Andale duo runs over, around and past defenders

The laughter that is sure to come when Andale senior Hank Eck is around isn’t a result of premeditated jokes. Kid opens mouth, funny comments tumble out.

No one is safe from Eck’s humor, but if he has a prime target, it’s going to be senior Hunter Knoblauch, his fellow running back. Knoblauch is the athlete with the golden smile and athletic ability.

“Superstar” is what Eck calls Knoblauch. And, oh, it’s fun to mock Knoblauch’s few failures.

“He’ll bring up something from my sophomore year, like when I dropped the ball against Holton,” Knoblauch said. “So I’ll say, ‘How was it watching that happen from the sideline?’”

Knoblauch laughs as he recalls one of his favorite Eck jokes. But that’s Hank, making his teammates laugh.

There’s an easy sort of closeness among the Andale players, especially Knoblauch and Eck, who were rivals in middle school.

Now the two running backs are competitors only in the sense that they challenge each other to be the best so they can win the Class 4A-Division II championship.

It would be easy to have carried over their rivalry from their middle-school days, when Knoblauch was at Colwich and Eck at St. Marks School, playing against each other for the eighth-grade basketball title. It went to double overtime. Colwich won. Knoblauch fouled out.

The closest they get to even remotely resembling rivalry is when Eck cracks jokes.

When asked to come up with a question for Knoblauch, Eck said, “Ask him about him leading the team in yards per carry.”

When the question was posed to Knoblauch, he paused and laughed.

“Oh my goodness. I’m guessing it’s him since he brought it up,” Knoblauch said.

Yep, it’s Eck. Through two games he has 19 carries for 254 yards, 13.37 yards per carry. Knoblauch’s yards per carry is 10.81, with 36 carries for 389 yards.

“That’s classic Hank,”Andale senior lineman Alec Hein said with a laugh. “That’s just Hank playing around, getting on people’s nerves.”

Eck and Knoblauch are vocal about their appreciation of the offensive line, which is one of the reasons Hein lauds them.

“They understand brotherhood on our team,” Hein said. “We’re all playing for each another.… They make us look good. If we miss a block, they can cut out and make a big run. They make our job pretty easy.”

Knoblauch has been in the spotlight longer than Eck. Knoblauch started at running back as a sophomore and was a varsity basketball player as a freshman. He had 1,753 rushing yards and 24 touchdowns in 2013 and was an All-Metro selection at defensive back, a position Eck also plays.

Andale coach Gary O’Hair doesn’t see much difference in Knoblauch and Eck, whether they’re playing defense or offense. They’re both 6-foot, 180 pounds, and O’Hair strongly believes that if Eck were at any other school, he’d get as many carries as Knoblauch.

“You could think they’re brothers,” O’Hair said. “They look almost identical, same size, almost exactly the same speed. Jersey 5 (Eck) and jersey 8 (Knoblauch) look a lot alike. I have to look twice to see who it is.”

Eck laughs off the comparisons.

“I’ve never noticed,” he said about how he and Knoblauch have similar skills. “I always thought Hunter is a lot better than me, by a lot. He’s faster and shiftier. I can see where (O’Hair) gets the numbers mixed up, but we’re totally different.

“I’d have to disagree with (O’Hair). Hunter is quite the athlete. He’s a lot faster than me. Well, not by much. Don’t give him that much credit. Just the moves he makes, I don’t see how he does it.”

Knoblauch’s biggest asset is his vision.

“So many times his runs just look easy — ‘Wow, that was wide open’— because he does a phenomenal job of finding the hole and seeing where to go,” O’Hair said. “He’s faster than last year. The plays he’s making, he just couldn’t have done it last year.”

Hein’s example of Knoblauch’s prowess was his 90-yard touchdown against McPherson on Sept. 12.

“We all missed our assignments on that play,” Hein said. “He turned it into a 90-yard touchdown. That was special. I saw him reverse field, and all of a sudden, he’s gone.”

Eck is speedy, too, and he is a smart runner. But where he faltered as a junior was making his cuts at the right time to extend his runs and get into the end zone.

So, of course, he went to Knoblauch for help.

“He said, ‘Man, I have to figure out how to get the ball in the end zone. I can’t make the last defender miss,’” Knoblauch recalled.

During the summer, they met on the football field and Knoblauch ran full speed at Eck.

“I’d run at him, and he’d make a cut,” Knoblauch said. “He’d keep doing it over and over so he could get those reps in and then it becomes natural.

“… He’d always say I could juke better than him. But he’s made moves in the Buhler and the McPherson games that he hasn’t made.”

Knoblauch has four touchdowns of 4, 5, 44 and 90 yards.

Eck has four touchdowns of 1, 31, 44 and 76 yards.

“We push each other to work hard,” Knoblauch said. “He’ll have better games than me, I’ll have better games than him. In the end, we all want the win.”

This story was originally published September 20, 2014 at 12:25 AM with the headline "Andale duo runs over, around and past defenders."