Football: Long walks prepare Wink's Tipping for longer runs

WINK Logan Tipping's brown 1982 Chevrolet 4x4, with its 305 Camaro engine, six-inch lift and Sublime bumper sticker, is sidelined for the moment. The transmission is busted, and until Tipping can get the funds to get it fixed, he'll continue walking the mile and a half from his house to school.

He doesn't mind the walk.

What he does miss is not being able to hear the engine roar, see the exhaust smoke pour from the straight pipes, feel that brown beauty accelerate through the Wink streets so quickly - that is the letdown.

Because for a soft-spoken person like Tipping, what he seeks most is an adrenaline rush. And for the nearly two months that his truck's been down, his fix has been a handoff, seeing a hole open through the offensive line and pumping his legs through it like a piston.

"The adrenaline's great," said Tipping, whose team opens District 8-1A play at 7:30 tonight at Van Horn. "There's not a better experience than that, really."

A drag-racing metaphor would be inaccurate; hardly anybody catches Tipping. He's rushed for an area-best 933 yards, averaging 8.3 per carry.

Each of Tipping's touches have some sort of importance.

For the Wildcats (4-2), it could be a momentum-shifting 40-yard run.

For opposing defenses, it can be the big play that their coaches told them to not allow, again and again leading up to the game.

For Tipping, it is the simple fact that he is getting the carries. The appreciation has been there since seventh grade, when his family moved from Wink for six months and he returned to find his starting spot no longer there. Tipping regained it his sophomore year, when Jacob Jones broke his leg, and he cherishes it like he does a football, cradled deep inside his arms, even as defenders are trying to strip it away.

"There's always someone else who can fill in for you, so you have to work constantly (to) keep your spot," Tipping said. "I'm not saying they give it away easily, but they make you work for it. I can lose it at any time. It's a big, ‘What if?' that's always in the back of your mind."

In reality, Tipping has become too talented for that to ever happen. Not with his speed and vision. Not with his motivation, a common link with his fellow Wildcats.

Including today's game, Tipping has just four more regular season contests left in his Wink career. The fact isn't lost on him or his teammates.

In his classes with fellow seniors Sawyer McGuire and Travis Thomas, they talk about making these final games count, about how far they've been and how far they want to go, about their Pee Wee games and about the possible playoff rounds in November and December.

"That," Tipping said, "is really what keeps us going. It makes you work harder, and you want to make sure you don't want it to end, just make it go as long as it can."

The truck, the track season in the spring, college - those will all be there.

For now, Tipping has games such as today's and walks like the ones he makes to and from school.

Listening to Disturbed or maybe Bullet For My Valentine on his iPod, Tipping has time to think about it all. He mostly thinks about football, though.

Friday night ... who is going to be there ... what play the other team is going to run.

"The walk's not as bad as people think," Tipping said. "I enjoy it. It gives you time to think."