The Aftermath: Who’s next at QB for Clovis?

Clovis head football coach Cal Fullerton wishes 2021 quarterback <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="26155" first="Chance" last="Harris"]</strong> had stayed in high school for the spring season but he fully understands why the state’s top signal caller decided to enroll early at Colorado State. “As a football coach, you wish he would have stuck around, but the way these kids have been jerked around, I commend his decision,” Fullerton told Prep Redzone New Mexico. “He can go up there and get some stability and get into spring football with those guys. “The quicker he gets a helmet on and gets some normalcy back, the better for him. It’s hard to blame a kid for wanting to go do that.” Harris signed with Colorado State nearly a month ago during the early spring period, and elected to join the Rams program now and participate in spring practice rather than during the summer. Harris arrived on the CSU campus earlier this week for orientation and classes are scheduled to begin on Jan. 19. “I didn’t want to talk him into staying here and then we have no season,” Fullerton said. “At that point, it would be too late for him to register for classes and too late for him to get up and be with his teammates up there in the spring. The best thing for him was go up there.  I couldn’t be more happy for him.” After saying goodbye to his star quarterback, Fullerton now turns his attention to deciding on Harris’ successor among multiple candidates. “We have three or four kids that we’ve been thinking about,” Fullerton said. Junior <strong>Milo Acosta</strong> was the Clovis JV quarterback in 2019. Several experienced seniors are also being considered with <strong>C.J. Gutierrez</strong> and <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="26219" first="Ernesto" last="Acuna"]</strong> being the best known. Acuna has been offered by Eastern New Mexico, NMMI and Aurora College. “They have some savvy to them, and that’s what we look for in a quarterback,” Fullerton said. “They have a lot of confidence. We’ve been talking about some different options. Our coaches do a very good job of adapting to situations that are out of their control. We’ll be able to figure something out for sure.” Another option: lean more heavily on stud running back <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="26162" first="Jeston" last="Webskowski"]</strong>, who is verbally committed to Eastern New Mexico. “The way the weather is in New Mexico into February and March, we’re probably going to rely on him more then we probably would have in the fall,” Fullerton said. “And we have a shortened season with four regular season games and hopefully seven with the playoffs. So, we don’t have to worry about him wearing down towards the end of the season. Yeah, we’ll ride the heck out of Jeston, for sure.” Webskowski rushed for 1,713 yards and 27 touchdowns on 223 carries (18.6 carries per game) as a junior in 2019. He remains committed to ENMU but has been talking with NMMI and a few FCS schools facing a scholarship crunch with many seniors, given an extra year of eligibility by the NCAA, expected back in 2021. “He’s still sold on Eastern, but I think he’s open to more talk  if it happens to come up,” Fullerton said. Even without Harris, Clovis still possesses plenty of talent with Webskowski, Acuna, University of New Mexico signee <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="26157" first="Jaden" last="Phillips"]</strong>, <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="26214" first="Blake" last="Muscato"]</strong>,  lineman <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="26203" first="Johnny" last="Jimenez"]</strong> (currently holds five college offers), CB <strong>Brandon Romero</strong> and Gutierrez. Jimenez has started for Clovis since his sophomore season in 2018 and has been the Wildcats’ second best defensive lineman during that span. “He’s a mean kid in the trenches and does a very good job for us,” Fullerton said. https://twitter.com/jestonweb/status/1346517436577832965 https://twitter.com/ernestoacuna2/status/1349040558346559488 https://twitter.com/johnnyjimenez62/status/1348747985140768769