Look, Ma, 1,000 Yards! -- Mother's Advice Worth A Grand To Interlake Qb

-- BELLEVUE

On the day of each Interlake High School football game, the Saints' quarterback takes a moment to meet with the person most responsible for him playing the sport and listens intently. To his mother.

"Before every game she says, `Concentrate and connect . . .,' " Matt McPoland said.

Usually he does. With one game left in the KingCo Conference season, McPoland has connected with his receivers for 1,065 yards, ranking him second in the league in passing yardage.

"I was surprised myself," said McPoland, a senior who didn't play a down of varsity football until this season. "I just wanted to play for fun this year. I was going into the season like, `Shoot, I hope I can throw for 300 yards like (Jason) Griffin did last year. Then I started throwing well . . . It's great."

As surprising as McPoland's success might seem, the bigger surprise is that he turned out for football at all. After playing his first season of organized football as a freshman, he sat out his sophomore year to concentrate on basketball and then decided not to play as a junior, either.

"My mom made me play last year," he said. "I didn't want to play, and she said, `I'll let you drive the car to school every day if you play football.

"It's weird. My mom loves football, though. It's her favorite sport. I wouldn't have even played if not for her."

Evidently, Mother knew best.

"Last year when he tried out he was really green," Interlake Coach Bill Heglar said. "He was obviously a talented kid, but the thing was he was so green. We could see he was going to be a pretty good quarterback."

Despite the talent, McPoland spent the season with the junior varsity, where he would learn more by playing every game.

By the start of this season, he wasn't yet all-KingCo material, but he was experienced enough for the starting job.

"I didn't know how to read defenses at all coming in this year," McPoland said. "The coaches spent a lot of time with me. They taught me how to read defenses, how to look over the field.

"I've learned a lot this year."

He has taken on more responsibility almost every week of the season.

"As the season went along, Matt got real good at picking up things," Heglar said. "Right now, probably 50 percent of the time, he's checking off for something he's seen open, and this is from a kid who's had only eight varsity ballgames. And 90 percent of of the time he's right with the calls he's made."

McPoland called no plays of his own when the season started.

"I need a lot more work if I'm going to play college ball, but I think I can do it," he said.

He probably can do it in any of three sports. In addition to his newfound success in football, he's coming off a junior year in which he scored 13.5 points per game as a forward for Interlake's district-playoff basketball team and was 4-2 with a 2.53 earned run average for Interlake's Crest Division-champion baseball team.

Last year he received recruiting letters from college basketball and baseball programs. Already this fall, he has received football letters from Boise State and Eastern Washington - and Boise State followed up with a phone call.

"I was real surprised," he said. "It kind of makes me think about playing football in college."

Football and baseball, both, if he has his way. His fastball has been clocked at 75-80 mph.

The strong arm is also considered his strength in football.

"I really have a hard time catching his balls, he puts so much zip on them," Interlake tight end Scott Terhaar said. "If I'm 15-20 yards away, I have a hard time. He gets them in there in a hurry."

Terhaar has done well enough hanging onto McPoland passes to become the KingCo's sixth-ranked receiver with 21 catches for 259 yards. Split end Dan Murphy ranks seventh with 20 catches for 250 yards.

The McPoland-Terhaar connection is nothing new. McPoland's top pass catcher in football is also his catcher in baseball.

"It's almost exactly," Terhaar said of how the same baseball communication skills translate on the football field. "I think Matt and I are a little closer just because we played other sports together. I think Murphy and him have their own little touch, too."

McPoland: "They're both good friends of mine. We have audibles that we go over . . . I'll grab my facemask, or Terhaar yells out words or colors or something when he sees something. It's just fun out there. They're always thinking. We're kind of like on the same brain wave."

Unfortunately, that hasn't translated into a wave of wins for the Saints (1-3 in Crest Division, 2-6 overall). The finish the season tonight at Newport (3-1, 6-2).

"I'm looking at it as the last game I'll ever play in high school in football. We want to go out and win and ruin their (playoff) hopes," McPoland said. "We don't want to rub it in their face or anything, but beat Newport and come back and get wild. That would be a good way to end the season."

But first thing's first. He's got a pregame meeting to attend.

"She's a different mom," McPoland said. "She loves it. She wears my letterman's jacket around."

And this year it has a football patch on it for the first time. Which is the oddly shaped sign of a mother's devotion in the McPoland family.

. BIG MAC. .

-- Interlake High School senior Matt McPoland, in his first season of varsity football, ranks second in the KingCo Conference in passing with 1,065 yards. His game-by-game totals this season:. . Opponent PA PC Yd. TD Result. . Redmond 19 7 95 1 L 24-21. . Woodinville 15 3 70 1 L 8-7. . Inglemoor 29 16 247 2 L 35-14. . Juanita 16 7 78 2 W 21-14. . Sammamish 24 13 165 0 W 10-9. . Bellevue 32 15 131 0 L 41-3. . Issaquah 31 11 148 0 L 12-3. . Mercer Island 25 12 131 1 L 27-6. . Total 191 84 1,065 7 2-6 #. .

# -one game remaining..