Former Husky has Special Connection to Apple Cup

While many local residents will have a vested interest in this Saturday’s Apple Cup, the game will hold special meaning for one Shoreline man. 

Dan Eernissee currently serves as the City of Shoreline’s Economic Development Manager, but he may be best-known best for his time as a center for the Washington Huskies, from 1981 to 1985.

Eernissee, born and raised in Des Moines, grew up with the purple and gold, with a brother that played with the likes of Sonny Sixkiller and Calvin Jones while Eernissee was just reaching his teens.

“When I hit my teens and long before I began to get recruited to play at the UW, I’d ride the bus to Husky games and buy tickets from people in front of the stadium,” said Eernissee. “While I was also recruited to play in the Ivy League for Harvard & Yale, I decided that passing up the challenge and thrill of playing Division One football for Don James in front of my family was a decision I’d always regret.”

Eernissee would letter for three years for the Huskies, starting at center for every game of the 1983 and 1984 seasons, and was named one of four captains for the team his senior year. Including his redshirt season, the Huskies would go to two Rose Bowls, two Aloha Bowls, and an Orange Bowl.  However, for Eernissee, one Apple Cup memory stands out among the rest.

“My favorite moment was in Apple Cup 1984. We entered the game 10 – 1 knowing that USC already had clinched the Rose Bowl. In the rarest of opportunities, we fought and scratched our way to an Apple Cup victory that sent us to the Orange Bowl where we faced and defeated Oklahoma for a shot at the National Championship,” said Eernissee. (However, the Huskies would end up finishing second that season in both the AP and the coaches poll to BYU.)

“My most vivid memory of the game was not the celebration after—although it was fantastic with oranges falling from the stands—but one jarring car-accident-like play: I was the middle blocker on kick returns, and the Cougars executed an onside kick where they sent all ten players directly from the huddle at me while the kicker dribbled the ball behind. The plan was for the kicker to fall on the ball after it went ten yards. I was well trained by the Master of Details, Don James, so I knew to watch the ball being kicked before going backwards. Seeing it dribbled off the tee, I stood eleven yards away waiting for the ball and – of course—the ten Cougs who arrived first. In the chaos of pinching in to try to block me, though, one of those lousy Cougs touched the ball before it went ten yards. Husky ball! I had done by my job simply by getting buried by ten players at once.”

After graduating and spending time in the other Washington (D.C.) with the Redskins, Eernissee enrolled at Regent College in Vancouver B.C, and proceeded to spend the 1990s as a pastor, and non-profit executive in the church world. After spending much of the last decade working with communities as a real estate developer (his most notable developments include the southern half of the Mill Creek Town Center, and Snohomish Station), Eernissee began his job as Economic Development Manager in Shoreline in 2010. 

“My role is similar to what I’ve strived to do in the past:  I am working to help Shoreline be fertile ground for the growth of current and future businesses, which in turn will help the entire community thrive,” said Eernissee. “Shoreline has a great reputation, of course, and its residents love their city. My job, then, is to build on the positive momentum already established and to channel it into really amazing opportunities and adventures for us all.”