This is just the typical tale you expect to be reading at this point of the high school football season.
It’s about a senior in his first year of playing football who, at the start of the week of the section championship game, is asked out of the blue is asked via text message by one of his coaches if he’d like to try playing quarterback.
Turn the clock ahead a little and that senior football player is a grizzled veteran of two weeks at the position getting ready to be the starting quarterback in a state semifinal game at a $1 billion stadium where an NFL team plays its home games.
Okay, so maybe it’s not a typical tale at all, is it?
But that’s been the November journey for Jackson County Central’s Grant Freking after that text from assistant coach Rudy Voss, a former JCC quarterback himself.
And the next leg of the journey occurs when Freking will be at the helm of the Huskies’ offense when they play Kimball in a Class 2A semifinal game at 9 a.m. Friday at U.S. Bank Stadium.
How did he get here?
Four-star college recruit Roman Voss was injured three offensive plays into JCC’s quarterfinal game vs. Norwood Young America last Friday. He’d carried the ball twice in those three plays, gaining 96 yards including going 73 yards for a touchdown on the game’s first offensive play.
That meant that Freking, who saw some playing time at quarterback in the Section 3AA championship win over Pipestone, would take over the rest of the game vs. the Raiders.
“Coming into the game I did not expect to play that much quarterback,” Freking said. “I was nervous at first, but then I got comfortable and from there it was money.
“It’s just fun. My coaches and my teammates trust me. I got in the huddle and they’re just like ‘You got this and that just makes me feel so much more comfortable.”
Freking was 7-for-15 passing for 126 yards and two touchdowns, a 15-yarder to Ben Gallagher and a 23-yarder to Carson Pohlman.
With all due respect to the talented Roman Voss, he would have been hard pressed to make that TD pass to Pohlman as he is right-handed and Freking is left-handed.
“It was a check play,” Freking said of the connection. “I was supposed to read Ben Dahlin and then I looked to the swing because they were blitzing but the swing was covered so I was just scrambling.
“I saw Carson out of the corner of my eye, and I just threw it up there and then I got smacked. I don’t know how I completed it, but I did.”
That no-look pass impressed the hard to impress Wade Wacker, JCC’s offensive coordinator and the QB on Jackson High School’s 1985 state Class B champions. He had high praise for Freking as the team gathered on the field for its huddle immediately following the game.
Freking has played on a big stage in downtown Minneapolis before, albeit in basketball rather than football.
In the quarterfinals of last spring’s state boys basketball tournament he shared the team lead in scoring (coincidentally with Roman Voss) with 19 points in JCC’s quarterfinal game vs. Albany at Target Center.
So, what led him to giving football a try in his senior year?
“Rudy and Roman really talked me into it,” Freking said. “I wasn’t going to but they talked me into it. It’s been so much fun and I enjoy it so much. It was such a good decision.”