QB Cooley hopes to leave his mark
Waukesha South senior eyes playoffs
WAUKESHA – “Be phenomenal or be forgotten”
The phrase sticks with you. It is oh-so-appropriate.
Grayson Cooley has a graphic of the words set as the background on his Twitter page. You could call it his mission statement.
The Waukesha South senior got it from Eric Thomas, a motivational speaker who has lit a fire under masses of people. Cooley is a big fan and in his way he embodies the good vibrations and can-do mentality that have made Thomas an internet sensation and sought-after public speaker.
“He has a bunch of videos. What’s your purpose? What’s your why? That type of stuff,” Cooley said. “He said it in a speech. Be phenomenal or be forgotten. It’s up to you if you want to be either or.”
Cooley clearly checks in on the phenomenal side of that equation. The 6-foot, 178-pound quarterback is invested in the idea of helping revive one of the area’s longest-standing struggling programs.
South hasn’t been to the playoffs since 1999, which means it hasn’t finished .500 in the Classic 8 Conference in at least that many years. But with Cooley under center, the Blackshirts are creating a buzz that could be the spark for the program’s resurgence.
Cooley has completed 62 of 100 passes for an area-best 788 yards and six touchdowns. He also ranks seventh in the area with 495 rushing yards in 91 carries. No player in the state can
match his 1,283 yards of total offense.
“He’s a competitor first. Every play is full speed,” South coach A.J. Raebel said. “When he’s in between plays, he’ll goof and joke. … The other end of that is that if you’re not doing something right, he’ll get on you or if you take a play off he’ll get on you and he does it in a way that a coach would. It’s aggressive. It’s sharp. He doesn’t put up with it.”
For years South was a grind-it-out, run-first team. That changed slightly in former coach Dave Rusch’s final few seasons, a stretch in which Cooley’s older brother, Cannon, was the starting quarterback for three years. Raebel, an All-American linebacker at UW-Whitewater in 2006 and ‘07, had other ideas.
The Blackshirts run a spread-option attack coordinated by former Kettle Moraine head coach Darnell Wiltz. Last year the team averaged 199 yards and 17.4 points per game during a 1-9 campaign. This year South is averaging 448 yards and 21 points per contest.
Take away the stats from a blowout loss to Waukesha West in Week 2 and the Blackshirts’ averages go up to 518 yards and 28 yards per game.
“With this offense, every play is a RPO (run-pass option),” Cooley said. “Last game I ran 37 times and threw 38 times. Every play I can check to something. Every play I can run. I can switch plays.”
Cooley completed 27 of 37 passes for 352 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 180 yards and a touchdown in 38 carries in that game for his busiest and most productive performance of the season. He is given a lot of freedom with the offense. “As a quarterback it’s heaven,” Cooley said. “because the coach respects and trusts you to make the correct plays and he trusts his own coaching to let you do what you want to do. (The offense) makes the defense always wrong.”
The prolific attack has yet to produce a victory, but South (0-3) has been close. Missed opportunities in the red zone proved costly in a 42-28 loss to Oconomowoc in the season opener. Last week, the Blackshirts fell, 29-28, to Mukwonago in a game decided in the final minute when South’s two-point conversion failed.
Therein lies a challenge of being a Blackshirt. Despite Cooley’s talent – Raebel believes he has Division I college potential – turnarounds in football require a mass of people and they rarely come quickly, especially when you compete against the heavyweight programs of the Classic 8.
“How do we get kids to learn how to compete in games for four quarters when sometimes the scoreboard doesn’t actually look like we’re competing,” Raebel said. “We had to make sure the kids understood that as long as they’re getting better every single play, as long as they’re working as hard as they can every single play, we’re going to grow.”
Waukesha South, which plays at Waukesha North on Friday, was one of the area schools whose conference realignment request went unfulfilled, and so it will continue to play in a league where it has struggled in football. The school, however, has enjoyed success in other sports such as boys and girls swimming and diving, tennis, cross country and track and field.
Football might one day join the list, but even with arguably the league’s best quarterback in the fold, there is work to do. There are 51 players on the varsity. Raebel’s goal is to get that total to 100. Help might be on the way. There is a 35-man freshman class and a good crop of eighth-graders. There are other good quarterbacks at the lower levels, too.
That is the long-term goal. The plan this year is to continue to improve play by play and to keep giving defensive coordinators restless nights. Cooley’s goals are simple: “What I’ve said since my freshman year of high school is probably what your mom has probably said since the beginning: leave it better than you found it,” he said. “I think my goal, the team’s goal, the senior class’s goal, is to leave Waukesha South better than we found it.”