By Gail Wood
Typically, quarterbacks aren’t lower-a-shoulder runners, eager to take and deliver a smashing hit.
But Trevor Houser, Olympia’s pin-point passing quarterback with the knack for finding the end zone, is the exception. As a sophomore, he started at safety, giving him his first taste of defense. He was hooked.
“I definitely like to hit,” said Houser, who has played quarterback since he started playing football in second grade and got his first taste of defense as a sophomore. “It’s fun. I like getting into the defensive drills at practice.”
However, with a lack of experienced depth at quarterback, Houser is supposed to avoid the big, knock-’em over hit. To ensure he stay healthy, Houser hasn’t played much on defense, except in practice.
“It’s the funnest part for me,” Houser said.
But the undefeated and sixth-ranked Bears can’t afford to lose Houser, who after a 4-0 start has already thrown for more yards than he did all last year. Throwing for at least 160 yards a game, Houser has already thrown for 950 yards, tossing five touchdowns. Going into Friday’s home game against Mount Tahoma, Houser and the Bears will face a team that likes to blitz and plays man-to-man coverage.
“Trevor has played quarterback throughout his life,” Bears coach Bill Beattie said. “You can see that now in how he plays. His decision making. His knowledge of reading the defenses. They’re all good. But we can’t risk him getting hurt.”
Bear football is in Houser’s blood. He’s a second-generation Bear. His dad, Skip Houser, played linebacker and guard for coach Bob Dunn in the early 1970s. Skip hasn’t missed one of his son’s games.
“It’s cool,” said Skip, a 1973 Olympia graduate and now a lawyer. “I can say this if the field I played on. Except we played on grass and it was usually muddy.”
Skip coached his son’s teams from fourth grade though seventh grade. Now, Skip is on the sidelines, either keeping stats or taking video for the team as his son plays.
“I don’t like watching the game from the stands,” Skip said. “I don’t think people would like to sit around me because I’d be yelling. It’s better that I don’t sit in the stands.”
Trevor said his dad doesn’t reminisce very much about his days of playing football at Olympia. And Skip doesn’t think back much to his days as a Bear when he goes to Ingersoll Stadium to watch his son play.
“It’s not reflecting back a whole lot,” Skip said. “You have some moments like that. But it’s really just capturing and enjoying the moment. You don’t think back too much.”
Trevor got his first start on the varsity as a sophomore when Cole Boysen, the Bears starting corner and kicker, broke his leg in the season opener. Trevor took over as both a corner and kicker the next week in a win against crosstown rival Capital. Skip’s younger brother, Ray, played football for Capital in the late 1970s. In Ray’s last high school game, he lost to Tumwater, a team that Beattie started on.
So, Trevor’s link to local high school football runs deep.
“It’s fun,” Skip said.
When tailback Spenser Killman broke his collarbone in the first series of the Bears’ first game (a 34-7 blowout win against Tumwater), Olympia had to rely even more on Trevor Houser’s passing. With a solid group of sure-handed receivers returning – Dylan Reed, Zed Higgs, Kyle Alfonso, Tyrone Sanderlin and Cole Murphy – passing was a key to winning. Killman returned to the lineup last week, scoring two touchdowns in a 21-14 win against Central Kitsap.
Houser is excited to have Killman back.
“That just makes us more diverse,” Houser said. “We don’t have to rely on the pass as much.”
Since Houser is a returning starter at quarterback, Beattie has counted more on his quarterback. Beattie has also turned over the responsibilities of calling the blocking schemes just before calling out the signals at the line of scrimmage as defenses shift into another position. Houser is just the second quarterback Beattie has permitted to call the blocking schemes just before the ball is snapped. Troy Dougherty, an all-league quarterback at Elma, was the other.
“I’ve given Trevor a lot of freedom,” Beattie said. “In all my years of coaching, I’ve done that only one other time. Trevor shows good poise out there.”
Against Mount Tahoma, Houser will again try to keep the offense moving by passing, not running. He’ll leave the running up to Killman and the other running backs, Nate Slosson and Kyle Alfonso.
“I’ve had to take the wheels off him this year just because we are so thin at quarterback,” Beattie said. “I know he’s frustrated with that. But at any level, whether it’s NFL, college or high school, you better have a quarterback. You look at all the teams that are successful and they have a good quarterback. Fortunately, we have a good quarterback. We’ve just got to keep him all year.”
