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Saturday, November 1, 2008
Welcome to QB City
Western Arkansas, AR
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Springdale serves as breeding ground for quality quarterbacks
If we didn’t know any better, we’d figure there was something in the water that has produced so many quality quarterbacks from the city of Springdale.
This season, all three Springdale high schools have top-notch quarterbacks with Springdale’s Ashton Glaser, Har-Ber’s Zach Faust and Shiloh Christian’s Kiehl Frazier. In addition, all three junior high teams boast stars-in-the-making under center.
Springdale’s water is supplied by the Beaver Water District, which supplies most of Northwest Arkansas, so that would mean every high school would have ample strong-armed signal callers.
Only a handful of quarterbacks from Rogers to the River Valley have made it to a college team. So that’s out.
Springdale sports several signal callers of late beginning with Will Hunt and followed by guys like Nathan Emert, Josh Floyd, Rhett Lashlee, Matt Simpson and Mitch Mustain.
So why so many from a town of 66,881?
In our search for an answer, we asked anyone who might know like current and former players and coaches, a pastor of the town’s largest church, the Chamber of Commerce president, businessmen and even the mayor, who may have had the best answer of all.
“I have no doubt that it’s because of a diet that included delicious fried chicken from the World’s only Neal’s Café,” said Springdale mayor Jerre Van Hoose.
According to the fine folks at Neal’s, there is no secret ingredient that produces strong arms and quick wits.
“It’s just good Tyson’s protein, man,” Micah Neal said. “It’s Tyson’s Chicken, cut specifically for us.”
With Tyson Foods Inc. chairman John Tyson out of the country, we went to another executive at the Springdale company to find out if there was anything special in its chicken.
“Chicken could be factor,” said Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson. “It taste great and is healthful, providing the kind of protein athletes — and the rest of us — need to be strong and active.
“And of course, if it’s chicken, it has to be Tyson.”
Here’s the wrinkle in that, though. Tyson is the World’s largest protein producer so young athletes from all over have grown up chomping on chicken.
And we haven’t heard of any quality quarterbacks coming out of Khazakstan lately.
So what is it about Springdale?
Most around town point their fingers at Gus Malzahn, who introduced an innovative Spread offense at Shiloh Christian and Springdale High.
“You cannot underestimate the influence of Gus Malzahn in this revival of the quarterback position,” said Ronnie Floyd, long time pastor of First Baptist Church in Springdale. “Each of the head coaches of those three schools today were all pivotal to Gus’ success … The Malzahn coaching tree has deep roots in Springdale at this time.”
Malzahn fined tuned plenty of quarterbacks’ mechanics and had them putting up ridiculous numbers in his Hurry-Up, No-Huddle Spread offense.
However, Malzahn points back to the people of Springdale for creating an atmosphere perfect for growing quarterbacks and football-savvy players in general.
“Springdale is a football town and football is very important to the kids,” Malzahn said. “There’s been good coaches from a young age, especially in junior high, and that’s produced a lot of talented kids.”
Malzahn is humble and won’t admit that he had much to do with it, but his offensive philosophy has caught on with other coaches and serves as a breeding ground for quarterbacks.
“More teams going to a Spread-type offense is attracting more of the top flight athletes to the football field and a lot of them end up playing quarterback,” said Malzahn, now offensive coordinator at Tulsa. “The 7-on-7 (tournaments) have had a lot to do with it and in my opinion, 7-on-7 in the state of Arkansas is second to none and that’s important as well.”
So Malzahn never even mentioned chicken.
Poultry or no poultry, there have been plenty of quarterbacks to cluck about in Springdale ever since Malzahn left for the college ranks.
This season, Bulldogs senior Ashton Glaser is coached by former Malzahn assistant Kevin Johnson. Glaser is verbally committed to BCS contender Missouri while classmate Zach Faust at cross-town Har-Ber should score a scholarship somewhere.
Faust owns the state’s strongest arm after tossing a ball 68 yards at the Top Gun QB1 Challenge — held each year at Jarrell Williams Stadium by the way — and also was first in throwing accuracy at the event. His only drawback is he’s 5-foot-10. But some lucky team will get a gem.
Faust also is coached by a former Malzahn assistant in Chris Wood, who’s as creative as anybody when it comes to running a passing offense.
“It starts with this community,” Wood said. “It’s a football community that has stayed the course of time and when these guys grow up watching guys like Will Hunt or whoever, they grow up wanting to be quarterbacks, too.”
Both Glaser and Faust grew up in Springdale while Shiloh Christian sophomore quarterback Kiehl Frazier moved in from West Fork over the summer. Frazier is loaded with potential with his ability to throw or run the ball and he even has competition with talented classmate David Matthews also taking snaps.
Frazier and Matthews are coached by another Malzahn pupil in Josh Floyd, who was a solid quarterback when he played at Shiloh Christian and does just as solid of a job coaching signal callers.
Floyd also credited the community and former Springdale coach Jarrell Williams with building a strong football foundation. For him personally, it was simply about having a father who took an active role in his upbringing.
“I think it was something as simple as me and my dad playing catch in the yard,” Floyd said. “Since as long as I can remember, since I was about three or four, I grew up throwing and catching.”
Springdale Chamber of Commerce president Perry Webb may have summed it up best, calling the Springdale quarterback breeding grounds a phenomenon that really cannot be explained.
“There’s no magic formula,” Webb said. “It’s just a lot of tradition and Springdale is a great community that really supports football and for whatever reason, that’s led to a lot of quality quarterbacks coming up through the ranks.”
So what we’ve learned is that Springdale has a lot of football tradition, a lot of community support and a whole lot of chicken.
Together, it all adds up to a lot of quarterbacks.
Or maybe it’s just something in the water.
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