Pat, at the time a student at UW Medical School, was also living.
Pat Lynch helped find treatment for his younger brother.
“I had enough knowledge to know how serious it was,” Pat Lynch said. “I was sort of in disbelief that he was as sick as he was. Until I said, look we need to go, we need to get you checked out.”
Pat Lynch had a good idea about what was wrong.
“I didn’t want to be sort of an uppity medical student and outflank the attending,” Pat Lynch said. “I made it very clear when I described to her what I was thinking. And she initially dismissed me until some of the labs came back and that pretty much cinched it.”
Dan was diagnosed with Addison’s Disease which, not-so-simply stated, is a disorder in which the adrenal glands don’t produce enough hormones.
“I had two thoughts: One was, thank God, they actually found out what was wrong with me and it’s not my fault. It explains everything,” Dan said. “And No. 2 was, ‘…I have no more excuses, I’ve got to put my life back together. And fear can be a very powerful motivator I was basically driven by fear for a couple of years to get my life back on track and that culminated with getting into graduate school at Berkeley.”
He earned an MBA at Berkeley, which included a semester abroad at London Business School. He spent some 30 years in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic and recently returned to the U.S. He lives in Lafayette, California.
His health is good but he cannot take it for granted.
“I admit I have to do a lot of work on my health,” he said. “I have to monitor it, get regular blood tests and take all my medications but because I do that and stay in shape and stay really active it’s actually really good. It’s just a lot of maintenance to do but because of that I’m in great shape.”
Friends, not rivals
Dan Lynch isn’t likely to watch the Apple Cup game on TV. He has a prior engagement this weekend, as the line coach for Miramonte High School which is playing for the Northern California championship on Saturday.
Pat Lynch completed his medical degree at the University of Washington and is an orthopedic surgeon in Spokane.
Cattage, played three years in the USFL and was one of the final cuts by Jim Mora (Cattage’s former position coach at the UW) and the New Orleans Saints, in 1985. He has been a machinist at Boeing for more than 30 years and lives in Kent, Washington.
The three graduates of Lewis and Clark share so much in common, not just their ties to the Apple Cup and that 1978 WIAA state semifinal, but they are also bound by the lasting friendships they’ve developed.
Pat Lynch spoke of the college days: “We’d work out in the summer together. It was Danny, me, Ray and Matt Manning, who was playing at Boise State. I would say the rivalry was a very friendly one.”
Cattage has a friendly agenda to this day.
“I’m really close with Pat and Mike Miller and Matt Manning (LC teammates all) and that whole crew to this day. When I go over to the other side of the mountains those are people I make sure I see and spend time with,” Cattage said.
Cattage came to Spokane from Alabama in the summer prior to his sophomore year in high school. He spoke about the difficult adjustment and finding his way in a new location.
“Coming to Spokane was like stepping into a whole different world. And being accepted by more people than I ever thought was possible,” he said.
“I was fortunate to have people like Matt Manning and Pat Lynch; all the other people that were so nice to me. It was unbelievable because I felt so lost. It wasn’t until late my senior year (in high school) that I truly felt like I had found my place.
“I’ve had people say, ‘Oh you did this for me, you were always a friend, you were always nice,’ ” he continued. “But they didn’t realize I felt the same way about them. They were always friendly and always nice and accepted me. I truly did not know my place, so what they say I did for them, they did for me.
“I feel like I received more from the friendships than what I gave.”
And as for that loss to the Cougars in 1982, he has found a way to put a positive spin on it.
“Like I’ve always told friends over there, when they say ‘so, we knocked you out of the Rose Bowl again.’ Guess what, I got to spend a week in Hawaii. You hurt me so bad, we went to Hawaii for a week,” he said.
“We had been to the Rose Bowl two years in a row. So I don’t get to go to Disneyland, but I get to walk around Maui. I’m suffering here.”