SAN CLEMENTE – “He’s just Sam.”
San Clemente football coach Jaime Ortiz tries to put it into better words – throwback, old-school, etc. – but those don’t quite fit as well.
He’s talking about Sam Darnold, the USC-bound senior quarterback, legitimate two-sport star in an age where that is a phenomenon and maybe most important, a born-and-raised son of San Clemente.
Darnold doesn’t have a Twitter account, although there are two profiles that claim to be his out there. (He calls them “creepy.”) He didn’t pick a hat at a press conference to announce his commitment to USC. He hasn’t given up on playing basketball for San Clemente, where he was named league MVP as a sophomore.
“The landscape of high school football has changed,” Ortiz said. “Everybody is looking for options – where am I going to school, who are going to be my receivers, who is calling plays? With Sam, it’s always been about a guy who wants to represent his school and his community.”
Darnold grew up attending San Clemente games on Friday nights, simply because that’s where he could watch live football, and those moments have stuck with him.
“I’ve been watching this team as long as I’ve been old enough to remember,” Darnold said. “We don’t have a college close by, so we’d come to these games and I’d see the atmosphere. I’d tell my dad, ‘I want to play here.’”
He’ll have one final opportunity to play on that field Friday, in the CIF-SS Southwest Division championship against Trabuco Hills. He has been the driving force for the Tritons, with 2,792 yards and a school-record 38 touchdowns through the air, to go along with 594 yards and 11 scores on the ground.
But this year represents a little bit more in the context of the disappointment that was San Clemente’s 2013 season.
Ortiz saw something in the then-junior in the second game of that season. With about a minute remaining, trailing Cabrillo of Long Beach, 32-28, the Tritons got the ball back with a chance to win. On the first play of the drive, Darnold broke off a 75-yard run down to the Cabrillo 3-yard line and ran in the winning touchdown two plays later with 25 seconds remaining.
“We’re looking at it going, ‘We’ve got something special,’” Ortiz said. “Last year, that was him taking over the game.”
Hopes were high, even late into the first half against Dana Hills the next week. But in the second quarter, Darnold was tackled awkwardly and got up limping.
“It felt, at first, like I just rolled my ankle,” Darnold recalled.
He even felt well enough to go out for the next San Clemente drive and threw a 23-yard touchdown pass just before the halftime break to cut the Dana Hills’ lead to 14-13.
Ortiz knew something was wrong when Darnold came back to the sideline and sat down on the bench. Doctors checked on the quarterback and ruled him out for the rest of the game. They later found out he threw that touchdown pass on a broken foot.
The impact of losing Darnold was immediate. Dana Hills turned a tight game at the half into a rout, scoring 24 consecutive points in the second half. San Clemente didn’t win another game, finished with a 2-8 record and averaged 12.6 points per game without its star quarterback in the final seven games of the season.
Darnold, relegated to the sidelines, described the experience in one word – “awful.”
“He made our team much better than it was,” Ortiz said. “He had that capability. After that happened, we had a hard time scoring. We were in games, but we couldn’t finish it out. If he’s healthy, who knows?”
San Clemente knows now, after riding a healthy Darnold to a 12-1 record, one step away from the first CIF-SS football title in school history and with an outside shot at regional and state bowl appearances.
The difficulties of last season made the path to this year’s championship game sweeter, but the Southwest final won’t be the last time San Clemente’s fans will be able to see Darnold competing on campus.
He’s also seeking redemption, in a sense, on the basketball court. He missed a significant chunk of last season because of his broken foot, then scored 22 points and had eight rebounds in his first game back, but he only played eight games because he broke his pinky finger when he punched a locker after a 51-50 loss to Trabuco Hills in January.
San Clemente basketball coach Marc Popovich believes that if Darnold would have focused entirely on basketball, he could have also been a Division I recruit on the hardwood.
But that wouldn’t fit Darnold. The 6-foot-4, 215-pound senior genuinely gives off the impression that he does what he wants, regardless of circumstance.
“I can’t just play football,” Darnold said. “I have to do other things. Just playing football is something I’ve never done.”
Could he have attended a school known for being a football factory to gain exposure? Could he have found a less competitive environment than USC to be able to play more quickly? Could he have given up on basketball to focus and improve on football?
The answer to all of those questions is undoubtedly yes, but that’s not Sam.
“You don’t see a kid like that very often,” Ortiz said. “He loves this town, he loves his teammates and he loves playing for San Clemente, whether it’s football or basketball – it doesn’t matter.”
Contact the writer: jbalan@ocregister.com
