More than big: Weight room dedication transformed Bethel High School’s Ezra Cleveland to one of state’s top linemen

As a football coach, Mark Iddins is happy to have a healthy Ezra Cleveland back on the Bethel High School football team.

But as a world history teacher … no, Iddins isn’t so thrilled.

“My worst student this year is this kid,” Iddins jokingly said, gesturing toward Cleveland. “He always interrupts me.”

“I only interrupt him to correct him,” Cleveland said.

Cleveland is not only a monstrous 6-foot-6, 290-pound presence on the Braves’ offensive and defensive lines. The Boise State commit is also one of the team’s strongest players and one of its 10 fastest, Iddins said.

Bethel was 5-1 with Cleveland in the lineup last year and 0-4 after he missed the rest of the season with a torn meniscus in his knee.

Few things get past him. Not opposing running backs trying to break through the line of scrimmage, nor defensive linemen rushing Bethel quarterback Bryce Missey.

And certainly not Iddins’ hypocritical PowerPoint presentation lessons in world history, either.

“He says, ‘Make sure you have a few bullet points,’ and then he comes up with a slide and it’s just a poop ton of words on this slide with a tiny picture,” Cleveland said.

Said Missey, who was also in the class: “Ezra goes, ‘Iddins! Come on, man. Didn’t you just tell us about bullet points?’ And those two just go back and forth with jokes on and on for like a couple of minutes.”

Speaking of bullet points, Bethel’s players hit with season-ending injuries last year:

▪  Cleveland said he was wearing in a new pair cleats against Curtis, took a bad step and one got stuck in the turf, with his knee folding underneath him. That tore his left meniscus and ended his season.

▪  Missey, a week later, suffered a concussion against Spanaway Lake. He missed the rest of the season, including Bethel’s 56-7 district round loss to eventual 4A state champion Bothell.

▪  Wide receiver Elijah McLeod broke his right leg in the second quarter of the opening game of the season.

“I remember last year talking to the Bothell coach (Tom Bainter) and they had lost one guy throughout the entire season on their state championship roster,” said Iddins, a former Montana State and Kamiak quarterback.

“That’s why I’ve made sure to stay on them about lifting during the season to make sure their bodies don’t taper. I felt like we did everything we could in the offseason. Now it’s just about luck.”

But there was a saving grace to all those injuries.

Cleveland had always been one of the team’s biggest players — despite his father, James, being 5-8 and mother Shawna 6-foot — but he said he had never dedicated himself to the weight room until this past summer after seeing how his loss affected the team.

An extra push came when a coach from the Air Force Academy visited him, telling Cleveland he had the potential to play in college.

“I didn’t realize I could go to the next level,” Cleveland said.

He said his bench press went from 230 pounds to 345, and he can now power clean more than 300 pounds. But Iddins said it’s Cleveland’s speed that really sets him apart.

Cleveland — the state’s top-ranked senior lineman, according to Scout.com — said he has run a 5-second 40-yard dash (his 40-time on Scout.com lists him at 5.3 seconds. He blamed that on bulky new shoes — again with the cleats — and that he got a bad start).

Iddins said Cleveland looked more like a sprinter than a lineman rounding the turn on the track at Art Crate Field during Bethel’s linemen relays — a team 4x100-meter event where linemen pass footballs instead of batons.

“He’s always been the 6-6, 280-pound freak athlete, so why would he need to go to the weight room?” Missey said of Cleveland’s mindset before this past summer. “But he’s really taking it serious this year. You can just see the improvements.”

Cleveland said that stacks of college letters awaited him almost every day this past spring in his fifth-period class with Iddins.

“There was one day I remember we had to make an Oregon State coach wait outside my class while Washington State was in the room,” Iddins said.

But Cleveland is more than a massive, talented football player on a path to a Division I university — even if that’s the rap he gets around school.

“He’s really not that kind of guy,” Missey said. “Once you get to know him and you’re around him, he’s a goofball. He’s such a great guy to have on the team.”

Cleveland gets his first name from Ezra Lusk, a former motocross star. He said he has competed in motocross events in the past but labeled himself “mediocre.”

“I’m a little big for it,” Cleveland said. “I always crash, and I can’t risk getting injured, so I stopped.”

Especially with all Bethel has planned this year.

“We’ve put in the work that we need to, we just have to transfer it into the games,” Iddins said. “It’s a long season, and we are preparing ourselves to play in November. That’s the goal.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 8:18 PM with the headline "More than big: Weight room dedication transformed Bethel High School’s Ezra Cleveland to one of state’s top linemen."