By Ed Piper
"We will roll with the guys in the building!" Tyler Roach, La Jolla head football coach, texted Sat., Feb. 21, when asked about the quarterback position for fall 2026.
"Emerson (Rota) and Ty (Tortorice) will compete this spring and summer for the job," the eight-year HC veteran coach.
Rota and Tortorice steadied the ship as much as they could when returning senior starter Hudson Smith went down with injuries and concussions early in the 2025 season, then midway through the season. Huddy, going through concussion symptoms wearing sunglasses at one point, ending up sitting out the last part of the season.
Roach, who played middle linebacker at University City as a student-athlete, then later developed an imaginative coaching approach to offense, showed his creativity once again last season in using safety/wide receiver Carson Diehl in the shotgun, in addition to rotating Tortorice, a freshman, in a traditional dropback QB role with Rota, a lefthanded slinger--none of the three had ever started a varsity game as a quarterback.
Senior linebacker Charlie Martin even got thrown in there at shotgun at one point.
After Huddy began to miss games, the Vikings still went 2-2 in the Eastern League, 4-4 overall before the playoffs.
The La Jolla coach brought in Hudson Smith as a transfer from the Scripps Ranch area two years ago. Before that, he helped develop Jackson Diehl, Carson's older brother and an unknown quantity, into an All-CIF quarterback who was an equal threat as a ball-carrier and an effective passer in 2023.
Going way back to the start of his eight years as head coach (a previous year spent as an assistant coach under Jason Carter), Roach became something of a "quarterback whisperer" to another Jackson, Jackson Stratton, who had blonde, flowing locks coming down from under his helmet. Stratton put up big numbers as a drop-back passer, and helped lead La Jolla to the 2019 Southern California Regional title after the CIF San Diego Section championship, with a 10-5 record.
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