Results speak loudly for Motes
Thatcher senior Heath Motes isn’t much of a conversationalist. When baseball coach Russell Jones encounters Motes in the hallway, Motes will say, “Hey, Coach,” and walk away. Motes isn’t being disrespectful. Nor is he arrogant. Maybe it has something to do with growing up in a home with a sister and three loud brothers, but he simply prefers the sound of silence.
“He doesn’t talk much to me,” Jones said. “But he doesn’t talk much to anyone.”
When Motes broke the Class 2A/Division III Arizona high school record for stolen bases earlier this season — he has since been eclipsed by Window Rock’s Chad Myron — Jones thought about honoring him in a school assembly. Then, he reconsidered. “It would embarrass him,” he said. Motes probably will hate this next line then: He might be the best smallschool athlete in the state.
Need proof? Well, Motes was a oneman gang for Thatcher’s football team, rushing for 2,089 yards and 32 touchdowns, throwing for 1,575 yards and 25 scores, and intercepting 11 passes from his free-safety position.
In baseball, he’s hitting .540 and has stolen 64 bases for a Thatcher team that’s the No. 10 seed in the Division III state tournament and will play San Tan Valley Combs today at Surprise Stadium.
Oh, and did I mention Jones believes Motes would have been a state champion wrestler if he hadn’t given up on the sport after suffering a shoulder injury his junior year?
“He’s just an amazing athlete,” foot- ball coach Dave Jeffries said. “It’s interesting. You wouldn’t know it just looking at him. And you wouldn’t know it walking down the hallways at school. He’s very quiet and introverted.
“But I coached in the Gilbert school district for 13 years and I don’t know if we ever had an athlete like him.”
About that quiet nature: I interviewed Motes by phone. Here’s part of our exchange:
Me: “Is it hard to believe your high school career is coming to an end?” Motes: “A little bit.” Me: “Have you decided what you want to do after high school?” Motes: “Not yet.” Me: “Do you think your personality comes from growing up with three boisterous brothers?” Motes: “I guess.” It was a short interview. Fortunately, others at Thatcher are only too happy to reflect on Motes’ phenomenal high school career that in football included 7,115 total yards and 102 touchdowns.
“From a coaching standpoint, he’s athletically the top kid I’ve ever coached,” Jeffries said. “If you put him on any one of the Valley teams, he’d still be a standout player. And he does it in a way that’s fun to watch. We’ll be on the sideline and when our team makes a play, you’ll hear cheering. When he does something special there’s an audible gasp on the sideline and in the crowd. It’s almost a, ‘Whoa,’ before the cheering and clapping starts. I think I’ve said, ‘Holy cow.’ ”
The odd thing is, Motes doesn’t have exceptional athletic gifts. He’s not the fastest player or the strongest player. And at 6-foot-1and180 pounds, he’s indistinguishable from most high school ath- letes. But what separates Motes is his quickness and his competitiveness.
“He has a nose for the ball on defense, and on offense, he doesn’t want to go down,” Jeffries said. “... He makes you look like you know what you’re doing as a coach.”
Said Jones: “People here take for granted what he does week in and week out. But when he’s gone, they’ll realize that’s not a normal thing. They’ll realize how special he was.”
Forget the statistics. What makes Motes truly special is that he doesn’t think he’s special.
Jeffries is leaving Thatcher and returning to the Valley to become the head football coach at Queen Creek Benjamin Franklin High. He’ll take a clip showing how Motes responded when he scored a touchdown this past season to tie the game against top-ranked Yuma Catholic.
“He ran through the end zone, then turned up field and handed the ball to the ref,” Jeffries said. “There was no hooting and hollering or going crazy. I’m going to show it to my team and say, ‘This is how we act when we score a touchdown.’ ”
Motes wants to play baseball in college — “I just enjoy it more than football,” he said — but offers from Division I schools have been scarce, likely because of the caliber of competition he faced in high school. He also wants to move to a big city where “there’s just more stuff to do.”
Those two quotes, by the way, were the longest statements Motes made in our interview.
Kind of refreshing, isn’t it? Reach Bordow at scott.bordow@ arizonarep ublic.com. Follow him on Twitter @sbordow.