Daft Finds His Voice in Time to Pump Life Into Foothill’s Season

Kevin Daft, Foothill’s passive quarterback, did a double-take. Had he heard that right?

Yell as loud as you can.

Come on, this was the middle of practice. A time for honing skills and tuning up for the week’s game. This was no time for a temper-tantrum.

But Coach Tom Meiss was adamant. So Daft yelled.

“I didn’t know what he was referring to,” Daft said. “He wanted me to count to five as loud as I could. I did and he had me do it again. I had to do it three or four times. Then I had to yell out plays as loud as I could.”

Daft yelled until his voice was hoarse. He got the point.

If there was one knock on Daft, it was his leadership style. He is shy and reserved almost to a fault. A fine quality in a person. An uneasy trait in a quarterback.

So he had to learn to yell.

The result has been a scream, at least for the Knights. Daft still isn’t what you would call overbearing, but he has made his presence known. Without him, the Knights wouldn’t be in the second round of the Southern Section Division IV playoffs.

Daft picked the Knights, and himself, up from a 0-3 start. Together, the team and its quarterback grew. By the time Century League play rolled around, the Knights were ready to roll right through it.

They did, finishing undefeated to give Daft something to shout about.

“Kevin needed to assert himself more,” Meiss said. “Mechanically, he can throw with the best of them. He’s probably the best pure quarterback I’ve ever had. But at first, I didn’t know if he had enough bulldog in him.”

True, Daft had all the tools. During the summer he had impressed Meiss so much that he geared the offense toward the passing game. A big shift, considering Meiss had often joked about using a “run and, shoot, run again offense.”

But he saw Daft’s arm and was ready to open up the offense. It proceeded to shut itself down.

The Knights scored only 10 points in their first three games. It wasn’t all Daft’s fault. Receivers were dropping passes. Injuries had weakened the backfield. The schedule was tough.

This from a team that returned 14 starters and was expected to be among the best in Orange County.

“Everyone felt good, because we had so many guys back,” said Daft, a senior. “We had so much experience, except at my position. I felt a lot of pressure.”

Daft has been a quarterback barely two years. He was a receiver and defensive back as a freshman, but moved to quarterback as a sophomore after an injury sidelined the team’s starter.

Daft absorbed the position like he was cramming for finals. He attended quarterback camps and sought out advice. He was the backup to Steve Wielandt on the varsity last season and picked his brain.

Wielandt took the Knights to the semifinals, while Daft watched and learned.

Daft mastered the dos and don’ts . The technical parts were easy. The intangibles were a little harder. Being a leader is tough when guys need hearing aids in the huddle just to hear you call the plays.

“With Wielandt, you could hear him call an audible clear on the sideline,” Meiss said. “Kevin is just an unassuming kid. He’s not going to slap guys on the helmet. The guys all love him. They protect him. They elected him a team captain. There’s an old saying that a dog has so many friends because he wags his tail, not his tongue.”

But Meiss wanted Daft to bark and growl a little more.

“It’s tough for me to play quarterback,” Daft said. “Everyone was expects a lot of you. They expect you to talk a lot. They want you to to tell people when they do things wrong. I’m just not the type of person who yells.”

Shouting practice helped.

The Knights lost to Newport Harbor, 14-3, their third consecutive loss. The following week in practice, Meiss put Daft through his primal screams.

Daft can pick out the moment things turned around. It was late in the fourth game of the season. He dropped to throw a screen pass and was rushed hard. Daft managed to flip the ball to Tramel Robinson, who went 48 yards for a touchdown that gave the Knights a 25-22 victory over Brea-Olinda.

Daft was so excited he almost shouted for joy. Almost, anyway.

“Kevin just isn’t a bossy guy,” said center David Greenberg, who has known Daft since the fourth grade. “He’s not a rah-rah type. We try to encourage him to talk a little louder in the huddle. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t a leader.”

There was no denying that during league play. Daft pushed and prodded the Knights to their first league title since 1985.

Daft threw for 461 yards during five nonleague games. He threw just one touchdown pass and three interceptions.

Those numbers rose dramatically once league play began. Daft completed 42 of 64 passes for 750 yards and eight touchdowns in five games. None of his passes were intercepted.

Daft passed for 240 yards and two touchdowns in a 41-21 victory over Canyon that clinched the title.