JAY – Football fans will be on pins and needles this weekend waiting to find out if Matt Cassel can go from carrying Tom Brady’s water to leading the New England Patriots to victory.

Not so long ago, Zach Bonnevie carried water for Jay quarterback Austin Clark. Last week, he had to fill Clark’s shoes.

Jay wasn’t faced with losing Clark for the season like the Patriots are with Brady. The junior will be back for Friday night’s game against Dirigo. But the Tigers didn’t find out until two days before last Friday’s opener that Clark wouldn’t be available due to an infected cut on his leg. Jay’s coach and Zach’s father, Mark Bonnevie, told Zach he would be the starter, giving Zach just one day of live practice to prepare for his varsity football debut.

“I was a little nervous, but I knew I’d have to step it up,” Bonnevie said. “(Coach Bonnevie) just told me to play how he knows I can play. I just didn’t want to make mistakes.”

Jay made few changes to the playbook. Outside of some running plays the Tigers like to have Clark run, they stuck with the spread offense with Zach working out of the shotgun.

“I told him he had the easiest job on the field,” Mark Bonnevie said. “All he had to do was hand it off.”

The Tigers did rely heavily on a productive run game led by Miles Hutchinson, Max Couture and Jordan DeMillo. But Bonnevie had more to do than hand it off.

The first snap sailed over his head, and he hustled back to cover it up, providing Mark Bonnevie with a moment only fathers who coach their sons could understand. Zach attempted 11 passes and completed a number of shovel passes, one of which turned into a crucial touchdown in the Tigers’ 20-7 win over Yarmouth. He threw just one interception.

Mark Bonnevie’s biggest concern going into the game was Zach’s timing with the offense. The Tigers use a lot of motion and underneath hand-offs and shovel passes involving the man in motion, so just getting the timing down for taking the snap was critical.

Unfortunately, Zach had had only limited experience with the offense. He didn’t start at quarterback in middle school until the last game of last season and Mark Bonnevie estimated that his son had taken only 25 snaps with the starting offense in preseason.

Getting backup quarterbacks any experience, whether it’s in practice or a game, is difficult. Backups, particularly at smaller schools, usually start at another position. Most schools groom underclassmen for backup duty and a future starting role by having them start at QB for the junior varsity. That gives them experience running the offense, but their practice time with the varsity starters is usually limited. They are often relegated to running the scout team, a group of second-string players who simulates an upcoming opponent during practice each week.

“We try to get them as many snaps in practice as we can, but usually it’s not more than 15 or 20 during the week,” Mark Bonnevie said.

“There are just so many snaps in a high school practice. It’s not like a college or a pro team,” Mt. Blue coach Gary Parlin said. “You’ve got to give the majority of the snaps to your starter.”

Parlin knows firsthand what a precarious situation that can put teams in. Earlier in the decade, he lost his starting quarterback to an injury at various points in the season for three straight years.

In the 2000 preseason, incumbent Marcus Corey broke his hand, forcing his junior understudy, Foster Oakley, to step in for most of the season until Corey returned. Oakley resumed the starting role for his senior year, then broke a leg in the last game of the regular season. Chelsea Allen replaced him in the playoffs and lasted the first four games of the next season before breaking his wrist, giving way to his backup, Garrett Lake.

Parlin said he learned from that experience that he’d rather lose a starting QB in preseason than just before the playoffs, but that was because he usually had a well-seasoned junior waiting in the wings to take over the starting job. Many teams aren’t so fortunate, and coaches face some difficult dilemmas balancing having a competent backup and grooming future varsity quarterbacks.

Parlin’s philosophy has been to prepare his quarterbacks for the pressure of Friday night football by having them start on defense as underclassmen before they assume the starting QB role. But that can conflict with the need to get them reps under center.

“If we have a kid that starts on defense, we really hate to play him in the JV game because we’re doing game-planning on Monday. Actually what we did a couple of years was we just played them in the home JV games so they could be there for part of the (varsity) prep,” he said. “But it’s hard to take a year off from playing a position and come back and play well the next year.”

It’s a difficult transition no matter who steps in and when. Zach Bonnevie learned that perhaps the most important thing for the backup quarterback to have when his opportunity comes, besides a good grip of the playbook, is the support of his teammates.

“The great thing is the other players were behind him from the start, and Austin was there ready to help him whenever he needed it,” Mark Bonnevie said.

“I tried to be on the sidelines for him, talk to him in between (possessions),” said Clark, who was the Tigers’ backup QB his freshman year. “I’d see how things were going and how he felt. Obviously, after his first snap, he was all right.”

“He made some freshman mistakes,” the mentor added, “but overall he did very well stepping into a very tough position in the season-opener at home. That’s a lot of pressure.”