Last summer, senior Cody Ruble didn’t even know for sure if he would be Seymour’s starting quarterback this football season.
Now that the end of the season is approaching, Ruble wishes he could call upon the storehouse of knowledge he acquired as the Owls went 3-6 in the regular season and move on to sectional play at Whiteland next Friday after a bye week.
“I feel every high school football player wants another year,” Ruble said. “It is so much fun. I’d give a lot.”
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This was Ruble’s only season as Seymour’s quarterback. He transferred to the school from Columbus North but was only eligible for part of last season and made just a couple of cameo appearances.
Now, he has just one, or a few games, left to make use of all of the information he has catalogued.
“I’ve actually thought of the year before,” Ruble said. “Like, ‘Oh, if I knew all this stuff last year how good I’d be.’”
Ruble is 6-foot-2 and weighs 180 pounds. He has a powerful arm, which makes some sense because he also is a pitcher in baseball. He can throw long, and he has the kind of vision that enables him to make fast decisions at the line of scrimmage and make the choice to keep the ball and run.
Actually, while on the surface it seems to be the case, Ruble said being a quarterback and being a pitcher, both throwers, have less in common than some think. Arm angle and finger placement differ.
“You have to have strong legs and a strong shoulder,” he said.
Overall this fall, Ruble has completed 98 passes in 190 attempts for 1,221 yards and 11 touchdowns. He has gained 215 yards rushing, though that total would be higher if he hadn’t been sacked or taken a knee occasionally at the end of a half or a game.
“I enjoy running the ball,” Ruble said. “I always wish I was a little faster.”
Yet Ruble does take long strides that eat up yardage, and he has slick moves that also pay off in gains, even if he is not outrunning the whole defense.
This has been a year of transition for Seymour. Head coach Tyson Moore is in his first season as boss and Ruble his first year as the field leader running the show. Although the Owls have taken some lumps, especially recently with high scores piled up against them, they have also shown explosiveness on offense at times.
Seymour has put up 33 or more points four times.
“I’d like to have our starting quarterback back,” Moore said. “I don’t think he has reached his full potential.”
Nothing Ruble has experienced this season has changed his mind about the challenge of being a football quarterback, generally conceded to be one of the hardest positions in sport to play, if not the most difficult.
“Being a goalie (in hockey) is probably the hardest physically,” Ruble said. “I feel being a quarterback is the hardest mentally.”
Swiftly unfolding scenarios after the ball is snapped is one reason for that opinion. Adjusting on the fly. Running through routes of several receivers within seconds. All situations must be coped with as opposing defenders thunder in and try to slam you to the ground.
The season has played out in stages for Ruble and Seymour. The Owls lost their first two games of the year, won the next three and have lost the last four in a row.
“There has definitely been different levels,” Ruble said. “The first couple of games, I wasn’t able to read things fast. Then we had a couple of wins. It was confidence in doing things. I think it’s like that for every aspect of life.”
The Owls are only scheduled to practice four days this week, take a three-day weekend Friday through Sunday and then prepare with increased intensity for 7-1 Whiteland.
Moore said a bit of rest and recovery, soothing bruises, is part of this week’s game plan.
“The biggest thing is we’ve got to heal,” Moore said. “We’ll do more walk-through stuff. It has just been full go for it.”
Sectional play is another world. Every team gets a chance to advance, regardless of regular-season record, and the season lasts as long as the wins accumulate.
“We have a handful of guys who are hungry to keep going,” Moore said.