‘Just like me growing up’: In Junction City, a former Duck finds what he always loved about the game

The sun is close to setting, the flies are out and the temperature is still hovering around 90 degrees. The Junction City High School Tigers are huddled around first-year head coach Tye Rauschert, who closes out this Tuesday practice with momentum as the Tigers prepare for a Friday night matchup against 3-0 Marshfield.

“Keep getting better every day,” Rauschert says to his team. “Build and grow.”

The Class 4A Tigers are 1-1. They beat Woodburn last week on the road, 30-13, to equal their 2024 win total. And yet, after the team breaks their huddle with a “family” on three, a different voice rises from behind the scrum.

“OK, everyone down here. Let’s go!”

The players head toward the voice. Then they run.

“We did a lot of conditioning because we didn’t have a clean locker room,” former Oregon tight end — now Junction City assistant coach — Josh Wilcox tells me.

I ask him if he ever had that problem. He cracked a grin.

“No, no,” he says. “We were spot on back in the glory days.”

The glory days, in a way, are why I’m out here in Junction City, a town of 6,747 located just a few miles south of the midpoint between Eugene and Corvallis. The Ducks are playing the Beavers on Saturday for the 129th time. It’ll be their second meeting since conference realignment struck, but the first where the ocean between the two schools is so apparent. 

The No. 6 Ducks are 3-0. The Beavers are 0-3, a 35.5-point underdog and have already produced a season’s worth of miscues, soundbites and negative headlines.

And what was supposed to be positive news this week – that the two schools had struck a six-year partnership to resume the rivalry beginning in 2027 in Eugene – was largely met with, at best, apathy from the Corvallis fanbase.

The feeling around the game – and often the sport – is largely sad, a sentiment shared by Wilcox. The 51-year-old’s ties to Oregon are as deep as they come: His dad, Dave Wilcox, is in the Oregon and Pro Football Hall of Fames. His uncle, John Wilcox, was on the 1957 Rose Bowl squad. His brother, Justin Wilcox, was an all-Pac-12 safety for the Ducks.

And Josh, in his time with the Ducks, beat the Beavers three times – including a 49-13 thumping in Corvallis during his senior year in 1996 that involved a stop at the storied Longbranch Tavern in Monroe on the way home.

“Two of the best things you can have growing up as a Ducks fan: Helping the Ducks go to the Rose Bowl, and being able to be here after a win in the Civil War,” Wilcox told me before practice at the now-Longbranch Bar and Grill.

Conference realignment, money and the disregard for history and tradition have turned Wilcox off of the sport as of late. And while we did chat a bit about what things used to be like, I was struck by how much he wanted to talk about football.

Junction City football.

He was a bit surprised by that, too.

“These kids want to learn”

See, Wilcox has had a lot of jobs in his life. He’s been a professional football player, a professional wrestler, a radio host and worked in beverage sales. But he’s never been a coach, and it’s not what he set out to do when he moved back home to Junction City to take care of the family farm after Dave’s passing in 2023.

Dave bought the 150-acre property in the 1970s after his retirement from the NFL, and Wilcox remembers two-a-day practices back in high school that involved bike rides home to move irrigation equipment around. 

Wilcox figured stories like that were from a bygone era. Coaching never interested him. That was (Cal coach) Justin’s thing.

But Wilcox is a big name in Junction City. And it wasn’t long before the newly hired Junction City head coach got wind of his presence. 

“It was nice to finally have someone share (his number) with me,” Rauschert said. “The first time I called, he said, ‘Well, I’ll come out and watch a couple of practices.’ I think he liked what he saw.”

What did Wilcox see? He saw the same short goal posts, the same old bleachers and the same grass field he played on in the early ’90s. He saw a team filled with players like senior tight end Jackson Roderick, who plans on going to electrical lineman school in Idaho next year, and senior running back Staton Barnes, a 5-foot-8, 165-pounder who spent his summer learning how to buy and sell pigs while participating in 4-H.

“All I really heard about with high school is about the recruiting stuff,” Wilcox said. “It’s just four stars and five stars, guys transferring, blah blah blah,” Wilcox said. “When you’re just reading the headlines and not super involved — and I don’t have kids either, so I’m not around them a lot — but these kids want to learn. They want to learn football.”

Wilcox started as a volunteer running drills. It quickly turned into a full-time position, where he has input on the offensive side of the ball. During fall camp, Rauschert said the team received messages from Oregon coach Dan Lanning, and former Oregon coach Mike Bellotti, who coached both Wilcox brothers at Oregon.

“The players loved it,” Rauschert said. “I read them all the text messages from all the people who reached out and it’s like, ‘These guys believe in you. Take this one day at a time and just keep building and growing for the future.’”

Rauschert will be cheering for the Ducks on Saturday. So, too, will most of the players on the team. That’s changed, Wilcox said, from his youth when Junction City leaned orange and the Wilcoxes would go around slapping Oregon stickers on their neighbors’ mailboxes.

Though he’s a Duck, that part of his glory days has faded away.

It’s disheartening – until Wilcox sees someone like Barnes living out his own. 

Barnes is the Tigers’ bell cow who, despite his size, pounded the ball 22 times against Woodburn for 240 yards and three touchdowns. He’s a senior who figures he’ll go to a trade school next year, but after an all-league season as a junior, is keeping the door open for a possible junior college football opportunity.

He’s also an Oregon State fan, who takes ribbing from his pro-Duck teammates and still wants the rivalry to continue, no matter how minuscule the Beavers’ chances appear.

“I’ve been the underdog my whole life,” Barnes says. “They’re all men out there. They’ve all got scholarships and stuff. Yes, one side has better players. But they all bleed.”

Wilcox likes that sort of talk. And he’s really liking the job, even if he’s “unfortunately, the lower-paid Wilcox coach.” Around the field, he calls himself “the Kenny Powers of Junction City,” and there’s still a resemblance of the player there, with strong arms and legs that fellow coaches joke must be shaven. But Wilcox doesn’t need any reminder that those days are long behind him – that’ll be front and center on Saturday. 

And he’s OK with that. With everything that’s changed, Wilcox has found the heart of what made those games special over the years isn’t privy to just Autzen or Reser. 

“Coming back here has certainly rejuvenated my love for football,” Wilcox says after practice before walking over to the stadium to watch a middle school game. “Having kids that want to learn and love playing football — the same kind of kids that I grew up with, guys that drive combines in the summer, guys that work at the feed store — I feel like I’m back around kids just like me growing up.”