Boller Up With Best of Them

There was a time passing for 3,000 yards in a high school football season was a big deal.

Then 4,000 yards became the ultimate target. Now, incredibly, Kyle Boller of Hart High is approaching a 5,000-yard season.

Facing one of the strongest pass rushes of the year and an Alemany secondary filled with talented coverage people, Boller was limited to 190 yards passing, his lowest total of the season, as Hart hung on for a 21-13 Southern Section Division III semifinal victory Saturday night at College of the Canyons.

Give credit to Alemany.

Linebackers Reggie Kinlaw, Ricardo Garcia and Mike Arguello repeatedly charged into the Hart backfield. Defensive backs Bryson Atkins, Deon Scott, Joe Fama, Derek Goodman and Marco Pantoja stuck with Hart’s receivers man to man. That’s how Alemany achieved what many thought was the impossible--hold Hart scoreless in the second half.

This game showed another Boller strength--toughness. He was hit in the ribs, on the hands, around his shoulders. He wouldn’t let Alemany knock him out of the game.

“I made up my mind I was going to go all out and try to take his head off,” Kinlaw said. “He’s a tough kid. He took hits and popped right up.”

Through 13 games, Boller has passed for 4,687 yards and 58 touchdowns with just three interceptions.

Boller will end up having the second-greatest passing season in prep history. He’s not likely to catch J.R. House of Nitro, W. Va., who finished his season Saturday by passing for 594 yards and 10 touchdowns in a 69-52 playoff victory. House ended up with 5,526 yards and 65 touchdowns.

All Boller has done is obliterate the state passing record in his first season as a starter. And he still has one game to play, against St. Paul.

What has offensive coordinator Dean Herrington learned about the 6-foot-3 Boller that he didn’t know 13 weeks ago?

“I didn’t realize how focused he is,” Herrington said. “He’ll make a mistake and learn quicker than any kid I’ve known. And he won’t make the same mistake again. Nothing riles him.”

The only time Boller riled his coaches is when he showed up one day last season with his hair bleached at the urging of a couple of teammates.

“That’s when we started having second thoughts about him with that yellow hair,” Herrington said.

It’s time to put into historical perspective what Boller has accomplished. To fully understand, let’s go back to the glory days of Valley football 20 years ago.

In the winter of 1978, any college recruiter looking for a good quarterback hung out in the Valley. Competing at rival high schools less than five miles apart were John Elway of Granada Hills and Tom Ramsey of Kennedy. Not far away were John Mazur of El Camino Real and Tom Tunnicliffe of Burbank. The following season, Tunnicliffe transferred to Burroughs. All would end up as quarterbacks at Pacific 10 Conference schools--Stanford, UCLA, USC and Arizona.

Few schools passed the ball in large numbers except Granada Hills, where Coach Jack Neumeier introduced a strange offense known as the run-and-shoot.

Even with Neumeier’s innovative passing scheme, Elway’s best season was 3,039 passing yards in 13 games as a junior in 1977. He was one of the few in Valley history to break the 3,000-yard plateau. The competition in the City Section was anything but weak.

This was before forced busing caused an exodus of students to the new suburbs of the Conejo and Santa Clarita valleys. This was before families started plunking down thousands of dollars to pay for tuition at private schools.

“The competition was unbelievable,” said Ramsey, who became the all-time leading passer at UCLA, played for the New England Patriots and is now a commentator for Fox Sports.

“El Camino Real was tough. Granada Hills was tough. Cleveland was tough. Taft was tough. Kennedy was tough. San Fernando, with all the talent they had, fielded half of USC’s teams in the ‘80s. Then you talk about Carson and Banning.”

Elway’s mobility, competitiveness, amazing arm strength and natural football instincts made him rise above all others.

Boller has rekindled memories of Elway’s high school days because he’s the first quarterback in 20 years who possesses the total package like Elway.

“He just has everything you look for in a quarterback,” Coach Jim Bonds of Alemany said. “He’ll be playing on Sunday someday.”

There was a fateful day last June at UCLA that will be talked about for years to come. The Bruins held a one-day football camp for top high school seniors. Side by side were Boller and quarterback J.P. Losman of Venice.

Bruin coaches were close to offering Losman a scholarship, and his performance at the camp only reinforced their opinion.

Boller grew up a UCLA fan all his life, but he had never started a high school game and there was only one scholarship available for a quarterback.

Losman got the scholarship. Boller went home, determined to let everyone know how good he was. Ten years from now, UCLA Coach Bob Toledo may be answering the question, “Why didn’t you give Kyle Boller a scholarship?”

Florida State, Tennessee, Oregon, California, Colorado and Michigan are trying to sign Boller. Mark Richt, Florida State’s offensive coordinator, was on Hart’s sideline Saturday.

Boller has become one of the top 100 football prospects in the nation, according to several recruiting services.

This was the headline in a recent sports column in the Rocky Mountain News: “Prep Star Mulling CU Compared to Elway.”

Boller is no Elway, but he’s as close as they come.

No less than Neumeier, the man who tutored Elway at Granada Hills, said Saturday morning, “I watched [Boller] on television and he’s good. He’s got great feet. He’s the best quarterback I’ve seen since John.”

So many times, people don’t live up to their hype. Boller is the exception. With one game left in his high school career, he is exceeding expectations, and no one knows what his limit truly is.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Playoff Leaders

RUSHING

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Player, Team No. Yds. TD Donald Thompson, Hueneme 24 133 0 George Witter, Harvard-Westlake 27 124 1 Michael Washington, Paraclete 6 114 2 Curtis Brown, Paraclete 13 104 0

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PASSING

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Player, Team Att. Comp. Yds TD Kyle Boller, Hart 26 14 190 2 Casey Clausen, Alemany 39 14 170 0 Rob Fockaert, Paraclete 13 5 92 2

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RECEIVING

*--*

Player, Team No. Yds. TD Jared Bazar, Hart 5 48 0 Shane Lavoie, Hart 3 73 1

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Eric Sondheimer’s local column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422.