West Albany quarterback, ultimate team player Michael Cale is ready to cap off his high school career with a bang
ALBANY, Ore. (BVM) — It’s 3rd and 6 with three minutes left in the game. The West Albany Bulldogs are down by four. Michael Cale rolls away from pressure. He has twin receivers to his left, the inside receiver running a short out route, while the outside receiver runs a straight go route to the endzone. Cale heaves it deep to his wideout, and the pass–catcher hauls it in for the go–ahead touchdown.
That’s the play. The play that has woken Cale up in the middle of the night more times than he can remember.
“There isn’t a time where I don’t complete the pass in my dreams,” Cale, the senior starting quarterback for West Albany High School, said. “Hopefully if that happens in a game, I’ll know what to do.”
Cale has been eager to step back out onto the football field for a somewhat normal football campaign. The Covid-19 pandemic forced his junior season to be pushed into spring 2021, as well as being shortened to only six games, as opposed to the usual 10–game season. With the pandemic and the shortened season also came a lack of fans and crowd noise, which made the game and the moment a lot more difficult for Cale than some others.
“The difference that it makes, having everyone in the stands making noise, you can’t make it up,” Cale, who noted that there were over 1,300 fans in attendance for his first senior season home game at West Albany against Beaverton, which he says is a lot for an Albany football game, said.
“With a big crowd, I heighten my focus to a whole different level within the game. Tuning out the crowd noise in my head allows me to better focus on what I need to do, play-by-play. It was so weird not playing with any sound, but I’m just glad we are back to normal.”
The starting QB is very relieved to be done with online school, for more reasons than just one.
“Getting up and getting ready for your day instead of slumping in front of a computer all day is totally different than what I was used to,” Cale, who also admits that he was not a fan of online school because it made him feel less productive, said. “Having an active day, then going to play a game is the ideal thing you want, versus feeling lazy and staring at a screen. The mental state that it put everyone through was rough, so I’m just glad to be getting back to normal.”
Now that his team is back on school grounds all the time, they are all more focused and way more prepared for game days than last year, which means a lot to Cale. He has always been a team–first guy, and it shows on and off the field.
“I’m always watching film throughout the week, trying my best to prepare for our next opponent,” Cale said.
End 3: West Albany 17, Canby 14.
Michael Cale scores on a 1-yd run to give West Albany the lead heading to the 4th.
— Alex Tam 譚汶材 (@alexctam)
Cale also mentions how he loves watching certain professional quarterbacks perfect their craft, and he name drops the infamous Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes as one of them. However, he wishes Mahomes would take after another NFL legend, some guy named Tom Brady, for one specific reason.
“I love how Tom Brady turns down bigger contracts from his teams in order for the team to be better around him,” Cale, who explains that certain quarterbacks such as Mahomes take up a lot of teams’ spending money with huge money deals, whereas Brady puts the team first and wants the money to be spread elsewhere, said. “That’s so awesome to me, because I’m a big team player, and I don’t want to be potentially dragging down my team when I could be helping them.”
Cale plans on going into law enforcement out of high school, however if he gets the chance to play football after high school, he will definitely take it.?
“My dream plan would be to play football at Western Oregon University, then follow that by entering law enforcement,” Cale said.
Cale loves the game and everything about it, but he knows that it could be coming to an end very soon, so he has a future planned when that day does come around.
