Multi-Sport Marvel

CWU’s Spevak nearing end of second standout sports career ||

YAKIMA, Wash. — It’s tough to find a starting place when attempting to describe all that Johnny Spevak has done at Central Washington, in part because finding a place to start wasn’t difficult for Spevak.

He started as a true freshman for the basketball team in 2005, working his way onto coach Greg Sparling’s first five with a combination of athletic savvy and competitive zeal.

In 2006, having redshirted as a wide receiver while Brian Potucek completed a historic career, Spevak started for the football team and began to write his own chapter in Wildcats gridiron lore.

He’s not done, either.

If Saturday’s home game with Humboldt State will mark the final regular-season appearance in Tomlinson Stadium for No. 84 — the same jersey Potucek wore — it will not end Spevak’s remarkable two-sport career.

Remaining will be regular-season games at Dixie State and Western Oregon. And if the unbeaten, No. 2 Wildcats run the table and maintain their top regional ranking, there will be one and possibly two more home games in which the 6-foot-3, 200-pounder can work his magic.

Central Washington University's Johnny Spevak plays against West Texas A&M University Saturday, Sept. 12, 2009 in Ellensburg, Wash. (Andy Sawyer/Yakima Herald-Republic)

And there have been many occasions, either on the hardwood or gridiron, when Spevak has done things that have seemed truly unreal.

“What I don’t get,” quarterback Cole Morgan says, “is how he contorts his body like he does and still manages to catch the ball. He’s up in the air, twisted in about six different directions, he manages to keep one toenail inbounds and then he still makes the catch.”

It’s true that Spevak has often treated CWU fans to his unique style of sideline ballet, a quality that has put him among the greatest receivers in Central football history.

He also has buoyed the Wildcats faithful with a combination of footwork and competitive perseverance that made him among the best defenders in Central basketball history.

Alone, either accomplishment would merit extensive commendation, especially combined with Spevak’s stature as a scholar who will complete his accounting degree in December with a stratospheric grade point average.

But to play two sports with such aplomb, plus be a beast with the books?

“I think it’s his competitive drive,” says football coach Blaine Bennett, who lists Taylor Stubblefield among the receivers he mentored while an assistant at Purdue. “He’s a talented player, but he also has gotten more out of that talent than anybody I’ve seen in a long, long time.”

It’s also been awhile — perhaps since Butch Hill (whose son Zak quarterbacked Central’s 11-1 team in 2002) starred as both a quarterback and pitcher in the mid-1960s — that a CWU athlete has approached Spevak’s degree of excellence in more than one sport.

Another multi-sport marvel was Dean Nicholson, who was an all-Evergreen Conference guard on his father Leo’s NAIA national tournament basketball team in 1950, and that spring in baseball was the conference’s leading hitter as a first baseman.

Spevak played baseball once, too, as a catcher, but recalls of his diamond days, “I couldn’t hit.”

So after being recruited out of Puyallup High School by then-football coach John Zamberlin (Spevak was an option-offense quarterback) and later told by then hoops-assistant Tyce Nasinec that he could walk onto the basketball team, a seemingly non-stop, 12-month-a-year athletic odyssey began.

“It’s gone by super fast,” Spevak says. “Everyone said it would, and when you’re in the middle of it all you don’t realize it. But it does, especially playing both sports.”

Winning helps, too.

All told, Central’s football and basketball teams with Spevak involved are 103-49. The hoopsters made the playoffs three times in four seasons and the gridders are working on their third straight postseason berth.

Last year, after a 91-catch, 1,442-yard, 20-touchdown season, Spevak was named a first-team DII All-American.

“And he was doing that while getting double- and triple-teamed, which goes along being ‘the guy,’” says Mike Reilly, Spevak’s quarterback during his first three seasons and who remains a close friend. “A lot of things make him special, and the first thing in my view is his intelligence. He’s one of the smartest, if not the smartest, wide receiver I’ve ever played with.”

Reilly, similarly cerebral, shared a radar-like thought process with his primary target. Each seemed always to know what the other was thinking, even if plans on a specific play had not previously been spoken.

“He and I were almost always on the same page,” Reilly says. “We did a lot of things that weren’t scripted, and he was running routes that weren’t really part of our offense. But because they worked, the coaches didn’t complain much.”

Nor does Jack Bishop, CWU’s athletic director, who points to Spevak as a shining example of the term “student athlete.”

“Absolutely,” Bishop says. “Johnny’s pretty much a straight-A student, he’s been a phenomenal performer in two sports and he’s exactly the type of young man you want representing your university.”

A former football coach, Bishop has a special appreciation for Spevak’s receiving prowess.

“He just has a style about him,” Bishop says, “and he maximizes is physical talent in both sports. He has an uncanny knowledge of just what to do and when to do it — like knowing when to go fast and when to go slow.”

And when to hit the books, even if it’s not for a class he’s taking.

“One year,” Sparling says, “he got done with football on a Saturday and we gave him our playbook on Saturday night. On Monday he was directing traffic at practice, and he knew plays we hadn’t even put in yet.

“So much of what he’s done, the records and all, really don’t mean much to Johnny right now. But there’s going to come a time five or 10 years down the road when he’s going to look back on it all and just start going, ‘Wow.’”

A lot of us already are.

• Roger Underwood can be reached at 509-577-7694 or runderwood@yakimaherald.com