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In what is fast becoming the “year of the quarterack” in the state of Washington, one player who came out of nowhere this past season was Mount Vernon QB Bennett Gibson and this year he hopes for even bigger and better things.
Unlike most successful quarterbacks, Gibson didn’t spend his early teen years attending camps, working on his mechanics, footwork and timing. He instead was a standout baseball player who finally took up the game of football once he hit high school.
“I had never even thrown a football before my freshman year, so it’s been pretty amazing,” Gibson told Northwest Elite Index recently. “Since I played catcher in baseball, that really helped my throwing motion and mechanics. You don’t want a long wind-up or anything like that and playing catcher, I had a shortened up compact throwing motion already.”
As a junior in 2011, Gibson lit up his opponents completing over 60% of his passes for 2,700 yards with 17 touchdowns and only seven interceptions, leading his team to a 7-4 record and the first round of the state playoffs. Even with that productivity the talented signal-caller knows he has a lot to work on and that will be his focus this offseason.
“I was talking to my coach (Jaxon Schweikert) about the Barton camps last year and this year I’m going to go to them,” Gibson said. “I really want to get my footwork better and to be better at reading defenses and I’ve talked about all those things with my coach.”
On the recruiting front, Gibson has already begun to receive letters from schools from out west including Washington State, Idaho, Pacific Lutheran and Stanford and he said the Cougars are the school sending him the most correspondence.
“I’ve actually been hearing from them a lot,” Gibson said. “I really like their new coach out there (Mike Leach) and they are definitely a school I’m interested in, but it’s so early, I’m not sure how serious it all is.”
With his impressive size and good speed, Gibson is an up-and-coming signal-caller to keep an eye on. He can throw well outside of the pocket as well as inside, and he’s strong enough to have defensive linemen and linebackers draped all over him. It will be fun to watch and see how he develops and how that translates to the field this fall.
