Country music dreamer makes a ‘Throwback’ to his days playing Whatcom County football
In any normal year, the first weekend of December is a pretty special time in Whatcom County. It’s generally filled with community holiday festivities and at least one — sometimes even more — high school football team playing for a state title.
But if this year has taught us anything, 2020 is not a normal year. COVID-19 has changed just about everything, including forcing the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association to push the Boys of Fall to late winter and early spring.
Never has Whatcom County needed the words of legendary Lynden football coach Curt Kramme, who died in the spring of 2017 after battling cancer, as badly as it does now — “Every setback has a comeback.”
If you found yourself missing Whatcom County’s Friday Night Lights this fall, you weren’t the only one. Former Squalicum and Lynden high school quarterback Clark Hazlett was right there beside you — socially-distanced, of course, from Nashville, Tennessee.
Hazlett took his former coach’s words to heart last summer while he was in Whatcom County, marrying two of his dreams into one when he filmed his first music video in his rookie country music singer/storyteller career in Lynden at the site and time he and so many Lynden football fans desperately wish they could “Throwback” to.
He used Rolle DeKoster Field and the Lynden High School parking lot and trophy hall as a backdrop for his stroll down memory lane, mixing in some of his own highlight videos from Whatcom County’s youth football fields all the way up to playing for Linfield University.
In the process, Hazlett got a chance to honor Kramme — a man who Hazlett told The Bellingham Herald had a profound impact on his life, even though he only played his senior year for Kramme at Lynden.
It’s for that reason, Hazlett said he was proud to make a tribute to Kramme and the Lynden community that helped feed his dreams to play football and eventually become a country music storyteller.
“I was a Bellingham boy, and I only spent one year up there in Lynden, but it changed my life,” Hazlett told The Herald. “I wanted to show that in my first video, and people have really responded to it. They’ve lived vicariously through that video.”
Throwing back
Hazlett first burst on the Whatcom County sports scene as one of two freshmen to share signal calling duties at Squalicum High in 2011.
After three years with the Storm, Hazlett started thinking about moving to Lynden and playing for their Hall of Fame coach.
“I remember going up there and talking to Coach Kramme and telling him I was thinking about making this move to play a year up there,” Hazlett said. “I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. They had an established quarterback (Sterling Somers), and I probably wasn’t going to play as much.
“What Coach Kramme told me really stuck with me. He said he really admired my aspiration to take a risk and transfer and the chances it wouldn’t all work out like I wanted. It was a risk I had to take, and it’s the best decision I ever made. Ever since then, I’ve been a risk taker.”
The risk paid off for Hazlett with a shot to advance to the 2014 Class 2A State Championship game — a game Lynden lost to Sedro-Woolley 42-13.
He moved on to play quarterback at Linfield College, where he served on the scout team as a freshman, was a backup his sophomore year and then tore a labrum in his hip as a junior in 2017 and was forced to redshirt.
“It was during that time that I realized I was more than a football player and more than a quarterback,” Hazlett said. “I started to dabble with other passions, and ultimately found storytelling. I started my own YouTube channel (Adventure Athlete) to document what it was like to play college football and give some insight in what it’s like to be a college athlete.”
Hazlett said it was then that he began to try his hand in music, but it wasn’t the summer before his senior season that he worked with a voice coach and realized there might be a future for him.
“It was as I was getting ready for my senior season that I wrote ‘Throwback,’” Hazlett said. “It was kind of what I was feeling — the premise of wishing I could go back to those good old days. I was realizing it was coming to an end.”
Thrown for a loop
Turns out it wasn’t quite coming to an end.
Hazlett says he was offered a chance to play professionally in Brazil in 2020. He arrived and immediately was put in quarantine for approximately a month and half.
“I was able to work out, and the coach let me borrow a guitar, and that was when I fell even more in love with playing the guitar and writing more songs,” Hazlett said.
The season ended up being canceled, and he returned to Whatcom County, where his parents, Scott and Elsie Hazlett, still live. His sister, former Squalicum soccer star Kim Hazlett, is also still in the area after signing a contract to play for the Seattle Reign.
Hazlett said he decided it was time to start chasing his second dream of making a living playing country music.
But before he left he was going through Instagram, and his scroll landed on some work by Evan Pollock of Pollock Pictures in Bellingham. Hazlett said he took a risk and reached out and struck up a conversation about possibly shooting a video for “Throwback.”
“Making things a little more difficult, I only had two months before I planned to move to Nashville,” Hazlett said. “So we started working together to make it all happen. He put together a team last minute and jumped through some hoops.”
Hazelett said he really wanted to shoot the video at Lynden High School because of the sentimental ties and wanting to stay true to his Whatcom County roots, and Lynden Athletic Director and coach Blake Van Dalen made it happen.
Shooting was done in 21 hours on Aug. 27, Hazlett said, and on Sept. 1 he packed up his truck and drove 36 hours from Whatcom County to Nashville.
Hazlett even managed to tie a tribute to the man who taught him to take risks into the video, gazing at a picture of Kramme in the Lynden trophy case as he sings “Every setback has a comeback.”
“I think Evan Pollock and his team did a good job capturing the story I was trying to tell with the song and bringing it to life in Lynden,” Hazlett said. “One of my favorite parts of the video is me sitting on the tailgate in the parking lot, because we used to do that on Friday nights after games.”
Throwing forward
Hazlett says he’s settled into life in Nashville and is starting to take the first steps in building toward his dream.
“We’re building some leverage,” the 23-year-old said. “I’m kind of reverse engineering everything here.”
Rather than trying to bursting onto the scene, as many artists do, Hazlett said he is focused on making connections and building a fan base through social media accounts on TikTok and YouTube — taking the mindset that it will likely take him years to get where he wants to go in the business.
And that’s just fine, because he hasn’t given up on his first dream of playing football, yet. He said he still hopes to play another five to seven years, and even plans to play in Mexico and then Brazil in 2021 — providing COVID-19 allows it, of course.
“I think I’ve got a good mindset,” Hazlett said. “I want to keep playing football when I can and keep working on my music and slowly build my catalog of songs. ‘Throwback’ is one of the only ones I’m going to put out for a few years.”
The next single he has planned is a song about being back in his hometown — something he said he holds near and dear to his heart no matter how many risks he takes or where his dreams lead him.
“I owe a big thanks to my mom, dad and sister for supporting all my wild dreams and aspirations,” Hazlett said, “but also to Whatcom County and Lynden. I have a lot of love for this community. I may have fans from all over, but I have a great place to call home.”
