Blecha's saga: from B-team rags to riches

Make a big hit and the crowd roars with approval.

Sack the quarterback and your classmates will tell you that you're the man.

Score a touchdown and your friends are liable to chant your name.

It sure is a sexy opportunity to play varsity football under the bright lights … instant popularity.

No other sport offers the platform to perform in front of the vast sea of peers that football does. Face it, the football stadium is the place to be on a Friday night.

Freshman football players know the possibilities before them. They see the playmakers making the headlines, and they dream of being that guy.

But they also see the gap between where they are and where another freshman player is at the same position, and they wonder if the spectacle of Friday Night Lights will be nothing but a movie to them.

They often don't realize how quickly that gap can close.

They should talk to Scott Blecha, the new freshman quarterbacks coach at Barrington High School.

Blecha is best remembered as the starting quarterback of a Conant team that came within a field goal in the waning seconds of reaching the state semifinals in 2002.

But few know the path he took to reach that position, that he spent his freshman season in the rear-view mirror of high school football glory, and that he wasn't exactly an object who was closer than he appeared.

"The first high school game I started at quarterback was a freshman C-level game," Blecha said.

But the dropped pass analogy that best describes his freshman campaign was very nearly a botched snap. A second-string quarterback on the B-squad, the 2003 Conant graduate nearly quit during his first summer camp.

"I was completely undersized. I was getting beaten up pretty good," he said. "It just was a matter of do I want to give up, or do I want to push a little harder."

Blecha didn't just push a little harder. He started shoving. By the end of his freshman season, he was the starting quarterback for the B-squad.

But his ascent was stalled.

His sophomore coach even claimed that Blecha was the fifth-string quarterback at the start of his second season.

"When he looked at the depth chart, I was the fifth quarterback, even though we only had four quarterbacks," Blecha said.

The joke was in good taste. By the time it was made, Blecha had emerged as the starting quarterback for an 8-1 squad, and he was poised to take over as the varsity quarterback once the incumbent starter graduated.

"It was a little frustrating," Blecha said of rise to the top of the depth charts. "But I was a pretty undersized so it was just a matter of hoping I grew eventually. All of these guys were coming out and they're bigger, they're stronger, they're faster.

"So naturally they get the look ahead of me. But again, it's just a matter of taking opportunities when you get them handed to you."

The adversity he faced is something Blecha preaches to his players, the realization that no one knows what the future holds. After all, he was in the same position most of them are today.

He wasn't a star player for all four years. For some freshmen, that notion can be hard to grasp without concrete examples.

"They see the varsity kids as finished products," said Barrington freshman coach John Armstrong. "They don't realize where they started and what they had to do to get to that level.

"Scott really helps them to know that they aren't slotted at that level for the rest of their high school career. They can move up, depending on what they do in the off-season."

It's the off-season growth that makes Blecha believe even the smallest player on his squad still has as good a chance as anyone of starring for the varsity down the line. He saw it happen with himself.

"You never know what's going to happen a year from now or who is going to grow," Blecha said. "I think that's the biggest thing with freshmen, just trying to get guys out and not letting them give up too soon.

"Maybe they're not happy with their playing time now or their position or anything going on, but you never know what is going to happen."

Even his freshman B-squad quarterback is encouraged by Blecha's story. Just knowing that his coach was in the same position and worked his way up has made Joe Matella strive for a similar ending.

So how can Matella achieve the goal?

"Take it week by week," Blecha said. "Set yourself smaller goals within a reasonable time line to keep yourself going throughout the weeks, months and years. If you told me eight years ago that I'd be coaching at a high school, I'd have called you crazy. It was too far away."

But eight years ago, playing freshman football for Conant coach Eric Jacobsen, Blecha first got the coaching bug.

Last weekend, Blecha's path again crossed Jacobsen's, when the former Conant signalcaller became the opposing playcaller in a matchup that pitted student against former teacher.

"I told him before the game, 'Scott, don't let up. Do whatever you need to do,' because that's the way it should be done," Jacobsen said.

Blecha followed his former coach's advice, and the Broncos beat his former school 38-14.

"We must've taught him well," Jacobsen said. "He is a great example of somebody who can work their tail off at the B-level, and turns out to be a varsity quarterback because of hard work, off-season work and work ethic.

"And then here is a kid who wants to come back and give it back teaching and coaching. He should be a great role model for the B-kids and all those freshmen for that matter."