Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Jacob Clark, times two
Same-name duo start for Tigers
BENTONVILLE — One is an offensive lineman and the only returning starter in his group, and the other is a tailback who just moved into his starting role this fall.
One is a senior in school, while the other is a junior. One has light-colored hair, and the other is dark-headed.
So what could these two Bentonville football players possibly have in common besides being teammates? It’s what they hear when most people try to get their attention.
Both of them have the same name: Jacob Clark. The two are unrelated, even though they both have siblings on the team, but having them together at the same setting makes things interesting at times, both on and off the football field.
“It’s funny at times,” the younger Clark said. “A lot of guys like to say ‘Hey Jacob’ whenever we’re together so we’ll both look. They get some laughs out of it.
“It’s also cool that I have another guy named Jacob on the team and on the varsity offense with me. It doesn’t usually happen.”
Both of them have made important contributions to the Tigers’ 3-0 start heading into today’s 7A-West Conference opener against Fort Smith Southside. The older Clark, who is 6-foot-2 and 275 pounds, and his offensive linemen colleagues have been responsible for helping Bentonville’s offense average 34 points and 447 yards total offense per game this season.
The younger Clark (5-10, 180), meanwhile, has become the team’s leading ground gainer with 391 yards and four
touchdowns and also had a 73-yard pass reception in the Tigers’ 37-8 victory last week over Tallahassee (Fla.) Rickards. While a runner likes to give his linemen credit for the
yardage he gains, others have mistaken the lineman Clark and praised him for the job well done.
“People at school do it,”
the lineman Clark said. “They like to tell my brother (Nathan), who is also on the team, to ‘ tell your brother nice job running’ and all that stuff. He’ll say ‘No, it’s the other one’ and by the end of the day, he’s used to it.
“It happens outside of school, but not near as bad. It all started when the other Jacob was a freshman and doing all that running. That’s when everybody started getting confused. People would ask me about it because they thought I was older than that.”
The confusion not only belongs around the football field. Some teachers have dealt with both Clarks because they had the same seminar class the past two years, although the older Clark admits that teachers have done a better job of determining the differences in the two players.
Still, nobody has to deal with the confusion more than
Bentonville’s football coaching staff, particularly Tigers offensive coordinator Aaron Danenhauer. He’s the one that has both of them in the offensive huddle at the same time, and he has grown accustomed to two sets of eyes on him when he wants to call out for just one of them.
“To be honest, I don’t know if we really think about it too much,” Danenhauer said. “It hasn’t been an issue. There will be times when I yell out ‘Clark,’ and both of them will look over. Other than that, it really doesn’t cross your mind at times.
“Sometimes, things take care of themselves because, if one of them messed up, they know which one I’m talking about. They know ‘ He’s talking to me this time.’ If I’m talking about a block, then the big Jacob Clark knows what I’m talking about. If I’m talking about hitting the hole right, then the other Jacob Clark thinks ‘Oh, he’s talking to me.”