No Bay Area high school football player is facing more pressure
this season than Gilroy’s Jamie Jensen.
No Bay Area high school football player is facing more pressure this season than Gilroy’s Jamie Jensen.
With goals as lofty as the Mustangs’ – an undefeated season, Central Coast Section championship and state bowl appearance – attention will always come back to the quarterback who threw for 4,323 yards and 41 touchdowns last season while leading his team to the CCS Open Division championship game.
The pressure may come in the form of a blitz, or a tense fourth quarter, but for the 6-foot-3, 210-pound senior being pursued by several Pac-10 schools as well as BYU, Hawaii and Utah, it’s just as likely to be there in the ordinary aspects of life, like when he works as a cashier at LJB Farms.
“There’s a whole lot of pressure,” Jensen said. “People will come in and say, ‘We gonna win this Friday?’
“But it’s exciting. It’s not really pressure, it’s more hype and excitement in the community. I like it.”
After leading his team to the best season in school history at 10-3 – just the second time Gilroy has ever won that many games and the first time the school played for a section title – there’s really no other option except to embrace the fanfare and weight of expectations.
“I think the thing that stands out about him is his ability to deal with pressure compared to the average kid,” said Rich Hammond, Gilroy’s third-year coach.
Hammond should know. No one has had a greater hand in molding Jensen into the most highly sought after quarterback prospect to ever play at GHS. Even Gilroy’s gold standard of athletic achievement, Jeff Garcia, who went on to San Jose State and the NFL after playing a year at Gavilan College, didn’t have the buzz Jensen has going into tonight’s season opener against Archbishop Mitty.
And to think, Jensen had all of two snaps on his varsity resume entering the 2007 season.
“I told his dad when we gave him the job (last year) that I was going to apply a lot of pressure on him because it’s the hardest job on the field,” Hammond said. “So that meant I was going to yell and scream in his ear and try to knock him off his game more than anyone else. That to me has been what separates him and makes him so good.”
So good, in fact, that while acting as conductor of the Mustangs’ shotgun, hurry-up spread offense, Jensen helped Gilroy become the most prolific passing attack in the history of Northern California. With a system designed to get the ball out of his hands quickly while finding receivers in open space, Jensen is quick to toss out the idea that his individual numbers are a by-product of the offense’s success as a unit.
“There’s so many passes last year … that I dumped off a little 5-yard pass and they took off and turned into a 70-yard stat,” he said. “The offensive line … averaged only one sack per game (allowed). That’s pretty dang good for how much we pass.”
Of the receivers that will be attempting to turn a routine pass into a reason for fans to rise out of their seats, seniors Dante Fullard (63 catches, 1,007 yards, 7 TDs) and Sean Hale (60 catches, 813 yards, 7 TDs) will see the bulk of Jensen’s throws. Both are exceptional athletes, capable of playing on the next stage. The pair knows the more eyes directed towards Jensen’s accomplishments, the greater the chance colleges will notice who is finishing a play.
“It just makes me know someone is out there watching us,” Hale said. “It makes you give that little extra in the offseason, in practice.”
Recruiting coordinators and assistant coaches from schools across the West Coast have been attending Gilroy’s offseason workouts, and University of Washington head coach Tyrone Willingham even stopped by the GHS campus in the winter to meet with Hammond about his quarterback.
“You can probably ask anyone on our team and they’ll say they want to go play college ball,” Jensen said, “but I think Dante and Sean have a really good chance.”
While most football fans in the area have taken notice of Jensen’s play, with reactions generally being dictated by which side of the stadium a person sits, not everyone has been overjoyed with his success. The signal-caller has had to become as comfortable with being a target off the field as he is on it. In the last year, Jensen has found his car vandalized with paint and/or keyed several times.
“It kind of sucks, too, because my dad and I share the car,” Jensen said, adding that he never had any such problems before last season.
But when you’re posting 36 points per game on opponents, including a ridiculous 486-yard, 8-TD performance against rival San Benito, it’s bound to increase the chances of people getting bent out of shape.
“Of course, beating teams, you’re gonna get some enemies,” Jensen said with a sly smile.
Almost every Gilroy coach and player, including Jensen, admits they don’t think he will match his statistical totals from a season ago, but they do expect him to be more efficient, cutting down on his 21 interceptions and improving upon his completion percentage (62 percent).
What makes the Mustangs’ offense so unique, and consequently the individual players, is the system. Without it, Gilroy wouldn’t have come close to winning a championship last season. On top of that, a player with Jensen’s skill set – a classic pocket passer – might not have seen the field.
“I don’t think I’d be getting any looks (from colleges) if we were in the fly offense, running the ball 70, 80 percent of the time,” Jensen said.
Bob Garcia, father of Jeff Garcia and a national championship winning coach at Gavilan in 1973, thinks Jensen has the chance to be a special talent, especially with the way Gilroy takes advantage of his strengths.
“For this offense, he’s awesome,” Garcia said. “The kid’s got all the tools. He’s got the size, he’s got the arm, he knows what they want to do and what they’re trying to accomplish. And their lineman and receivers are all on the same page … I think he could go to a lot of schools and play.”
Hammond is leery of talking too much about college recruitment because of the distractions it can cause and the quirkiness of what each program is looking for – “I won’t put college scholarships as a benchmark of our success because those guys give scholarships for I don’t know what” – but he did admit Jensen has an outstanding opportunity to improve his stock in the first few games, and will be the focal point of every team’s plan to take down what is currently the eighth ranked team in Northern California, according to norcalpreps.com.
“I think Jamie has a bull’s-eye on his chest because of what we did as a team (last year),” the coach said.
Over the next 10 weeks, a coach, a player, a team and a town will find out if the attention has been well deserved.
No pressure.
Season opener
What: Gilroy vs. Archbishop Mitty
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday
Where: Garcia-Elder Sports Complex
