BENTONVILLE -- When Canaan Ross moved to Bentonville in the seventh grade, Dallas Hardison was his football coach at the Boys & Girls Club.
When Ross joined Bentonville's football team as a freshman two years later, it was then-sophomore Kasey Ford that took him under his wing and guided his younger teammate.
Canaan Ross
SCHOOL Bentonville
CLASS Senior
HEIGHT 6-1
WEIGHT 210
NOTABLE Has passed for 2,182 yards this season with 18 touchdowns and six interceptions, and he has run for a pair of scores. … Threw for a season-high 304 yards and a touchdown in Bentonville’s 44-34 victory over Bixby, which plays Lawton next week for the Oklahoma Class 6A-II state championship. … Earned the starting quarterback just before the season started, despite two surgeries and an illness caused by an allergic reaction to the sutures used during surgery on his ankle.
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For more on Canaan Ross, see the video at nwadg.com and arpreps.com.
Both of his mentors were starting quarterbacks that led the Tigers to the Class 7A state championship game. Ross would like nothing more than follow in the footsteps of his predecessors, and now he is just one game away from making it happen.
"It would really mean a lot," Ross said. "I know Dallas real well, and he was a heck of a quarterback. Kasey was like my older brother, and I don't have an older brother.
"Ultimately, I want to win a state championship because this is my senior year."
It didn't come as easy as some might expect for the 6-foot-1, 210-pound Ross. He had to overcome a horrific injury he suffered last season, then another medical setback that eventually led him to Arkansas Children's Hospital, and that was followed by a competition in order to earn the starting quarterback job.
He came through those tests and almost set the school's single-game passing record in only his second start. He enters today's Class 7A state playoff semifinal game against Fayetteville having completed 146 of 230 passes for 2,182 yards and 18 touchdowns with only six interceptions.
"He's a hard worker," Bentonville coach Jody Grant said. "Football is very important to him. He's put in his time, and really I'd almost say he's an over-achiever.
"He's got great arm strength, and he does some good things. The kid's thrown for 2,000 yards, and he's operated our offense really well. He's had his moments, as all quarterbacks do, where they struggled. There's times when we felt like he hung on to the ball too long, but for the most part he's become better and performed well for us."
Yet, there was a time last year when it appeared Ross' opportunity would never take place.
During a Monday night junior varsity game, he rolled out after dropping back to pass and tried to stiff-arm a defender. Instead he was brought down and suffered a broken ankle in the process, and he had to wait a week before surgery could be done.
"That's when I realized how tough he really was," Grant said. "He snapped his ankle, and it was bad. I mean, he didn't get emotional. He didn't act like he was hurt at all.
"You would have thought he just turned his ankle, and it was a gruesome snap of the ankle. He handled it about as tough as I've ever seen a kid handle it."
It didn't end there. Two weeks after he was cleared to resume football duties, Ross started to have an allergic reaction to the sutures used during the surgery, which led to an infection and eventually caused him to become ill.
He was then rushed to the hospital, then later sent to Arkansas Children's Hospital for four days of treatment. Right after he was cleared for action a second time, he suffered a hernia while lifting weights, and that led to another surgery.
"When they said they had to rush me to Little Rock, I turned to my dad and said 'Am I going to be OK,'" Ross said. "I usually never get sick or been a sickly person. I was in a stretcher as they flew me down there, and I was praying the whole time.
"Then I finally came back around mid-March and still in offseason. I went in there and did a dead lift and got a hernia. I was going to be out another six weeks. By that time, it was about two days before spring workouts started in pads."
When Ross finally came back, he found out the starting quarterback job wasn't going to be handed to him. Instead, he was in a competition with Nathan Lyons and Aaron Estrada for most of the spring and into the summer 7-on-7 season.
He didn't win the starting job until before the season started. But once Ross was there, he has remained there throughout the season, although Lyons spelled him from time to time.
"We intentionally wanted to put some pressure on him to win the job," Grant said. "We don't like to just give jobs to people because it's their time. We want them to earn it, and that's what kids should want. He had to work for it. He knew that, and he embraced it. Canaan earned that spot, and did great with it.
"He almost set the single-game passing record against Bixby, Okla., and he did some good things. He's a tough kid. He gets hit hard Friday night, and it would have been a interception for a touchdown if not for the penalty. A lot of kids would have found a way to get off the field, but you could tell he worked too hard for this."
Sports on 11/25/2016