From the time I left Highland, almost a year ago, I began losing touch with the kids I had covered for years. That process accelerated in March when I was excused from the pages of the San Bernardino Sun, after 31-plus years, just after I had moved to Long Beach.

And it really moved ahead when I made the jump from Long Beach to Hong Kong on Oct. 1.

Even in the 21st century, when you are overseas it’s tough to keep track of sports events in the U.S. that aren’t, say, the NFL. I get some strange version of ESPN, over here, and it doesn’t even feature SportsCenter.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about a couple of guys who attended Redlands East Valley High School, Landon Donovan and Ronnie Fouch. I can’t say I was seriously close to either guy, though I spent a fair chunk of time around Landon, there for a while. Still, I feel as if I know both of them more than a little. Landon was at REV when my son was there, and Ronnie was at REV when my younger daughter was.

So, I’ve been trying to follow how they are doing and where they may be headed. Both seem to be having some tough times, of late, and I feel from them — from a great distance.

First, Ronnie:

He got my attention right off, as a sophomore, when he took over at quarterback for a REV football program that had enjoyed all of one good season in school history and showed a rifle of an arm, despite his fairly slender build.

He threw for a zillion yards out of coach Kurt Bruich’s spread offense, and he overcame a shoulder injury in that Greatest CBL Game of All-Time event with Colton in Week 10 of 2005, when Shareece Wright lit him up just before he got out of bounds on a scramble at the University of Redlands. (This was the televised game REV won in the final seconds, 41-40, with its backup quarterback, Mikie Stadler.)

Fouch came back strong as a senior and looked to have a chance to be the first San Bernardino County quarterback in a long time (well, ever, really) to make an impact on Pac-10 football. He signed with Washington, which looked to be rebuilding under Ty Willingham … and then things went south.

Jake Locker, a better runner and all-around athlete, clearly was ahead of Fouch on the depth chart, and even then the Huskies were struggling. Then Locker got hurt, early this season, and Fouch took over — as a redshirt freshman for a program imploding at that exact moment. Defeat followed defeat.

Coach Ty Willingham was told a week ago he would be done at the end of the season, at a press conference at which the school president casually mentioned the Huskies were at a low ebb in their football history.

And with that burden on their minds, the Huskies went to the Coliseum to play USC and maybe the greatest defense in modern Pac-10 history, and it was, well, nightmarish for U-Dub in general and Fouch in particular.

Final score: USC 56, Washington 0, one of the three worst defeats in modern school history, for the nation’s only winless Division I-AA (as it used to be known) school. And Fouch was caught in the middle of it, leading an offense that didn’t get a first down until its sixth possession.

Fouch had horrible stats, going 14-for-33 for 113 yards with three interceptions and an average gain of 3.4 yards per pass. He also was sacked once, and the offense managed only 184 yards.

He now has seen significant time in seven of Washington’s eight defeats. For the season, he is 79-for-165 (47.9 percent) for 993 yards, four touchdowns, seven interceptions and has been sacked 10 times.

Washington’s offensive coordinator, Tom Lappano, absolved Fouch of blame for two of the interceptions, out of the USC game. But it doesn’t look good for the kid. Especially with a new coach coming in and this unpleasant body of work and some unflattering video on Fouch’s resume.

When programs collapse, the new coach tends not to give much of a chance to the guys who were there in the previous regime. I mean, they don’t even get a look, because (aside from the former coach) no one is as inescapably tarred by defeat as the quarterback, and I fear Ronnie might get caught up in that. It isn’t fair, but that’s how coaches’ minds work.

I know both his parents, John and Rhonda, who are good people, and I can only imagine them wincing through that USC game. And Ronnie has never been anything but polite and earnest, and also flatly overt in his devotion to Ty Willingham — who is yesterday’s news.

I just feel badly for all of them. I just hope Ronnie is in there if/when Washington wins a game this season. And I hope he stays serious about school and gets a college degree out of this, at the least.

I’m guessing he won’t have much chance to play, in the future, unless Washington hires a guy who wants to play a West Coast-style offense (as opposed to someone who will want to take advantage of Locker and his running). Or unless Fouch transfers somewhere else. Which I would advise against if he wants to get the best out of that free UW education. Football is fleeting, anyway.

As for Landon …

I’ve decided I will make a separate post on him. Part 2 of this, coming up next.