LITTLE ROCK — If Stephen Newell’s not throwing touchdowns or tackling runners, he’s rescuing distressed damsels from the top of a famous Colorado mountain.
The football stuff - he performed that fairly often in the early years of the new century.
The rescue thing - that was just a week ago Saturday.
Stephen’s name first showed up in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in September 2002. As quarterback for Pulaski County junior high, he ran for a 1-yard touchdown and threw a 60-yard touchdown pass to Brent Hanks in a 26 to 8 rout of a school with the initials Little Rock Christian.
Two months later, Pulaski Academy, led by a quarterback named Adam Thrash, thrashed a high school with the initials Bad Knees by a score of 69 to 7. Stephen, a ninth-grader, threw a 69-yard touchdown pass to Bo Rhodes.
He finished his career with 477 tackles, 134 of them his senior year, when he tackled 23 players for a loss of yards and sacked quarterbacks seven times.
Our last significant mention of Stephen was in February 2006, when we published a photograph of him the day he signed to play football for the Air Force Academy.
On to the damsels, upon whom Stephen stumbled about three miles from the top of Pikes Peak.
Stephen and Steve Shaffer of Austin, Texas, hit the trail head about 7:15 that morning, planning to hike the 26 round-trip miles by midafternoon.
At about the 11-mile mark, however, the hikers found Marian Steele in distress. She was pretty certain she had broken her left foot.
After ascertaining only her foot was injured, the cadets offered to carry her to the top, an offer she and her hiking buddy, Schona Schlaht, happily accepted.
They tried to carry her between them, which didn’t work, so they took turns carrying her over their shoulders.
“I tried to pretend I was a scarf and wrap myself tight around their neck,” says Marian, 32, a Harley-Davidson mechanic who is preparing to enter nursing school. “It was really embarrassing.”
The cadets had hiked the first 11 or so miles of the trail in about three hours.
The last two miles took them at least that long.
“They were like superhero robots,” Marian says.
It wasn’t robotics or adrenaline, however, that carried them to the top.
“I’m a workout fanatic,” Stephen says.
Some days for fun, the two of them run up Manitou Incline, a strip up Pikes Peak’s skirt that gains 2,000 feet in altitude in three-quarters of a mile, the sort of slope that makes skiers scream. Some days, Stephen straps on a 35-pound vest.
Her foot was, indeed, broken, Marian said when we talked recently.
Other hikers offered water and bandages and concern, Marian says, but only the men from Arkansas and Texas offered a lift.
“It was like a He-Man cartoon,” Marian says.
“I told them they are my designated friends now.”
Arkansas, Pages 19 on 07/25/2010