Calvillo Is No Passing Fancy : Colleges: Former La Puente High quarterback has guided Mounties to 3-0 start and No. 5 ranking in state.

Coaches and administrators at La Puente High have long searched for home-grown role models to inspire their athletes toward success at and beyond the high school level.

The list of former Warrior football players who have gone on to success at the collegiate level in the past 15 years pretty much begins and ends with Max Montoya, an offensive lineman for the Raiders who played at La Puente, Mt. San Antonio College and UCLA before starting his NFL career in 1979.

Anthony Calvillo heard Montoya’s name often while he was playing quarterback for La Puente in 1988-90.

Now, it is Calvillo’s name, and reports of his success at Mt. SAC, that are finding their way back to his alma mater. Calvillo and former La Puente running back Dwayne Jones--a redshirt freshman at Oregon--are role models.

“I heard from a student, a girl at La Puente, that they are using us as examples,” Calvillo said. “That makes me feel good. It shows me I’m doing something good and maybe helping other people out.”

Calvillo has helped Mt. SAC to its best start in years. The Mounties are 3-0 and ranked fifth in the state and third in Southern California by the JC Athletic Bureau. The Mounties play host to Palomar Saturday night.

Calvillo, a sophomore, has passed for 738 yards and five touchdowns. He has completed 56 of 100 passes and had only one intercepted.

“He’s the guy right now, the real key in our offense,” Mt. SAC Coach Bill Fisk said. “His biggest improvement from last season has been in his knowledge of our offense, how to read the defenses and calling audibles. He’s very mature.”

The 6-foot-2, 175-pound Calvillo has also grown physically from last season, when he passed for 1,549 yards and 10 touchdowns. During the off-season, he added 15 pounds.

“He stays in the pocket, waits for receivers to get open and steps up just when he’s supposed to,” Fisk said. “A lot of time, quarterbacks will throw too soon because they’re going to get hit. He hangs in there.”

In the opener against San Diego Mesa, Calvillo completed 21 of 41 passes for 300 yards and three touchdowns as the Mounties won, 42-20.

“That game was a little unusual,” Mt. SAC Coach Bill Fisk said. “Mesa decided to blitz every down and they were coming with eight guys to see if they could get him. They did, a little bit, so we put Anthony in the shotgun and he did a great job.”

Two weeks ago, Mt. SAC beat defending state champion Taft, 26-14, as Calvillo completed 19 of 30 passes for 229 yards and a touchdown.

“He could have thrown the ball more, but there were times we wanted to run the ball to take time off the clock,” Fisk said.

Calvillo completed 15 of 28 passes for 209 yards and a touchdown in last week’s 30-24 victory in the Mounties’ Mission Conference opener against Rancho Santiago.

“The offensive linemen are getting the job done and giving me time to throw,” Calvillo said. “I feel very confident in them and my receivers.”

Calvillo was a standout in football and basketball at La Puente, which he attended even after moving to Riverside after his sophomore year.

Calvillo ran an option offense for three years. He passed for 900 yards and rushed for about 600 during his senior season, helping the Warriors to a 6-4 record and second-place finish in the Valle Vista League. La Puente, however, was barred from the playoffs and stripped of its victories for using ineligible players.

“That was the first year La Puente would have gone to the playoffs in about 10 years,” Calvillo said. “It was a very disappointing senior year.”

Intent on continuing his playing career, Calvillo said he sent letters to 20 community colleges inquiring about opportunities. Among the respondents was Taft, a school located about 25 miles west of Bakersfield that recruits from all over the country.

Calvillo was set to attend option-oriented Taft and he told Tom Maher, Mt. SAC’s offensive coordinator, of his plans.

“I told him, ‘I’m going to Taft,’ ” Calvillo recalled. “And he said, ‘Oh, that’s fine, just come over here to work out with us and get ready.’ ”

Calvillo never left.

He took a liking to the Mounties’ drop-back passing approach and decided to enroll at Mt. SAC where he would be in competition with two third-year quarterbacks, including Bill Gallis, who is now the starting quarterback for Azusa Pacific.

“We were kind of thinking Anthony would be the guy we would hold out his freshman year,” Fisk said. “He had a lot to learn.”

Said Calvillo: “I didn’t want to redshirt. I figured I would be starting at the middle of the season.”

Not surprisingly, Calvillo made the correct read.

Calvillo dashed the coaching staff’s plans to redshirt him with his performances in an intrasquad scrimmage and a scrimmage against Saddleback.

“He came in (against Saddleback) and was outstanding,” Fisk said. “For everybody on the team, there was no doubt who the quarterback would be.”

Calvillo rotated with the others through the first four games and then was installed as the starter.

“He was an option quarterback in high school but he makes all the throws a pocket passer has to make,” Maher said. “It was hard to keep him off the field. The team responds to him.”

Along with winning the Mission Conference championship, Calvillo’s personal goal this season is to break the Mounties’ single-season passing record of 2,244 yards, set by Steve Myer in 1972.

Next year, he plans to continue inspiring others with success at the four-year level.

Said Calvillo: “I’m just hoping to go to a school where they rely on me--like, ‘You’re the man. You’re going to determine our season.’ ”