LJ FB: Forcier cont.'

By Ed Piper, Jr.

Remember I wrote, without having talked to him, that Chris Forcier, a former star quarterback at St. Augustine and the new La Jolla High quarterbacks coach, was "unsmiling" and presented a "fierce" visage on the practice field during Spring workouts?

I walked up to him yesterday (May 31) and told him about this, and had written without having met him first.

He smiled.

I said, "That's the first smile I've seen you do."

He said, as we began chatting amiably, "Maybe I should smile more." I replied, "No, that would break the aura."

Really, we talked football, which I'm always a student beginner at, since I didn't play it as a youth. He talked technically about stuff, and while throwing with one of his tutees, rising senior Trevor Scully, before the formal Wednesday workout, he explained to me why he has the player practice twisting his upper torso at the waist and lifting his throwing arm up: "This is without pads. With pads on, they are going to force his arm down. So you want to do this motion in an exaggerated way, so that he will have good throwing form in the game." Or basically that.

It was informative, clear, and understandable.

Wow, to be one of the athletes soaking up all this teaching. I keep telling people, when I was a senior in high school, the head baseball coach told us, "Concentrate. Swing hard." That was the level (or lack thereof) of technical coaching we got 46 years ago.

What I relished about our conversation that carried into the early part of the workout, while players warmed up at the end of the field, and that Chris--no trademark Nike cap on backwards, with the sky being totally overcast all day, long hair pulled and tied together at the back of his head--visibly seemed to enjoy was talking about the opportunity to play football in Milan, Italy, and soak up the culture.

Forcier, whose brothers Jason and Tate were also star quarterbacks, said, "The money I made playing football, which wasn't much, went to travel."

Having lived and taught in a foreign culture (Mexico) right out of college, I didn't need calisthenics to warm to the subject.

"How many people get to pursue their passion, and live in a foreign culture, soaking it all up?" he said as Scully, his lone tutee at quarterback this day, stretched with the rest of the Viking returnees and hopefuls 40 yards away on the north end zone paint.

"I could work out for a couple of weeks and be ready to play," he said, not seeming boastful. He means right now. Forcier looks fit, moves like it with his athletes, and maintains a tall, wiry physique that must have aided him in looking over opposing defensive lines to search out his sprinting receivers.

He just graduated from St. Augustine in the Class of 2012, so the scenario doesn't seem that far-fetched.

I interjected a little humor, and prefaced my question so that he wouldn't take it in a bad way. After all, it is the first time we have ever exchanged words.

I asked, "LaVar Ball vs. your dad" (who guided him and his brothers to get "the best training as quarterbacks as he could" when they were young)--"is there any comparison?"

Forcier laughed. Not really. "I wish I had $495 shoes," he said, in reference to Ball's new brand he is marketing to basketball players.

Was your father some kind of Rasputin? No. "He was a quarterback" in his playing days, and not being a quarterback coach himself, he arranged for coaches to tutor his sons at the position.

There was an overlap among brothers' years in high school, so dad arranged for Tate, the youngest of the trio, to transfer from St. Augustine--where Chris held down the starting quarterback job--to Scripps Ranch, where he started at quarterback and starred.

Chris's own journey went St. Augustine, UCLA, transfer to Furman University (where he started), NFL (Jaguars), CFL (Montreal Alouettes), then Europe. He said he chose Italy "because of the weather". There are teams in Germany and Austria, where coaching staff colleague Armon Harvey played and coached, but Forcier opted for Milan.

A fellow Viking coach called him after I posted my original story on Forcier yesterday morning. So at least two people read my story. I'm just kidding.

"That's cool," said Forcier. "We have a beat writer."