Great Walls of Waverly
http://www.chillicothegazette.com/apps/ ... /711030328
By LANCE CRANMER
Assistant Local Editor
WAVERLY - "Hey Sweetheart," Rusty Wright yelled across the practice field behind Raidiger Field.
Several kids look up, but just one player raises to his feet amidst the sea of black practice jerseys.
While the rest of the Tigers go on with their Tuesday afternoon warm-up exercises, Trevor Walls jogs his way over toward Wright, big grin on his face.
"There's going to be one of these days I'll be walking down a street and there's going to be a ball bounce off my head," Wright joked. "That's one of those nicknames I gave him when he was in junior high. We share a little bit of love with him."
For almost as long as Wright, the Tigers' head coach, has been a part of Waverly football, Walls has been right there beside him.
"He's been on our sideline since the fifth grade," Wright said. "We've got pictures of him. Short little chubby kid on the sidelines. He was our ball boy. Since about his fifth grade year he's been on our sidelines. That's a long time to be around a team."
That chubby kid running around and making sure referees have a supply of fresh footballs nearly a decade ago, has matured into arguably the best quarterback in Waverly football history - a 6-foot-6, 215-pound gunslinger with 26 career victories, 5,500 yards and about a 5-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio.
"He's one of those outstanding kids," Wright said. "The biggest thing with him, some kids are talented and some kids play pretty well to a point where they level off. He's never leveled off. He's just gotten better."
Tonight, Walls leads Waverly back into the playoffs for a second-consecutive year as the Tigers host Belmont Union Local in a Division IV matchup at 7 p.m.
"We know we have to come out strong," Walls said. "We know they're a good football team. They're small, but they're quick. We had to change our defenses around to try to do what they do. They run a five-wide spread. And offensively, we're going to try to do what we've done all season."
For the most part, that has pretty much been dominate their opponents.
During his senior year, Walls completed 52.4 percent of his passes for 2,002 yards, 20 touchdowns and just four interceptions - and he did most of that playing with a separated left shoulder, his non-throwing one.
"It's been OK," he humbly said about his senior season. "We would have liked to win the Wheelersburg game, but you have to move on. We did what we wanted to do and that was make the playoffs. Now we have to try to make a run."
Wright said that has been the goal all along for his third-year starting quarterback.
"He wanted to get this team back to the playoffs. That was his No. 1 goal," he said. "That was this team's goal. Really if you talk to him about anything, that's it."
Amidst the excitement of his final high school year, it would have been easy for Walls to get lost in the whirlwind of attention suddenly thrust upon him by college scouts.
Despite being the great big kid from southern Ohio with great big numbers, Walls managed to stay off the college radar until just recently.
"I guess being from southern Ohio and not being from a big school or anything, I guess (colleges) got started late," Walls said.
"A lot of the big time scouts and recruiters have called and they're as shocked as anybody," Wright said. "When you're a 4.0 student in the classroom and he's very intelligent on the field ... it's very baffling at times, but he doesn't give it a second thought."
While no offer is officially on the table, serious interest has been shown by Big 10 and Mid-American Conference schools like Bowling Green, Toledo, Ohio, Purdue and Indiana, as well as Ivy League programs Harvard and Yale.
For now though, college football is too far away for Walls to think about.
Right now the focus is on Union Local, also a 9-1 team, and shutting down its big guns like quarterback Jordan Barbina, whose numbers (58 percent completions, 1,803 yards, 19 TDs and 11 interceptions) are comparable to Walls.
Last year the Tigers needed overtime to get past Jackson in the first round of the postseason before taking a hard loss in the second round to Columbus DeSales.
"We didn't really come out to play last year," Walls remembers of that Week 12 game in Athens. "Hopefully we change things this year. That was one of our goals in preseason was to get further than last year."
