Katella Likes Look of Wright : Prep football: Junior quarterback makes an impression running complicated offense.

Jaret Wright caught the visitor staring at his outdated duds and quickly set the record straight.

“It’s ‘60s Day today (at school),” Wright said, laughing. “I think I found these pants in the trash.”

One could hope that’s where Wright tossed them afterward. The blue-denim bell bottoms, leisure suit jacket, flowery shirt and medallion hanging from his neck were no fashion statement. They were more like a hallucination.

But Wright’s willingness to wear the clothes and go along with the flow reveal the easy-going and humorous side those who watch him play football never see. On the field as Katella’s quarterback, he’s an intense competitor. Away from it, he’s a teen-ager bent on enjoying life.

“The kid has a great sense of humor,” Katella Coach Larry Anderson said. “Just like his dad. He’s fun to work with.”

Wright, son of former Angel pitcher Clyde Wright, is no laughing matter for opposing teams. A 6-foot-1, 205-pound junior in his first season with the Knight varsity, Wright has executed Katella’s veer-and-shoot triple-option offense well enough to pass for 609 yards and seven touchdowns against opposing secondaries. That’s about 250 more passing yards than Katella had all last year.

And he didn’t waste time or effort establishing himself.

In a 49-0, season-opening nonleague victory over Magnolia, Wright ran for 84 yards and three touchdowns and passed for 130 yards and two more scores.

Last week, Wright completed nine of 12 passes for 188 yards and one touchdown to lead the Knights over Estancia, 21-14. He also rushed for 48 yards in 14 carries and scored on a one-yard run.

Those are outstanding numbers for any quarterback, but particularly impressive for someone unfamiliar with Anderson’s complex, newly installed system. Wright, who played junior varsity last season and freshman ball the year before, didn’t run anything remotely close at either level. No one would guess it.

“There’s a tremendous amount for a quarterback to know,” Anderson said. “He’s done a remarkable job of understanding what we are trying to do with the offense. He’s got quickness and good running instincts. . . . His peripheral vision is as good as any quarterback I’ve ever had. He has the ability to see the entire field. He has a sense of where the defense is, and he can find the open receiver.”

Anderson said only one of the three interceptions thrown by Wright was because of a bad read. One came when Anderson told Wright to throw the ball into the end zone at the end of a half, the other when a defender sent Wright sprawling to the ground as he released the ball.

The hit rang Wright’s bell but couldn’t compare to the crunching jolt that sent him to the hospital in his first game as a freshman. Then a two-way player splitting time between quarterback and linebacker, Wright got a concussion while trying to make a tackle. He realized later in the offensive huddle there was something wrong.

“They (teammates) told me I called some plays we didn’t even run,” Wright said.

Wright recovered quickly but his mother, Vicki, didn’t. As the wife of a former major league ballplayer, she preferred the relatively innocuous baseball environment to football’s organized mayhem and steered Jaret, one of five children in the family, to Little League. He still plays baseball and will be a pitcher-infielder on the Katella varsity next season, but football is one of his passions. So what’s a mom to do?

“I’m getting used to watching him play football after the concussion,” Vicki Wright said. “Football is much more fun to watch than baseball. It really doesn’t matter which way he goes.”

Said Clyde Wright, who pitched 10 years in the majors and three more in Japan: “I love to watch him play football. I regret I never played it myself, so I kind of live my football fantasies through him. My wife naturally doesn’t like for her little boy to be banged around. You know, if he doesn’t do any of it (baseball or football) and just goes to college, that’s fine, too.”

Which college, however, is a topic of debate in the Wright household. Vicki Wright and the children are Mormons--Jaret and sister Stacy, a Katella freshman, attend religious studies each day before school--and she hopes Jaret might attend BYU. Jaret, a die-hard surfer, would hate to trade the waves at Newport Beach for the mountains around Provo.

“He’d like to go to Hawaii, where there’s no BYU (football) and a lot of surf,” Vicki Wright said.

That decision can wait, though. For now, there’s plenty of high school football and baseball to be played. Wright says he likes both sports equally and says there are similarities in being a quarterback and a pitcher.

“In both positions you are trying to outsmart the other guy,” Wright said. “So I’ll out-think the free safety or the batter. I think they (positions) help each other in making you think.”

Wright said he talks with his father about pitching and works with him on his mechanics. They haven’t agreed at times, but he knows he stands to benefit from his father’s experience and knowledge.

“It’s happened a couple of times where we’ve butted heads,” Wright said. “But I have to respect his knowledge of the game. He played all that time, so he’s got to know something.. . . If I need to know something about baseball, we don’t have to go ask someone for the answer. For football, I rely on the coaches here (at school).”

And the coaches know they can rely on him as Katella prepares to resume play next week in the tough Empire League, which has Esperanza ranked No. 1 in the county and Los Alamitos No. 2. Katella’s league-opening opponent, undefeated El Dorado, rates among the best of the rest. The prognosis is not rosy for the Knights, but don’t tell Wright.

“We have a great challenge to try to beat any of those guys,” Wright said. “It all depends on how much we want it. I just do my part, and if we work as a team, we’ll be fine. We have so much talent we could be unstoppable as soon as we get all that talent in sync. Plus winning always makes the (Saturday night) dance better.”

Just as long as he chooses the proper outfit.