CUMBERLAND — When the going got tough, Carter Clites got going.
Clites, a sophomore quarterback at Mountain Ridge, possesses a ton of qualities that the Miners seek at their position that has seen a Player of the Year awardee and two Offensive Player of the Year recipients in the last three years.
Bryce Snyder won Offensive Player of the Year in 2021, Uma Pua’auli was Player of the Year in 2022 and Will Patterson shared Offensive Player of the Year honors last year.
But something Clites possesses that none of Mountain Ridge’s last three QBs showed is his handedness: lefty.
Clites, making his first career start at the varsity level Friday night, showed poise against a fierce Allegany pass rush, completing 19 of 26 passes for 204 yards, zero interceptions and two touchdowns to lead the Miners over Allegany, 24-21.
Greenway Avenue Stadium and the atmosphere that comes with it speaks for itself, but Clites was unfazed after he got going.
“It felt pretty good,” Clites said of playing at Greenway. “It was a little nerve-racking, my first start. But I give thanks to our coaches and my players for supporting me and prepping me through it.”
Clites was thrown into action last week against Catoctin when starting quarterback Cobe Penick exited the game with a knee injury. Clites completed 8 of 11 passes out of the bullpen in a 29-12 victory for the undefeated Miners.
“I think the biggest differences are him rolling out of the pocket,” Mountain Ridge head coach Nathan Shipe said of a left-hander under center. “Being more comfortable with the left when it’s an intense situation, that coaches are cool enough to remember that, ‘Hey, we’ve got to call sprint left, we’ve got to call boot left,’ so we’re not putting him in positions where it’s more difficult for him to be successful.
“So as far as him making plays, being a lefty, or kids catching the ball out of his hand coming from a lefty, I don’t think the kids thought about that too much. I think it just puts more pressure on our offensive coaches to make sure they put him in positions to make plays.”
Throwing a left-hander into an offense isn’t nearly as simple as one would think, nor is it a matter of just flipping things the other direction.
“So, if you’re watching your scouters, I love to roll our quarterbacks out, mainly to the field side,” Mountain Ridge offensive coordinator Sefa Pua’auli said of Clites. “But understanding where we are on the field when we run those plays — because position-wise we don’t want to roll to the short side of the field — and try to remember that Carter is a lefty.”
“So, really, we try to play it by ear and then we try to learn as we go along what his strengths are. The good thing was we had a whole week to prepare for this.”
Even more vital is the second-team reps Clites got while backing up Penick during preseason and the first two weeks of the regular season.
“The good thing about what Coach Shipe does is … he always makes sure the second team gets reps,” Pua’auli said. “That’s why when Carter came in last week, he was ready to go. And the week of preparation this week was all the difference.”
Both of Clites’ touchdown passes went to Eli Sibley, who has six touchdown catches in three games. The first came on a play-action pass after four straight run plays for a 2-yard score.
“I’ve developed, in my time being a QB, a bond with my receivers,” Clites said. “So we have that connection, and I trust them. Even though there were incomplete passes, I still trust them and just threw to them.”
The second was the game-winner, a 3-yard lob to the corner that saw Sibley jump into double coverage and haul in the pass.
“First of all, I’m super proud of Carter for stepping in not only this week into a big game like this, but the tight spot he got thrown in last week,” said former Mountain Ridge head coach and current QB coach Ryan Patterson. “He’s got such a phenomenal arm, the ball comes out of his hands so nicely.”
“But being that he is a left-hander, we first of all as coaches have to stand on our head and flip backward to try to think of exactly how we want to do this thing. We’ve had all these right-handers and athletic ones too that we like putting on the run. So if we’re going to put him on the run … we want to try to get things moving to the left. That’s going to help our play calling.”
Coincidentally enough, it was a left-hander — Dan Strietbeck — that laid the foundation for Mountain Ridge’s pass-heavy offense.
“His two years were kind of a two-year experiment to see how throwing the football would go,” Shipe, then an assistant at Mountain Ridge, said. “And I think we all saw that that was a direction that the program could go in. It just took longer than we wanted it to to make that full transition and to get kids in the program that were willing to buy in.”
There’s no indication of when exactly Penick will be healthy, and Clites’ varsity career is in its infancy, but the Miners seem to have yet another talent coming out of the quarterback factory in Frostburg.