The Legend of Sonny Sixkiller: At First, It Was Slow in the Making
One of the earliest Seattle newspaper accounts described him almost absentmindedly as Al Sixkiller. Washington football coach Jim Owens insisted on calling him by his given name, Alex.
Everyone else would know him as Sonny.
Sonny Sixkiller.
There has been no greater name in Husky football history than this one, celebrated on the cover of Sports Illustrated and countless other magazines, in a song, on a T-shirt and in Hollywood movie credits.
Fifty years ago this month, Sixkiller first worked his way into the consciousness of the local sports fan as he prepared for spring drills as the UW's third-string quarterback.
He had attended classes for just six months after appearing in four freshman football games and starting two of them. He was only 18.
In 1970, Sixkiller's Cherokee name began to appear more and more frequently in the media as spring drills drew close and everyone tried to forget a disastrous 1-9 team from the season before -- then the worst in UW annals.
Sixkiller found himself on the varsity depth chart stuck behind senior Gene Willis, the returning starter, and fellow sophomore Greg Collins, with whom Sonny had shared time on the frosh team.
A fourth quarterback, Steve Hanzlick, was playing UW baseball but had made it known he might return to the football team, especially if the Huskies had trouble settling on a starting signal caller.
Willis and Sixkiller knew each other well from back home; they were former teammates from Ashland High in southern Oregon. As for Collins, Sonny always felt that Owens favored the more polished California player.
Besides the UW, Sixkiller was offered scholarships by Oregon and Washington State, with Oregon State informing the 5-foot-10 recruit, if he was actually that height, that he was too short. He almost believed it.
"I thought maybe that was right, that I was a small-college quarterback," said Sixkiller, shown in the recently taken video with UCLA basketball legend Bill Walton and Huskies hoopster RaeQuan Battle.
This is the first installment of several detailing the swashbuckling Sixkiller era of Husky football. We'll replay a magical time and show how the Beavers couldn't have been more wrong about him.