GORDON KING/Yakima Herald-Republic Prosser High School's Bubba Hancock celebrates after tackling a Bellevue High School player in a game played Nov. 19, 2005. Prosser beat Bellevue 38-35.

It's easy to spot the guy wearing No. 5 in Prosser red.

He's the one who, after coming up from safety to make a highlight-reel hit on some hapless ballcarrier, is apt to celebrate the moment with whoops and waves to the Mustang cheering section, imploring the cheering throng to stand up and enjoy this as much as he obviously is.

And nobody in that Prosser crowd needs to look at the program or the newspaper to see who No. 5 is. Or, rather, who he is not.

Because, in black and white on program rosters and box scores and scoring summaries, No. 5 is some guy named Jared Hancock. And every Prosser fan knows that guy doesn't exist.

"Nobody," says Prosser coach Tom Moore, "calls him Jared." They call him Bubba. Everybody calls him Bubba. "He's been Bubba since he was about two months old," says his mom, Laurie Green — who is, in fact, the sole person on the planet who ever calls him Jared, but then only under special circumstances and only very loudly. As in:

"Jared Callie Hancock, you'd better get your tail in here front and center, and I mean NOW!"

"Only when I get in trouble," Bubba says sheepishly. "I was a busy little kid — not always getting in trouble, but always busy. When I was little, I'd be riding my bike all over town, and my parents would be out looking for me and asking people, 'Have you seen Jared?' And they'd say, 'Who?'"

Bubba's mother would get the same response at home when, in a family with four boys, there was invariably a crowd of visitors. "In our house," Laurie says, "it's always been one of those 'block houses' where there were always 500 kids over. I would call him Jared and everybody would look around and say, 'Who are you talking to?' I figured I might as well stick with Bubba."

Jared became Bubba between the ages of six weeks and eight weeks. As a baby, he suffered from a stomach blockage that left him able to keep food down. He's seen a photo. "I was skin and bones," he says. A surgery removed the blockage, and within two weeks the little guy had gained 10 pounds, went from bony to the kind of beefy bairn who begs the "bubba" moniker. Says his mom, "He's been Bubba ever since."

He was brawny enough as an elementary schooler that he spent his first two years in Grid Kids playing on the offensive and defensive line. "Once I got into sixth grade," he says, "I started growing up instead of out so much." As the youngest of four athletic boys and the third one to play football, Bubba took to the game naturally. And he has been a major contributor to the Mustang varsity since early in his sophomore season. Says Moore, "He's a real playmaker."

Hancock, a junior, has rushed for 1,215 yards over his two seasons on the varsity, and on defense he has brought a linebacker's ferocity to his safety role. He was sensational in last Saturday's 38-35 victory over four-time defending state champion Bellevue, helping stymie the Wolverines' explosive wing-T attack with one slobber-knocker hit after another. "With Bellevue, we played a 4-4 and dropped me down to linebacker," recalls Hancock, who obviously relished the move. "I feel like I'm a true linebacker."

And he carries that linebacker mentality to the other side of the ball — as does Ivan Merino, the team's leading rusher who, as a linebacker, also has been known to seek out contact rather than avoid it. "On offense, coach (Mark) Little says 'Be the hammer, not the nail.' That's nice. I think that fits all of our running backs. We all run with a little attitude that we're not going to get knocked back, that we're going to knock you over before you knock us over."

Maybe that sounds something like what Jared would say.

But it definitely sounds like Bubba.