Anthony Cunningham had lived for this moment.
As soon as the football moved, Cunningham, Sultan High School’s nose guard, bulldozed Monroe’s offensive line. Seconds later, after sacking the quarterback, he jumped to his feet, glared down at his fallen opponent and yelled, “I’m gonna be here all day, baby!”
After that, double teams came quickly but they still couldn’t stop Cunningham. With tackle after tackle, he backed up his first-quarter boast.
That was June 15, a day Sultan coaches and players said they won’t forget. Cunningham, who was wrapping up his sophomore year, played like a wild man in that varsity scrimmage in Sultan.
“It was the game of his life,” said Paul Cunningham, Anthony’s father.
It also was his last.
Three days later Cunningham drowned while swimming with his girlfriend at Lost Lake, north of Sultan. He was 16.
Before its home opener tonight against Chimacum, Sultan (1-1 overall) will honor Cunningham with a moment of silence. The game will be the Turks’ first on their home field since Cunningham’s breakout performance. It’s a time for the community to mourn the young man’s premature departure; it’s also a chance to celebrate the impact he made on the town in less than a year.
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Last spring the Sultan football team had high hopes. Key seniors would graduate, but plenty of young talent would return in 2004, including Cunningham, a stocky 5-foot-5, 180-pound nose guard and offensive tackle. Cunningham grew up in Chicago before moving to Sultan with father, Paul and step-mother Polly in July 2003. He quickly endeared himself to teammates thanks to his heavy Chee-caw-go accent and his on-field intensity. Cunningham picked up the nickname “Chicago” and earned comparisons to another undersized, famously relentless player.
“It would be like (legendary Notre Dame player) Rudy Ruettiger,” teammate Jon Murphy said. “He was just like that during practice. We knew our defense was set with Tony on it. He could get through (the offensive line) almost every single time.”
Cunningham logged significant varsity action as a sophomore. Sultan coach Jim MacDicken called him a “quick, smart, physical kid” who was going to be an impact player.
Paul Cunningham saw it coming long ago, back when Anthony began playing football at age 10.
“We could tell that from the first day he was on the field,” Paul said. “The kid couldn’t memorize his (multiplication) tables, but you give him a playbook and he could memorize that within minutes.” Anthony also wrestled and was a talented sprinter, but “football was his passion…football was his life.”
And in Sultan life was good. Paul said Anthony didn’t have many close friends when he lived in Chicago, but he immediately connected with several teammates in Sultan, including Murphy, Ben Lukone, Josh Switzer, and Chad Weisenbarger. All of a sudden, Anthony was heading to parties and sleepovers. Soon, he had his first serious girlfriend.
Kristi Anne Chavez met Anthony Cunningham through a family friendship. Now a 16-year-old junior at Monroe High, Chavez said she was attracted to Cunningham’s kindness.
“He didn’t really talk that much, but you could tell he had something inside…the way he treated everybody, the way he had respect for everybody.
“He treated me very well, but he was new to (dating).”
In other words, like all men, Cunningham goofed up sometimes. Before the couple’s first date, Paul warned Anthony not to take Chavez to an action movie; to instead pick a more romantic film. So Anthony whisked away Chavez to see “Starsky and Hutch”.
Oops.
Chavez said she didn’t mind, though. It was Cunningham’s intention that mattered.
Cunningham’s mother, Sheri, recalled other times when Anthony exposed his soft side. Like when at age 13 he made her a Mother’s Day plaque titled “The 13 Reasons I Love You in My 13th Year”. Caring efforts like that “just blew you away. He always thought about other people,” said Sheri, who lives in Chicago (Paul and Sheri divorced when Anthony was in elementary school).
Now that “Chicago” is gone, the people he affected are thinking about him. The Sultan football team has dedicated its season to Cunningham. The Turks won their first game 74-0 at Vashon. Murphy, Lukone, Switzer and Weisenbarger all said the memory of their fallen teammate fuels them.
“It sucks that he’s not here with us (physically),” Switzer said, “but we know he’s still here with us.”
“He’s still in our hearts,” Murphy added.
“I’m amazed at how many kids he’s touched,” Sheri said. “It makes me completely overwhelmed.”
Said Chavez of the players’ decision to devote their season to Cunningham: “I definitely think that that’s what he would have wanted.”
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Paul Cunningham will be in the stands tonight at Sultan. It will be the first game he’s been able to attend this season.
“There’s gonna be a lot of emotion,” he said. “I’m sure the kids are going to have a lot of emotion, too.”
When Paul drives into the school parking lot, there should be just enough daylight remaining to clearly see the engraved monument that bears his son’s name, Anthony “Chicago” Cunningham, along with others who died while they were students at Sultan. The first time Paul saw the memorial, he said it “brought a good tear to my eye.”
“(Anthony) was only here a year, and he made such a difference. That’s one of the things we can’t believe because Tony was always such a shy kid.
“In Sultan, everything changed. The year that he was here he made a good impact.”
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