Friday’s game
What: Northmont (1-0) at Fairfield (1-0), 7 p.m.
Where: Fairfield Stadium, Ohio 4 and Stadium Drive, Fairfield
Last meeting: Fairfield won 39-21 in 2015
Football had a profound impact on Aaron Carmack last season, and he wasn’t even playing.
This is a big, strong guy who was Fairfield High School’s junior varsity quarterback as a sophomore. So why was he in the stands in 2015?
“My sister (Amber Flynn) played college basketball for Bowling Green,” Carmack said. “She’s always been pushing me to play basketball, so I decided to focus on basketball last year and see where that would take me.”
Where it took him was away from the Tribe football team. He watched every game and regretted his decision to not play.
So last spring, he went to Fairfield coach Jason Krause and asked for the chance to come back to the program. But it wasn’t automatically a done deal.
“Part of my feeling was, you took a year off from us. How do I know what kind of commitment you’re willing to bring back to the table?” Krause said. “I met with the captains and seniors and got their feelings on him coming back to the team, and they were all for it. They’re all friends, and they thought Aaron would be helpful to us.”
And so the road back began for the 6-foot-4, 250-pound Carmack, and it’s led him to the starting QB position. The senior threw for 247 yards and a touchdown in his first varsity start last weekend at Centerville, helping the Indians go 1-0 with a 13-6 victory.
“I went to every football game last year because all my friends are on the team and I had to support everything they did, but every game hurt a little bit more because I missed it so much,” Carmack said. “Honestly, I love football more than anything. Basketball is not as fun to me as football is.”
The Centerville game was not his varsity debut … he got in for a few plays at the end of a 56-0 rout of Princeton in 2014.
Carmack was locked in a preseason battle with sophomore Jeff Tyus for the quarterback job. Krause chose Carmack as the starter, but wasn’t totally sold on him as the team prepared to face the Elks.
The biggest reason was that Carmack struggled in the final scrimmage against Oak Hills.
“I was really nervous,” he said. “I just wasn’t very confident in myself. I didn’t trust myself to make plays. I had to get a lot better to play against Centerville.
“The difference was really the guys around me. They were telling me I’ve got this and I have no reason to be nervous. Honestly, without them, I don’t know how I would’ve done last Friday.”
Carmack completed 13 of 22 passes against CHS, hitting Chico Robinson for a 62-yard touchdown. Robinson, a junior, had four receptions for 118 yards.
“Aaron was kind of on a short leash,” Krause said. “If he came in and struggled, I was going to turn to Jeff Tyus quickly. But Aaron did everything we asked him to do and made some really smart decisions. He gave me no reason to want to move in another direction.”
Asked if he’s set any individual goals, Carmack said simply, “Just don’t mess up.”
He is certainly more of a thrower than a runner, much like Hunter Krause, last season’s starter and the program’s all-time leading passer.
“I was kind of worried that we might have to change the offense a little bit this year, but as Aaron gets more comfortable, I feel we can remain who we’ve been the last couple years,” Jason Krause said. “He can make the throws Hunter made. His pre-snap decision making is probably what I’ve seen the most improvement in.”
Carmack attended Our Lady of Grace Catholic School in Colerain Township before moving to Fairfield in the eighth grade. Had he stayed at Our Lady of Grace, he would’ve ended up at La Salle or St. Xavier.
“I love Fairfield,” Carmack said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
About the Author