Super 7 QB Competition Proves to be a Success
Credit: Don De Mars/EVT
The quarterback position always comes with competition. There can only be one on the field at a time. Football has evolved to make QB the most important player on the field. The play from the position usually decides which team wins and which team loses.
The glory of the position has trickled down to every level of the game, with players of all ages working to be the next elite quarterback. Nowhere is this dynamic more noticeable than in the world of QB development, with camps popping up all over the country to train the next generation of signal-callers. Over the weekend, one of these camps, The Super 7 Elite Competition, held its first event at La Costa Canyon High School.
The Super 7 was created to give high school quarterbacks from San Diego a place to compete with and learn from talented quarterbacks. Carlsbad coach Thadd MacNeal and Left Coast Atheletix founder Jose Mohler created the competition, which will take place over two preliminary rounds, with a final round on May 13.
San Diego State’s all-time winningest quarterback, Christian Chapman, and former Denver Broncos quarterback Brett Rypien joined MacNeal and Mohler to help coach the young gunslingers. The QBs rotated through a variety of throws, with each mentor evaluating and educating the players.
The competition attracted some of the area’s finest young signal-callers, including five-star prospect Julian Sayin. Sayin, despite being a sophomore, already has offers from over twenty division one schools. He’s the fifth-ranked recruit overall, and the second-highest ranked quarterback in the class of 2024.
Sayin plays at Carlsbad, which means he works with Coach MacNeal on a daily basis. He also works with Christian Chapman, Carlsbad High’s QB Coach, regularly. “We’re working at practice every day, so today was a great work(out) with him, Sayin said.” The all-world recruit did not let the fact that he was the highest-rated player at the event affect him, “I guess you could say I’m the favorite, but I don’t think rankings are very important. It’s going to be who goes out and competes.” While Sayin was the top-ranked player at the event, there were many other extremely talented quarterbacks in attendance.
University City quarterback and three-star recruit Samuel Cooper also came to the event and threw the ball well. He’s a three-sport athlete, as he also plays basketball and lacrosse for the Centurions. He was the San Diego City Section Offensive Player of the Year. He excelled as a dual-threat quarterback, passing for over 2000 yards and rushing for over 1000 yards in the 2021 campaign.
Cooper, who transferred from Lincoln to University City last season, has offers from both Army and Navy, as well as a handful of division two schools, but he’s only a junior, so he’ll still have another season to get more offers. He had one of the most consistent and compact throwing motions at the competition. He was extremely humble.
“Just to be able to be next to Julian Sayin, just to be next to him and to get to learn the little things from him that you wouldn’t get on a daily basis from elsewhere is awesome.”, Cooper said.
Super 7 does not limit themselves to high school quarterbacks, as La Costa Canyon quarterback Quinn Roth can attest to. Roth is in eighth grade but will play for the La Costa Canyon High School next season. He is already participating in Spring Ball with the Mavericks. Despite being multiple years younger than most other players there, Roth played well and was not intimidated. He said, “It just makes me want to be better and look up to these older guys, and it makes me want to be just as good, if not better than them.” Roth also talked about how he was excited to continue to come back to the competition year after year, as he hopes to improve with age.
While there was a huge variety of drills that the quarterbacks competed in, Chapman talked about the hardest throws the competitors worked on. “The toughest throw out here today is probably the ten-yard outs because you need to have some arm strength and some good timing, as well as the comeback routes, which helped the quarterbacks to work on footwork as well.”, he said.
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Both Del Norte High’s Jack Schneider and Quentyn DeMara, Cooper’s understudy at University City, talked about how they benefited from working out from under center. Both of them play on high school teams that tend to operate out of the shotgun.
The event was a huge success, and every single quarterback got a chance to learn and compete with each other. The ability to have an NFL quarterback, as well as three other highly skilled coaches, critique and teach the young players is a huge advantage. It is exactly the kind of healthy competitive environment the Super 7 are attempting to foster.
Sam is a Senior in High School. He has been writing for three years, and started at EVT in June of 2021. He’s headed to Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Communications in the fall of 2023.