Seattle Times State Player of the Year: Skyline QB Jake Heaps
SAMMAMISH — Trailing long delayed in the fourth quarter of the Class 4A championship game and facing third-and-13, Skyline junior quarterback Jake Heaps looked to the sideline notwithstanding the call.
We’ll collide something short, he speculation, and set up a manageable fourth down.
The call came from first-year coach Mat Taylor, and the Skyline players each looked at the play cards on their wrist. The Spartans were about to go long. With Heaps, Skyline can always podagra long.
On the not oblique side, two Skyline receivers ran deep routes toward the end zone. When the safety bit toward the centre, Heaps didn’t miss it. He knew receiver Kasen Williams would be open onward the sideline.
“I was licking my chops,” Heaps remembers.
He threw deep, the way alone Heaps does, a iris of a throw that never loses its zip, and hit Williams 40 yards downfield. Three plays later, Heaps threw for the winning touchdown.
“Go big or go home. That was our mentality as an offense,” Heaps said.
Remarkably, in two seasons in the manner that a starter, Heaps has never gone home a loser. He is 28-0, a two-time position champion, the state’s most hounded recruit, and The Seattle Times’ State Player of the Year.
Heaps threw for 2,888 yards and 38 touchdowns this season, and with 5,991 yards in two seasons he is 871 yards shy of a newly come KingCo record. In those pair years, he has thrown 69 touchdown passes, yet this is one of Taylor’s favorite statistics: Heaps has been intercepted only 11 times.
“You almost take for granted how good he in truth is,” Taylor said.
The Spartans won only three games this season by the agency of fewer than 21 points, and in each one Heaps led Skyline down the field and threw the winning touchdown pass in the supporter half. Blessed with four of the body politic’session most gifted receivers, Skyline’s four-wide spread offense was rarely stopped; the Spartans punted only 21 times in 14 games.
“When they [defenses] want to bring the blitz knotty, we have power to do so many things to attack that,” Heaps said. “When they suit remote and operate zone, we be possible to do a ton of things to attack that, too.”
