Test is working for GHS’s starting quarterback position

July 3, 2012

Jacob Test and Guymon High School head football coach Bryan Ballard on the GHS football field. Test, who saw some playing time as a backup quarterback as a freshman last year, hopes to earn the starting quarterback position this fall. Staff photo/John Plestina

One of the most promising underclassmen in Oklahoma as a freshman last year, sophomore Jacob Test is now vying for the starting quarterback position on the Tiger varsity, a position he hopes to hold for the next three years he will be at Guymon High School.
Test, 15, has excelled on the field from the time he began playing football in a Kids Inc. program when he was in the fourth grade through his freshman year at GHS where he started several junior varsity games and was the backup quarterback to Dakota Harris in a few varsity games. He was also a kicker last year. Test played at quarterback for most of the last varsity game of the 2011 season.
“I’ve only come across three kids that were ready to play (at the varsity level) as freshmen,” said GHS head coach Bryan Ballard.
Starting his 19th season coaching high school football, Ballard will begin his second season at the helm for the Tigers. Most of his career was in Texas.
“Playing eighth grade football to varsity football is a huge jump not only physically but mentally. The plays are the same as you move up,” he said, and explained that the plays also become more detailed and the game becomes far more physically and mentally demanding at higher levels of play.
“Last season was a very big physical and mental change, but it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it,” Test said.
Test and Hooker’s Joe Bean were the only two players from Panhandle schools that were invited to participate in both the National Underclassmen Combine in Yukon in late May and the NUC Ultimate 100 in Dallas, Texas, in June. The pair are friends. Test and Bean emerged from the NUC in Yukon as top college prospects. Bean, a senior this fall and two years older than Test, has been offered several scholarships from major universities.
 NUC is the longest running event of its kind for Oklahoma high school underclassmen, and is said to be the nation’s most respected high school combine and football camp.
At the combine in Yukon, Test qualified in the 40-yard dash, agility shuttle, vertical jump, broad jump, bench press, 1-on-1 and 3-on-3 drills. He also played 7-on-7 at the combine.
“I did great with that,” Test said.
The trip to Dallas was Test’s first trip to a large metropolitan area. He has lived in Guymon all of his life.
“When we got to Dallas, I was playing on my phone and when I looked up, it (the city) just shot up in front of me,” Test said.
“We got to the field the next day and I calmed down a lot,” he said.
He met football players from schools in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. There also were several college coaches at the NUC.
“I learned a lot. It wasn’t just a testing combine. It was a combine and camp put together. I learned new throwing techniques,” Test said.
He has participated in 20 summer football camps since he started playing Kids Inc football as a fourth-grader.
Test recently attended the Air It Out and West Texas camps, both held at West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas.
“I’m proud of him. He’s working hard. He wants to be the starting quarterback at Guymon High School and he’s working hard to get that job,” Ballard said.
Test admits that playing in the NFL is a goal, but he did not say much about that option. Instead, he answered a question of where he sees himself in 10 years, at 25, by saying he wants to complete his college education and have a family by then.
As for a future in the NFL, he said, “I guess I could make it” with the necessary work to get there.