High school football Class 5A playoffs: Junior quarterback Brett Bemis matures under center

Brett Bemis hasn’t had the luxury other nonsenior Sycamore quarterbacks have had of late.

He hasn't been surrounded with senior receivers.He hasn't had a NCAA Division I prospect to throw
to.

But the junior quarterback and the passing gamehave been slowly earning the trust of coach Joe Ryan as the season has progressed. The Spartans head to Chicago to take on Westinghouse at 3:30 p.m.
today at Lane Tech Stadium in the first round of the Class 5A playoffs.

“It was a little tough at first, but the fact we had to overcome that difficulty, it’s going to make us stronger in the future,” Bemis said of the offense.

The Spartans (5-4) scored 170 points in the first five games of the season, but only 50 in the past four, including a 14-0 loss at Yorkville.  They needed a Week 9 win against Sterling to make the postseason, which they did with a 21-18 victory. The output was their highest since a 42-0 win at Ottawa on Sept. 27.

Bemis has been getting stronger as the year has progressed. His completion percentage was in the low 40s for most of the year, but he finished completing 52 of 101 passes for 761 yards, seven touchdowns and three interceptions.

Ryan said the accuracy was one of the biggest things the 6-foot-5 Bemis needs to work on going forward.

“We need to improve our completion percentage,” Ryan said. “It’s not the amount of yards, it’s the percentage of completions we get. And we need to raise that.”

Starting in Week 3, Ryan started relying on senior running back Dion Hooker, giving him more than 30 carries a game during a three-game stretch. Even as Ryan has started calling more passes, Hooker finished with 29 more carries than the next-closest back in the area despite missing the first two games of the season.

Ryan said he’s been impressed by the poise Bemis has showed.

“I know things don’t go the way you want to sometimes as a junior, but he doesn’t sulk, he doesn’t feel sorry for himself,” Ryan said. “He picks himself up and is ready for the next play. When you’re a junior, sometimes it just doesn’t go your way. But I think he bounces back from things that don’t go as well as he’d like.”

Two of Bemis’ top targets – Nick Niemann and Matt Coovert – are juniors, as well. Ryan said that’s another challenge in the development of a quarterback.

“When we had younger quarterbacks, we had older receivers or Division I receiver in Ben Niemann,” Ryan said. “That allowed that quarterback to throw it up to some older guys or a D-I guy. Well, we’re young at quarterback and we’re young at receiver. That’s a tough combination. But they’re growing. The timing is getting better and I like where we’re going with it.”

Given the offensive struggles the team went through late in the year, Bemis said it’s made them stronger and ready for a playoff run.

“There was definitely a stretch where it wasn’t doing as hot as we wanted,” Bemis said. “But it’s gotten a lot stronger through the last three weeks of the season, progressing. So I think we’re feeling good going into the playoffs.”