The Front Row with JASON ELLIOTT Nov. 23, 2011

In a little over 10 years of covering sports and other events, I've met a ton of people.

And more often than not - I actually remember most of those names and faces.

Not too long into my first year of covering high school sports, there was a name I couldn't get right.

Luckily for me, I learned.

TRYING TO balance college along with an internship at the Shoshone News-Press and full-time job at McDonald's, getting to know some of the players was a little difficult.

In those first couple of months, I'd rely on the rosters to direct me to the correct name, just in case my memory wasn't as good as it should have been.

Every photo, or mention in the paper was incorrect for the first two months I worked in Kellogg.

No matter how many times I was told otherwise, I'd continue to make the same mistake and have to have my memory refreshed again.

But the more I got to know Brandon Gray as a person, not only as an athlete, the more guilty I felt about mixing his name up.

THERE WAS a lot of different things that I regretted about my time at the News-Press, but one of the top 10 was mistaking him for another player.

The more games I watched, the quicker I learned how wrong I really was.

Gray, who graduated from Mullan High in 2003, was one of those players that didn't look the part of an all-state basketball player, but at 6-foot-6, he could take over a game and shoot the basketball just as well as anyone on the floor.

Most of the time, he'd do it with a smile on his face, either grabbing rebounds or scoring inside the paint.

He never played football, and track usually interfered with going snowmobiling or riding his motorcycle in some of the off-road areas around the Silver Valley or surrounding areas.

In fact, there was probably a chance that if the high school activities association had made it a varsity sport, there was nobody that could beat him on a snowmobile.

Gray was injured in a mining accident on Thursday night at the Lucky Friday Mine, and later passed away from his injuries on Saturday in Coeur d’Alene. Services will be held Friday at the Mullan Pavilion.

The news shocked me at first and still doesn’t seem real.

It seemed like just yesterday he’d been attempting to dunk a basketball before a game at the Mullan Pavilion.

Without knowing it at the time, I learned a valuable lesson about how to never take anything for granted.

Getting to know the person outside of sports was a good step, as was watching him light up a room with his smile.

I’ll never forget his name again.

Jason Elliott is a sportswriter for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at [email protected].