Kid quarterback directs Bellevue to their biggest win imaginable
Kid quarterback directs Bellevue to their biggest win imaginable
Are you kidding? First varsity football game of his life. No pressure, eh?
Just a crowd of 24,987 watching Eric Block, a 14-year-old sophomore, quarterback his Bellevue High Wolverines to the biggest upset in the history of Washington prep football, a 39-20 stunner Saturday night against national powerhouse De La Salle at Seahawks Stadium.
J.R. Hasty deservedly will get much of the attention after a marvelous 271-yard rushing effort. Linebacker E.J. Savannah has all the college scouts drooling with his speed and hitting ability. Block has no initials for a first name, but his abbreviated football career certainly has an impressive first step.
``This,`` Block said amid a wild post-game victory celebration, ``is the best thing I can ever imagine in my first start.``
The biggest question for Block -- and maybe all the Wolverines -- is how the heck do you top Saturday night`s debut?
Block was the master of misdirection against the No. 1 ranked team in the nation. The kid played magic tricks with the football, running the high-wire Wing-T offense with precision against a squad that had done a number on 151 straight opponents in compiling the most remarkable winning streak at any level of football.
But the only numbers being done Saturday night involved offensive fireworks no one could have expected.
De La Salle had surrendered 30 points in a game just once during The Streak, giving up 32 in a victory against Ygnacio Valley in 1999. Interestingly, Ygnacio Valley also runs the Wing-T. Of course, De La Salle won that game, 71-32.
So consider the remarkability of Bellevue putting up 30 on the Spartans on Saturday night -- in the first half.
You figure you have to be some sort of football factory to knock off a program that has gone 236-4 since 1984. A team that last lost on Dec. 7, 1991. A team that had just four foes finish within a 10-point margin during the 151-game roll.
But Eric Block isn`t the product of some gridiron machine. He`s 14 years old, for criminy sakes. The kid ought to be worrying about how to open his new locker, not how to shut down a legend. He can`t even drive, but there he was in the biggest spotlight imaginable, fearlessly directing traffic in an offense as chaotic as the Christmas Eve rush at Bellevue Square.
Playing quarterback at Bellevue doesn`t require a big arm. Instead, it calls for fast feet and a quick mind. It calls for ballhandling skills that come only with considerable practice. It calls for leadership most often seen from senior captains.
But the Bellevue coaches called on Block, who directed the freshman team last year as a ninth-grader. Any difference?
``Tons,`` Block said with a grin. ``You look around at a JV game and there`s what?, maybe 50 people watching. And here, there were 30,000, or whatever. It`s a bigger stage, for sure. But when it comes down to it, it`s just football. You have to execute.``
You`d think the kid might have blinked at some point.
Think again.
No, he didn`t complete a pass. Come to think of it, he never even attempted a pass. But he didn`t fumble a handoff either. He read every option perfectly. He delivered the ball like a point guard, always finding the open man.
And when De La Salle started focusing on Hasty, he tucked the ball under his own wing and ran 10 times for 68 yards, including a magnificent 37-yard touchdown in the second quarter that included a goal-line leap and full stretch to the end zone.
De La Salle was supposed to be the team with the precision offense. But on this night, in this year, in front of this huge crowd, Bellevue clearly had the superior machine. And Block was the one driving the Bellevue BMW, even though he can`t even start thinking about getting his license until he turns 15 on Sept. 26.
Surely, Wolverines coach Butch Goncharoff must have had some trepidation about starting a sophomore in such a pressure cooker.
``No,`` Goncharoff said. ``I know him well enough. We put him in so many pressure situations getting ready for this and he survived `em all.``
Turns out Block`s not quite as big a rookie as you`d think.
``I`ve been doing this all my life,`` he said. ``I`ve run this offense for eight years for the Bellevue Wolverines.``
That would be the Wolverines junior program in the Bellevue Boys and Girls Club, which happened to be coached by his dad, Scott Block. So, yeah, the kid has been training for this moment.
``We`ve been preparing for this for so long,`` Eric Block said. ``This is all we`ve thought about for the past six months. If we came out with clear heads, we knew we could do it.``
So these Bellevue boys actually thought they could do this? Nobody in the world gave the Wolverines much of a chance to beat De La Salle, let alone undress them with an offense that racked up 463 yards on the ground.
``We knew,`` Block said. ``We might have been the only ones, but we knew.``
And now, the rest of the world knows as well, thanks to the new kid on the Block and the rest of his Bellevue buddies.
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