Emet Ordway of Battle Ground discussed faith and family, along with football, as part of his application process for the Rego Athletic Scholarship Fund

Paul Valencia
Clark County Today

Emet Ordway has had an interesting journey as a high school student-athlete.

Mark Rego

He is Battle Ground all the way, even if Battle Ground High School was rarely his main campus.

“I have the weirdest school schedule you’ve ever heard of,” Ordway said.

Early in high school, he studied with Academy Northwest. Then he was a Running Start student at Clark College. He also excelled in fire science at Cascadia Tech in east Vancouver..

He did take an Advanced Placement class at the high school, though, in his hometown.

Through the different locales, he always came back to proudly wear the Battle Ground colors on his football and wrestling teams.

His football coach, Mike Woodward, told Clark County Today last season that Ordman is one of his favorite players he has coached in his decades of coaching in Washington and California.

“He’s like that All-American kid who does everything right,” Woodward said.

Next academic year, Ordman expects to be at El Camino College in California, playing football at the junior college. That is not a school that has scholarships for athletes. So Ordway went in search of some help.

His coaches told him to “make sure you find the Rego Scholarship,” he said.

Sure enough, Ordway looked into it and thought it would be a perfect fit.

“I learned who he was as an individual. It was cool to hear from people who were coached by him and the impact he had on them,” Ordway said.

Ordway said he focused on what it is like to be a leader during the application process for the scholarship.

“Coach Rego was about faith, family, and football,” Ordway said. “Those were my points in my essay.”

Mark Rego was an assistant football and track and field coach at Evergreen and then Union High School. He died during the 2018 football season. He was known throughout Clark County for his enthusiasm and his passion for helping young athletes.

Family and friends wanted to keep his legacy alive through a scholarship fund. To date, the fund has given money to 233 athletes from Evergreen and Battle Ground Public Schools.

This year’s scholarship winners were announced earlier this spring at a ceremony.

“It was a nice tribute to Coach Rego,” Ordway said.

The scholarship is for athletes but not for their athletic skills. The recipients of these scholarships have a drive to succeed in life beyond sports.

Ordman, for example, has a number of goals. After El Camino, the plan is to transfer to a four-year school to play football. He also wants to become a firefighter, and eventually, become a high school coach.

His passion, he said, is firefighting.

First California and then … he will figure it out.

But he will always be proud of the start of this journey.

“Representing Battle Ground is really cool because the community was really strong,” he said.

His teammates on the football and wrestling teams became his brothers, his companions.

“Just representing the Tigers was really cool,” he said.