Jacksonville Episcopal quarterback Albert Chester has single-handedly led his
Eagles to a sterling and dominating 8-0 record. But the incredulous shame
for Chester and his teammates is that they cannot move on to the Florida state
playoffs this year, regardless of their record and state rankings. The
Episcopal Athletic Director pulled the team out of their league two years ago
and went independent when the program was struggling, and there was a fear that
the "bald" Eagles could regularly get their wings clipped in brutal
competition. The move was generally supported at the time, but few had the
vision of what Chester would do to single-handedly turn the program around.
Some of his games help to illustrate the awesome numbers he has put up this
year. Against Melbourne Catholic Central this past week, he put up close
to 400 yards in a 27-10 win with one touchdown in the air, one on the ground,
and three more that were called back by whistle-happy officials. The week
before that he threw for three scores and ran another in. In Episcopal's
closest game of the year (a 55-53 win over Taylor), he threw for 274 yards and
three touchdowns. A 28-14 win over South Carolina's Porter-Gaud came on
Chester's shoulders, with a throwing score and two late fourth quarter running
scores on quarterback options. Against Hilliard, he threw for four
touchdowns and 245 yards on just 16 completions. And it goes on and
on. For the season, he has thrown for 1700 yards and 19 touchdowns versus
just four interceptions.
Chester describes the offense that is showcasing his talents as a "run
and shoot" offense, mostly out of a pro set but with a little bit of
option. He has the freedom to call audibles at the line of scrimmage, but
regrettably does not yet have that same green light to improvise his own
scrambles. "The coaches haven't yet turned me loose, not quite yet
how I would like," adds the senior Jacksonville quarterback. When you
note that even in a constrained scheme that asks him to pass first and run only
in emergencies, Chester has put up some five hundred yards rushing and seven
scores on the ground - well, you can only imagine what damage he could do with
the chains off. The best chances for him to run currently are called
bootlegs (our favorite play, Albert!) and a recently installed quarterback
counter.
Even with no post-season available, he has some big games in November to look
forward to. Jacksonville Episcopal squares off in their season finale
against their top rival, Bishop Kenny, on the 7th, and then the Eagles will
travel to Orlando on the 21st to play against a big out-of-state opponent in the
annual Disney Bowl. That opponent was previously to be a team from New
Orleans, but now Disney is looking possibly at a school from Pennsylvania.
On the recruiting front, Albert Chester still maintains that Stanford is
clearly his number one choice, and at this point he is only awaiting the
admissions process at Stanford to give his verbal commitment. He submitted
his completed application a few weeks ago, but it is unclear how soon he will
hear back. His cumulative GPA of 3.4 and SAT of 1070 are not slam dunks by
any stretch. His father says that he has been signed up for the November
SAT test date this Saturday, but that he may have to pass on that with a
long-distance travel game Friday night. I imagine the Stanford coaches
would very much like to see Chester get a higher SAT score before pushing his
application all the way through Old Union, and the prospect of his not taking
the test until December is an unpleasant one. It will be interesting to
see how this all plays out in the coming weeks, but my guess is that the
Stanford coaches are currently pleading with the Chester family to have Albert
take this Saturday's test.
The Episcopal senior says he just received his latest report card, with a 3.6
GPA including courses in physics, business math, world & conflict (a debate
class), marine biology and senior English. He says that all of his
textbooks are college books, and his father notes that his essays and teach
recommendations should help round out a "tight" Stanford application.
He has scheduled his official visit to Stanford the weekend of January 10,
and will also travel to Vanderbilt and the Air Force Academy later that
month. His other two visit slots are open at this time, and his father
notes that a lot more interest has come his son's way with his senior
performances. Florida is calling weekly and stepping up their tone, while
schools like Boston College and Purdue are now addressing him as a quarterback
recruit and not the previous label of "athlete" recruit.
Closing note: it was reported by several recruiting services yesterday that
Albert has committed to Stanford, as sourced from either an Episcopal coach or
the Athletic Director. But this is not true. Albert and the Chester
family understand that the admissions process at Stanford still needs to
conclude for him. They also understand that a full commitment to Stanford,
likely though it may be if and when he is accepted, cannot take place until that
time. Unfortunately, coaches or high school officials do not often fully
grasp this crucial element of the Stanford recruiting process, and so they can
often misinterpret a recruit's emotional commitment to Stanford for a complete
verbal commitment. This happened in a Jacksonville newspaper back in June
after Albert Chester took an exciting unofficial visit to Stanford, and that is
again the case here... to set the record straight.