Quarterbacks normally don’t go looking for collisions.
They look for ways to avoid them. By running out of bounds. Or by going into a slide as they’re about to be hit. Or by wildly flinging the football into the bleachers as a gang of defenders bears down on them.
It’s not that quarterbacks are cowards. Anything but. They might be the bravest players on the field.
It’s just that defenders seem to get a little nastier when they see a quarterback running for his life.
Then there’s Aaron Boehme.
His goal as the starting quarterback for the Linfield College Wildcats in the season-opening game this fall: To run over somebody.
What, a head-hunting quarterback? No, not really.
Let’s just say he might have a little of that nastiness defenders possess.
A former safety for the Stanwood Spartans in high school, Boehme says he “loved laying lumber, especially on those wide receivers over the middle.” His former high school coach, Dick Abrams, described him as a “dominant free safety, a big hitter.”
As a ballboy when his father was the Stanwood High School football coach, Boehme’s idols were a couple of hard-hitting safeties in the mid-1990s.
“When he got to be a free safety, we had many talks about the intimidating play of those guys,” said his father, Tom, now the principal at Centralia High School. “As a ballboy, he’d be on the sideline watching those guys. He knew what jacked up the team” — big hits. And he knew how to deliver them.
“He had great timing,” his dad said. “He sent a few guys off the field.”
So what the Linfield Wildcats have directing their offense this fall in his first season as the team’s starting quarterback is a player who knows what it’s like to throw a touchdown pass and to intercept a pass meant to be a touchdown. He knows what it’s like to take a hit and to punish with one. And he knows what it’s like to catch a pass (he played a little wide receiver last year at Linfield, making two receptions, both for touchdowns).
In other words, he’s an athlete. A very good athlete. In high school, he won letters in football, basketball, baseball, and track.
“Probably the best athlete I’ve coached at Stanwood and one of the best I’ve ever been around,” the veteran coach Abrams said. “(In football) he could have played any position. He could have been our best receiver. He was on the field for every play.”
Beginning on Saturday, when Linfield travels to Abilene, Texas, to take on Hardin-Simmons, Linfield will be counting on his arm, his running ability, his intelligence and his leadership to help continue what is one of the most remarkable records in all of sport. Linfield has put together 52 consecutive winning seasons, the longest streak in college football.
“That’s the cool thing about Linfield College,” said Boehme, a junior who as the backup quarterback a year ago completed 19 of 27 passes, including 14 of 17 for five touchdowns in his only start, a 66-0 victory over Lewis &Clark in the season finale. “There’s so much tradition.”
And much of that tradition lies in the fact that the Wildcats have won 32 Northwest Conference titles and made five Division III playoff appearances from 2000-2005, including a national title in 2004.
That they went only 6-3 the last two years was a “big disappointment,” Boehme said, and will serve as an incentive this season.
Boehme spent the summer on campus grooming for his role, running, throwing and playing seven-on-seven. One of the players he was working with was his roommate, Gunnar Cederberg, a junior wide receiver from Tigard, Ore.
The two share a place with two other players and are considered, in Cederberg’s words, the “little kids of the house.”
“We play a lot of video games and yell and scream at one another,” he said in a telephone interview.
Cederberg also critiques the unusual eating habits of his quarterback. “He lives off Cokes, Twizzlers (licorice), and Doritos,” Cederberg said, “and “he never gains a pound.”
Boehme’s 205 pounds are spread over a 6-foot, 5-inch frame, a body that you might guess doesn’t move very fast. You’d be wrong. He covers 40 yards in 4.6 seconds, which is very good, especially for someone that size.
“He’s kind of tall and skinny, but he’s been extremely durable and extremely tough,” said Jim Nagel, the Linfield offensive coordinator and quarterback coach.
And being tough, Boehme has the mentality that makes him unafraid of running into other bodies. Nagel would just as soon his protege avoid as much contact as possible.
“He’s been instructed to slide, dive and run out of bounds,” Nagel said.
What, you’re not going to let him make like Dick Butkus? “When he gains 25 pounds, then we’ll talk about letting him truck somebody.”
Nagel coached former NFL quarterback Steve DeBerg at San Jose State, and believes Boehme has “all the tools to play at the next level.”
“He’s got great mental as well as physical skills,” the coach said. “He’s smart, strong, has speed and outstanding arm strength. What he has to do is work on his mechanics, and his accuracy has to improve.”
One thing he doesn’t lack is confidence. “He’s one of these guys who thinks he can do everything,” Cederberg said. “He knows the playbook. Sometimes we’ll break from the huddle and I’ll say to Aaron, ‘What in the heck am I supposed to do?’ He knows.”
Sounds as if he has the makings for a coach. Which is exactly what Boehme wants to be someday.
“I think he’d be a real good one,” Nagel said. “He wants to learn as much as he can.”
Tom Boehme recalled that when his son was in the second grade, he thought he should have been allowed to play football against third graders. When he wasn’t, he staged his own little protest, electing to play soccer.
“I think he did it just to tick me off,” Tom said. “He’s always had a football mind.”
When he was home this summer, Aaron spent some time doing what future coaches do: drawing up plays.
One of which, no doubt, called for the quarterback to flatten a defender.
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