WOODLAND — Wyatt Harsh went camping this summer.
With the skills he learned, he hopes to light a fire for this year’s Woodland football team.
Last season, Harsh turned heads as a freshman quarterback. He threw for 1,994 yards and 24 touchdowns in earning first-team all-league honors in the 2A Greater St. Helens League.
But when the high school season ended, Harsh was just getting started.
Under the tutelage of the Barton Football Academy, where he learns from former Pac-10 quarterbacks Taylor Barton and Alex Brink, Harsh embarked on a busy offseason.
He joined some of the West’s top high school quarterbacks at camps in Las Vegas, Portland and the Seattle area.
As Harsh’s sophomore season begins, his teammates see a more confident and skilled quarterback.
He’ll need to play that way for Woodland to make the postseason for the fifth year in a row. He no longer runs an offense that has the league’s MVP now that Eli Whitmire has graduated.
This is Harsh’s team now.
“The expectation last year was to understand that he was going to make freshman mistakes,” Woodland coach Mark Greenleaf said. “Now that he’s a sophomore, we’re not going to be so lenient with the mistakes.”
Not that Harsh is worried about pressure. The camps he attended mostly revolved around high-intensity seven-on-seven competitions.
“Seven-on-seven helps me with the speed of the game because last year I struggled with that,” Harsh said. “As the season progressed, it started to slow down for me. Things started to click with the reads and stuff.”
Harsh also went to school on the technique of throwing a football.
“Last year I started throwing sidearm,” he said. “At the camps they started having me throw over the top more. That allows me to drive it in there better.”
Though he isn’t the most outspoken guy, Harsh enjoys the competitive tension when several Type-A personality quarterbacks get together.
“I want to be the best quarterback at the camp,” he said. “I forces me to push myself to be my best.”
Greenleaf has seen the talent of others rub off on his quarterback.
“The more talent you’re around, the more it makes you bring up your expectations of yourself,” he said.
Though Harsh will be looked to for leadership, he won’t be alone. Woodland returns its entire group of starting linemen, including second-team all-state junior Isaac Andersen.
Andersen likes what he sees in his quarterback.
“He’s doing a great job so far,” he said. “I and everyone else in this town is really surprised by his maturity level and his humility.
“If I didn’t know him, I’d say he’s at least a junior.”
