DETROIT – Water.
To some, it’s sacred.
To all, it’s nourishment.
To the Seattle Seahawks, it could be destiny.
It all started back in Cheney, in training camp, when Seahawks head coach Mike Holmgren attended an otherwise routine news conference. He opened a bottle of water, took a sip and set it aside.
The news conference ended, and Holmgren didn’t take the plastic bottle with him.
Enter Jeff “The Fish” Aaron, host of the 3 to 6 p.m. radio show on Everett’s KRKO 1380 AM.
Aaron grabbed the bottle and decided it would be “magic water.”
“I jokingly, on the air, said I’m going to save this water and I’m going to pour it in the end zone at every Seahawks game and it’s going to be magic,” Aaron said.
“Then we had a guy at a bar who claimed to be a minister, so we had him bless the water. Then we started pouring a capful on people’s heads” for good luck.
If your head got the water and the Seahawks won, you got it again. If they lost, you were done and Aaron called for someone else’s head.
Enter Deanna Hill, 36, of Stanwood.
Before the Oct. 9 game against the St. Louis Rams, Hill’s head got splashed and it was the start of the Seahawks’ 11-game winning streak.
Eleven times, Hill’s head got soaked.
The only radio station party she missed was before the final week of the season, which was the Seahawks’ loss to the Green Bay Packers on Jan. 1. Relatively meaningless, but a loss.
“That’s when we were, like, ‘Oh my God, this is serious,’” Aaron said.
Hill returned for the Seahawks’ first two playoff games.
She got soaked.
The Seahawks won.
Here’s where it gets really good.
When the station held a must-be-present-to-win raffle for a trip to Super Bowl XL, Hill was there with family and friends, but a bunch of unlucky fans weren’t. Five names were pulled; none were there.
The sixth name pulled from the hat was Amanda Elliott, Hill’s cousin.
That means Elliott’s here in Detroit, and so is Hill.
More importantly, Hill’s head is here.
On Friday afternoon, Aaron poured one final round of H2O on Hill’s head, “ensuring a Seahawks victory,” he said.
Rich Brown of Arlington found himself on an overhang high above Radio Row inside Detroit’s Renaissance Center when he saw Aaron hold up the sacred bottle.
“Is that the water?” Brown shouted down to Aaron. “Woo-hoo!”
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