Mark Chisholm 

Sitting in the Flagg Field press box in Seffner on September 24 last fall, were a handful of people who had to be there.  The Armwood-Wharton football game was mercifully coming to a close.  Less than three minutes remained on the game clock.  The action on the field had become secondary to the chatter about funny advertisements, the support Armwood gets from the local Seffnerites, and other barely football-related topics.  After all, the score was 48-0.  Once again the Wildcats took over after a Hawks kickoff.

As we glanced down at the field distractedly, the ball left the hand of the Wildcat quarterback and zipped as if it moved on an invisible rail eight feet off the ground and reached its destination: the hands of a receiver 20 yards away.  The ball had gotten from point A to point B in the blink of an eye.  I had taken note of the first two QBs Wharton had used in a futile attempt to move the ball against one of the best defenses in the state.  The player who threw this pass was clearly neither of them. The question was asked to Armwood PA announcer Bruce Burnham, “who is this kid?” A shuffle of papers and we all peered over his shoulder anxiously:   #14   QB   Chase Litton   Freshman.

It was a single pass from #14 (also his age at the time), but the new QB then displayed poise, escapability, and touch on the next four plays.  Those handful of snaps were enough.  He had cemented with stark clarity his substantial potential. Like Jon Landau’s prophecy concerning Springsteen, indeed, I have seen the area’s quarterbacking future and its name is Chase Litton.

The first thing you notice is the tall frame.  At 15 years of age now, Litton stands 6’5”.  He will probably grow taller still.  A healthy dose of athleticism is apparent as well.  Litton moves out of harm’s way with ease.  The starting pose of his delivery is not as high as the Jeff Tedford school of quarterbacking, but it’s up in the middle of his chest.  Litton uses an expedient delivery where the ball barely makes it behind his helmet before zipping forward.  Then the whip: Litton delivers the ball with as much velocity as anyone in the Bay area.

He made his first start in the Wildcats penultimate game of the season versus Tampa Bay Tech. He passed for two touchdowns and helped Wharton roll up 34 points in a narrow 36-34 loss.  The Titans stingy defense allowed more points only once last season when eventual 4A state finalist Armwood scored 38 against them.  There was a report that TBT’s then-head coach C.C. Culpepper called a fourth quarter fake punt that secured their victory because he didn’t want to give Litton another crack at it.  In Wharton’s final game, Litton’s second start, he threw for 228 yards and three TD’s in a 62-32 setback versus Sickles.  Remember, he’s 15.

For the season, he completed over 50% of his 82 pass attempts.  Of his 44 completions, eight went for touchdowns.  Those completions averaged 16.4 yards each.  Litton finished the season with a passer rating over 106.  He threw only two interceptions, both against Sickles and was sacked only four times behind an inexperienced offensive line. Again, he’s 15.

Of course, Litton also plays basketball.  He started at center in all but a handful of games for a Wildcat team that advanced to the 6A regional final before losing to eventual state finalist Dr. Phillips.

Amazingly, the amount of hours spent at QB camps and personal training programs Chase has attended adds up to exactly zero.  His father has worked with him on dropbacks, but not much else, he humbly claims.  Jeff Litton was a signal-caller himself, first at Seminole High in Sanford, and then briefly at the University of Sioux Falls.  Sure, Chase started at the Winter Springs Pop Warner flag football league when he was five years old and has had countless coaches since, but it is what he has learned from his father and brothers that has served him in the heat of battle.

 

Jeff Litton is father to four boys.  He seems a matter of fact, no-nonsense type.  He is the man that never misses a day of work, and expects the same commitment to the task at hand of his sons.  They are, in order of youngest to oldest: Chase, Zachery, Joshua and Shawn.  Their mother, Lisa, is clearly a source of their ultra competitive gene as well.  She can be seen pleading, cheering, and encouraging the Wharton basketball team at courtside while serving as their videographer.

Three older brothers, who are accomplished athletes in their own right, have fostered an encompassing competitive spirit in Chase. Is there any greater lesson in the fruits of winning and losing than having to compete for time in the shower?  How about traveling to Indianapolis to watch Shawn, now a senior guard with Butler University, and his upstart Bulldogs battle storied Duke for a NCAA National Championship a year ago?  What about Zach, forcing Chase to use only his left hand during one-on-one games?  Josh created a game where he would stand Chase 20 yards behind and they would throw the ball as far as they could and advance to that spot with the object being to never let his younger brother catch up to him.  These were not calculated events with the goal of making Chase a superstar QB, it was just brothers being brothers.  The close family is his identity.  He told me that he talks to his brothers every day.

The Litton family name is woven into Wharton’s short sports history.  Until A.J. Astroth eclipsed his mark this year, Shawn was the all-time leading scorer for Wharton basketball.  Josh runs thebluecrew.net, a website dedicated to all things Wildcat basketball.  Jeff’s employer is a prominent paid endorser of Wharton athletics.  This might lead Chase to heap pressure upon himself to live up to some pre-determined expectations, but he denies that.  “What’s expected of me is what’s expected of everyone else: get the job done.”

 

Truthfully, not much is expected from a young Wharton team in 2011.  The Wildcats are a team that will rely on the growth of a bevy of underclassmen that logged significant playing time last year.  Rising junior cornerback Vernon Hargreaves will lead the defense, and this coming fall he will have a chance to come over to the other side of the ball and use his speed to impact the offense too.

The opening game for Wharton according to a tentative 2011 schedule finds them hosting King and their Big County Preps top-rated senior quarterback Greg Windham. Both will attend the Bright House Sports Network IGNITE Elite Combine on March 26 at Skyway Park.  Litton said he watched Windham at a recent team Tampa 7-on-7 practice.  “Watching him throw, I have a lot of stuff to improve and work on.”

It may not matter the success Wharton has as a team.  Litton is already a hot commodity.  Florida State was the first to contact the Littons, most likely because of his AAU basketball travels.  The University of South Florida and Miami have also invited him to attend their football games and camps.  In fact, I bumped into Chase last fall after the USF-FAU game as I walked out of the stadium media room.  The Manning Passing Academy (yes those two brothers that both have Super Bowl rings) has sent numerous requests for Chase to attend their skills camp.

Inevitably, there will be many more articles written about Chase Litton.  He may barely remember that rainy night in Seffner over the next few years as the chaos of the recruiting process engulfs him.  But that handful of plays introduced Chase to a destiny.  He’ll pursue that destiny with a youthful joy.  He’ll conquer it with a conscious knowledge that if he can beat his brothers in the backyard battles, what other competition can be that hard?

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A sixth generation Floridian, the author fell for football watching the expansion Tampa Bay Buccaneers break his little heart repeatedly before finally winning: first a single game in 1977 and then the Super Bowl in 2003.

Follow Mark Chisholm on twitter.com – @MarkSharkBCP    His most recent tweets are found in a box to the right of this column.      E-mail: chisholm@bigcountypreps.com