Deontae Cooper’s career on the field at Washington was derailed by three separate ACL injuries. But he has his time on Montlake — spent mostly in the training and class rooms — to thank for getting him back on the football field.
The sidelines, that is.
Highline High School named Cooper its next head football coach on Thursday. He wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity had Michael Kneip, a close friend and teammate at UW, not made Cooper his first hire after taking over as Bellevue coach last year, two years removed from the dominant, scandal-plagued Butch Goncharoff era.