“I definitely missed that football feeling,” CJ Wallace said. “I think I finally got that drive for it again. ... You got to want to play football. You can’t just make yourself want to play, you got to want to get hit. You got to want that feeling. I think the more as I watched it, I’m like, ‘This is something I want to do.’”
Chris Wallace also spent a year away from the team, calling games alongside Marty Bannister as part of the Spectrum News 1 high school football coverage team. While his son was committing to winter workouts, Springfield coach Maurice Douglass was also looking for an offensive coordinator and Chris Wallace decided to rejoin the program.
“I was comfortable with (Spectrum), but I saw the opportunity to help coach my son and a lot of these other kids that are in my mentoring program,” Chris Wallace said.
The father-son duo have played a key role in the program’s success this fall. CJ Wallace has thrown for 2,082 yards and 21 touchdowns for the Wildcats, who won their first Greater Western Ohio Conference title since 2022. He threw for a season-high 318 yards and five TDs in last week’s 35-6 victory over Marysville in a Division I, Region 2 first round game.
Springfield (7-4) travels to Springboro for a Division I, Region 2 quarterfinal game on Friday night at CareFlight Field.
“I give a lot of credit to my teammates,” CJ said. “Everybody’s buying in right now, believing in me, taking practice real serious, treating it like a game, just really the mental side of it. I think everybody’s maturing a little bit now.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
The Wildcats have plenty of weapons in senior running back Deontre Long, senior receivers Sherrod Lay, Jr. and Daquan Shaw, as well as junior Braylon Keyes and freshman Timothy Thompson. Wallace threw TD passes to Lay, Shaw, Keyes and Thompson last week, while Long had 125 total yards in last week’s victory.
With so much talent, you have to find ways to get the ball in their hands, Chris Wallace said.
“You have to come up with creative ways to make sure everybody’s interested and having fun,” Chris Wallace said. “I think the system itself allows that, if you understand defenses, you take what they give you. Somebody’s always running so I think our guys realize that we don’t know who’s getting the ball, so everybody needs to run their route. There’s no such thing as decoys. It’s all dependent on what the defense is doing and that takes a lot of trust in each other and growth with each other. It’s been awesome to see them come together and continue to grow like that and we get better every day, which is pretty exciting.”
CJ Wallace “started off in the fire right away” against three perennial playoff teams in Winton Woods, Walsh Jesuit and Trotwood-Madison, his father said. All three of those programs are playing in regional quarterfinal games this weekend.
Chris Wallace is one of several coaches within the program who have coached their sons, including Douglass and defensive coordinator Conley Smoot. The hardest part of watching your son play quarterback is that it’s like playing ‘all over again,’ Wallace said.
“It’s kind of like you got to play all over again and go back through the disappointments and things when it doesn’t work right,” Chris Wallace said. “It’s almost like you’re doing it again. I feel like I played the game.”
Earlier this season, the Wildcats were driving to win the game late in the fourth quarter at Trotwood when CJ’s pass was tipped by a defensive lineman and intercepted. The Rams held on to win 16-13.
“Those situations really hurt,” Chris Wallace said. “They always hurt as offensive coordinator, but when you see your son hurting, when you see your son wanting to win so bad, but on the other hand, it still feels good when he has success, too.”
The Wildcats have had plenty of success since that game, which Douglass called the turning point of their season. Springfield finished the regular season 6-1 to claim the conference title.
“I’m proud of (CJ’s) temperament, because let’s be honest, I don’t care what level, even in pee wee now and with the way social media is, a quarterback gets too much credit when he wins and gets too much credit when he loses,” Chris Wallace said. “It was important to see how he handled that. But like I said, he’s failed plenty of times to make him get where he’s at now, to be able to handle that ... Being able to compete and do what you got to do at the quarterback position and put your team in position to win week-in, week-out, it’s very commendable. I am so proud as a father and a coach.”
The key, CJ Wallace said, has been staying in the moment.
“I’m just trying to get better every game, just taking one step at a time, not looking at the next game and focus on the present,” CJ Wallace said.
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