Four-year letter-winners in the Mount Si Wildcats football program are the equivalent of an endangered species.

Mount Si Wildcats head football coach Charlie Kinnune isn’t surprised that senior football player Slater Macko was recently selected to compete in the Washington State Coaches Association all-state football game at 7 p.m. on July 12 at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. Macko, who earned first-team, all-league honors in the 4A KingCo Conference as an offensive guard and defensive tackle during his senior season in 2018, will continue his football career at NCAA Division II Western Oregon University this fall.

“Slater has left a huge impact and legacy on our program. To be a four-year letter-winner is something that doesn’t happen very often in our program. We’ve had some kickers and the occasional skill-position kid who are four-year letter-winners but to have a lineman do it is very impressive,” Kinnune explained. “This year we had two of them (RJ Bell also was a four-year letterman). This is really a great way to see Slater cap off his high school career by playing in an all-state game like this.”

In a Record feature last August, Macko said: “I work out for four to six hours per day. We work out together as a team six days a week at Mount Si. The only day we take off as a team is Wednesday. I also work out at Ford Sports Performance in Bellevue five to six days per week.”

Kinnune said Macko’s doggedness and training regimen turned him into one of the best interior linemen in Washington during his junior and senior seasons.

“He is very aggressive. He does a really good job of balancing the cerebral part of the game and then the part of the game where you just cut it loose and let nature take over,” Kinnune said. “He really started coming into his own his junior and senior year. He was a first-team all-league player on both sides of the ball, which is very difficult to do. Not very many people do it.”