UPWARD SPIRAL : Kocicka Rises and Keeps Hart in Its Accustomed Spot at the Top of Foothill League

Once dogged by skeptics and desperate to prove his worthiness to play quarterback, Hart High’s Mike Kocicka marvels today at just how far he has come in one year.

Dejected emotionally but determined to prove himself, Kocicka quit the football team at Crescenta Valley halfway through the season and slipped into obscurity in 1992. He transferred last fall to Hart--a school known for its outstanding quarterbacks--but stayed away from football for several months.

He looked like a prototype major-college quarterback: 6-feet-3, nearly 200 pounds with a rifle arm. But the dream to play the game he learned in a schoolyard five years earlier was fading for the native of Czechoslovakia.

Now that dream is alive and taking Kocicka for a wild ride.

The senior with little previous varsity experience is the area’s third-leading passer with 2,216 yards and is second in touchdown passes with 24. His 58.3 completion percentage (119 completions in 204 attempts) is also third best.

Hart (8-1), with its talented rookie quarterback at the helm of a run-and-shoot offense, can win the Foothill League championship for the ninth time in 11 seasons with a victory over Santa Clarita Valley rival Canyon tonight at College of the Canyons.

The facts and big numbers swirl in Kocicka’s head. All he needed was a coach who believed in him.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said.

A month ago, no major colleges were recruiting Kocicka. Now, Washington State, Colorado State, UCLA and Texas are showing interest.

“If somebody told me last year that within a year I’d be helping my team to a Foothill League championship and getting a chance to play in college, I wouldn’t have believed it,” said Kocicka, 17. “I’m just really amazed where I am right now.”

The real surprise, however, is that he hasn’t gotten here sooner. But there is good reason. Kocicka never played organized football until the 10th grade. His experience before that? Daily pickup games at Rosemont Junior High in La Crescenta.

He quickly fell in love with the game, especially after he discovered he could throw a spiral half the length of the field.

In 1991, he threw 12 touchdown passes and threw for more than 700 yards in 7 1/2 games on the Crescenta Valley junior varsity team that was 9-1. But his junior year was a different story. Kocicka felt uncomfortable with varsity defenders charging at him. He couldn’t relax. He couldn’t stay in the pocket. And until the problem was solved, his big arm was useless.

Kocicka said he never got the coaching he needed to overcome the jitters--a product of inexperience.

“He had such an arm,” former Falcon receiver Brett Miller said. “But you could tell when the coaches jumped on him he took it bad. They weren’t patient with him.”

Crescenta Valley started Dave Fielder at quarterback. Fielder passed for 641 yards, completing 38% of his attempts. He threw eight interceptions and four touchdown passes. But Fielder led a running, ball-control offense to an 11-2 season.

The Falcons reached the semifinals of the Southern Section playoffs. By then, Kocicka was long gone. He had transferred to Hart in October.

Carl and Jana Kocicka, Mike’s parents, had decided to move from La Crescenta to an apartment in Valencia to help their only son. It wasn’t the first time they uprooted their life to provide something better for Mike. In 1978, when Mike was 2, the Kocickas emigrated to the United States, leaving Bron--a small, rural town in eastern Czechoslovakia.

Having seen other members of the family come to the United States and prosper, Carl decided to take a job as an engineer at the General Motors factory in Van Nuys. After it closed, Carl went to work at a Santa Clarita water works plant. But the Kocickas didn’t move to Valencia until they realized Mike’s dream was eluding him.

“I was down on everything a year ago,” Mike Kocicka said. “Without football, I didn’t see what I had to work for. My grades were going down.

“(My parents) saw how depressed I was and how much I wanted to play. They decided it was worth it.”

Kocicka was a secret on the Hart campus until spring workouts. Coach Mike Herrington was the last to see him throw, but his interest was piqued by assistants who kept coming into the weight room saying, “You got to get out there and see him.”

Hart receiver Soren Halladay had heard about Kocicka’s arm and asked for proof.

“I told him I could throw it 50 yards from my knees,” Kocicka said, “and I did it.”

John McLaughlin, another Hart receiver, witnessed this during his track and field workouts.

“I thought, ‘Geez, this guy’s got a better arm than (Davis Delmatoff and Ryan Connors, All-Southern Section quarterbacks at Hart),’ ” McLaughlin said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Soon, everybody was asking Kocicka where he got his arm.

“I have no idea,” Kocicka said. “I’ve never played a sport like baseball. I’ve never lifted weights. All my relatives played soccer. They never used their arms.”

Kocicka likely gained his strength during a growth spurt in which he grew from 5-8 and 140 pounds in ninth grade to 6-4 and 208 today.

“I didn’t know much about football,” he said. “I just knew one team tried to score and the other tried to crush the guy with the ball.”

The thought of getting crushed seemed to prey on Kocicka’s mind every time he dropped back to pass when he arrived at Hart. But offensive coordinator Dean Herrington helped him tackle his sack phobia, Kocicka said.

“At Crescenta Valley, people told me I wasn’t able to take a hit and stay in the pocket,” Kocicka said. “It was a mental thing. Here, the coaches tell me they believe in me. I can relax. I have a little more confidence.”

Mike Herrington knew Kocicka had the ability to throw the ball anywhere on the field--Kocicka proved it during summer passing leagues. So Herrington decided to gamble with inexperience when he named Kocicka the starter. Kocicka was prepared to make the gamble pay off.

“I knew it was my only shot to show someone I could play,” Kocicka said. “If this didn’t work out, I’d never play again.”

In Hart’s opening game, a 37-8 victory over Pasadena, Kocicka looked like a quarterback in transition. He hurried some passes, misfired on others.

He was jittery in the pocket and took off running. But when he scrambled toward the sidelines, Kocicka didn’t retreat out of bounds. He lowered his shoulders and invited a collision.

His confidence grew as the game progressed. By game’s end, he was 14 for 27 for 321 yards with four touchdowns and two interceptions. He also ran for a touchdown.

Two weeks later, in a 31-14 victory over Westlake, Kocicka left the game in agony after taking a helmet to the ribs. But he came back and actually ran the ball (14 times) more than he passed (13).

By Oct. 15, an impressive transformation looked nearly complete. Kocicka keyed Hart’s 41-21 rout of Saugus by completing 13 of 17 for 319 yards and four touchdowns--none more striking than a 42-yard bullet to McLaughlin.

Kocicka, under a heavy rush, saw McLaughlin break from the right sideline toward the middle of the field. The line-drive pass traveled more than 50 yards in the air and McLaughlin caught it on a dead run near the goal line.

“He put it all together that night,” McLaughlin said. “He’s everything to our offense. We definitely could not do without him.”

Said Mike Herrington: “He’s done some remarkable things within a very short amount of time. He’s not afraid of contact anymore, and he’s been nailed a few times.”

The hits are now just part of the game for Kocicka.

“Now I’m taking blind sides and it doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. “When you’re flat on your back and you hear the crowd, and you know you completed a big pass--there’s nothing like that feeling.”