THE FRONT ROW WITH GARRETT CABEZA: Saturday, June 20, 2015

When an athlete has success in a sport, sometimes the athlete's younger sibling feels he has to duplicate his brother's success when his time to shine comes.

But that isn't the case for Northern Lakes Mountaineer infielder and recent Lakeland High graduate Kenny Cooper.

Cooper's brother, Eric, who graduated from Lakeland in 2012, excelled as a baseball player on the Lakeland baseball team and for the Prairie Cardinals American Legion baseball team.

Eric played baseball at Yakima Valley Community College for two years before taking the fall semester off in 2014 as he worked with his dad. He took classes at Lewis-Clark State College this spring semester and he may try to walk on to LCSC's baseball team next season.

"I feel like everybody always has this mindset of I was the new Eric Cooper and whatnot, but I always kind of made my own name for myself because you can ask any of my coaches that have had both my brother and I and they'll all tell you we're two different people," Kenny said.

Kenny said Eric is tall, lanky and hits for power, while Kenny is quick, hard-working and someone who hits more singles than anything else.

"We're just two completely different people, so I think if you ask any of our coaches they would say they're two different people," Kenny said. "So I didn't have to live up to his name. I've just kind of created my own path."

Kenny said that their personalities are more similar than their styles of play.

"Personalities are more the same than we'll probably ever say, but just completely different type of baseball players," Kenny said. "Same likes and interests but if we were together, we'd always just go head-to-head with everything - like he's a Yankees fan, I'm a Red Sox fan.

We've kind of just clashed that way but it's always for good fun."

Kenny said it's nice having someone in the family who has college baseball experience.

"It helps having that college experience, especially in your own family, because he'd come home and teach me things that my dad didn't know and I didn't know," Kenny said.

While Eric's college baseball career already began and may continue at LCSC, Kenny's may begin soon.

Kenny hasn't attracted much interest from colleges, but right now he is considering taking his baseball talents to Wenatchee Valley College, where Coeur d'Alene Legion coach Zach Clanton coaches as an assistant.

Clanton offered Kenny a chance to walk on to the team.

"I need to talk to my parents about it some more, but that's a very good opportunity for me and it seems like a good school to go to," Kenny said.

If Kenny decides to play college baseball, Northern Lakes coach Pat Capone believes he will fit right in.

"Kenny is a great piece-of-the-puzzle guy," Capone said. "Is he going to go in there and be their three, four hitter? No. But that's not Kenny Cooper. What he's going to do is he's going to play solid defense. He's going to hit and run. He's going to bunt. He's going to do all the little things right, and that's what he profiles at the next level ... He's going to go to Wenatchee and push whoever's in front of him because he is solid."

Cooper is playing his last Legion season as he will be too old to return to Legion ball next season.

He said he wants to make it to the state tournament, which is July 28 to Aug. 2 in Coeur d'Alene.

"Team goal, we all want to make it to state and kind of get back on the state roll because our high school season we didn't quite make it there," Kenny said. "So we kind of feel like we need to make it up before we all leave and never play together again."

Lakeland didn't make it to the 4A state baseball tournament this season, but in 2014 - Cooper's junior year - Lakeland took second place.

When the end of the Legion season comes, Cooper said he will miss playing with teammates who he has played with for years.

"Brian (Howell), Dalton (Strong), Mike (Bodak), I'll surely miss all those kids," Kenny said. "We've been playing together since Little League. The things we've accomplished as a team together is phenomenal."

Garrett Cabeza is a sports intern for The Press. Contact him at [email protected].