CONCORD – Christian Aguilar started at quarterback in a North Coast Section championship game last season, filling in for injured star Jaden Rashada, and led Pittsburg to its first section title in 30 years.
The opponent that night was Clayton Valley Charter.
The final score was 28-14.
“He was the main reason they won that game,” Clayton Valley coach Tim Murphy said this month. “The kid was as accurate as it got.”
Now the kid is on Murphy’s team.
A couple of weeks after the championship game, Aguilar, now a senior, moved and enrolled at Clayton Valley. He has been cleared to play at the Concord school because the transfer was a family move, Murphy and Aguilar said.
Aguilar is in a tight competition for playing time at Clayton Valley with the team’s backup last year, junior Mason Lovett. Pittsburg is still led by Rashada, a five-star senior who has committed to the University of Miami and remains on good terms with his former backup.
“Me and Rashada are really good friends to this day,” Aguilar said.
Given the quality of the programs separated by nine miles over Kirker Pass Road, it’s possible – perhaps even likely – that Pittsburg and Clayton Valley could meet again in the postseason.
In the NCS Division I championship game last season, Aguilar had a storybook night. He completed 21 of 27 passes for 276 yards and three touchdowns.
The following week, Rashada, who would later say he was “like 55-60 percent” from a hamstring injury, returned to the field for a regional game on the road against Liberty of Bakersfield. Pittsburg lost 35-7, an outcome that ended the Pirates’ season one victory from playing for a state title.
Aguilar finished the game against Liberty. He was 4 of 5 for 37 yards.
After winter break, the 6-foot-1, 170-pound Aguilar was a student at Clayton Valley.
“Showing up Day 1 was a whole another environment for me,” Aguilar said. “Talking to some of the players, we had some laughs and giggles. We had just played them and beat them. Now I obviously just transferred to that school, which is crazy. I didn’t really know nobody. It was a different environment, for sure.”
Aguilar said it took about a week for him to feel more at ease from the nerves he had when he stepped onto the campus.
“Day 1, me and coach Murph talked a lot,” Aguilar said. “The players brought me in early on and from there I’ve built a lot of friendly relationships with them.”
Aguilar showed last season that he can adapt quickly to change. He said he found out in the middle of the week that he — not Rashada — would most likely play in the title game against Clayton Valley.
“Any backup quarterback can just get thrown in,” Aguilar said.
After the transfer, he added, his new teammates told him that they had been preparing for Pittsburg’s QB1, not the backup who had thrown no more than 10 passes in any game that season.
“They saw me and thought for sure they had the game in the bag,” Aguilar said. “They were saying they didn’t see it coming, I guess you could say.”
In his postgame interview, Pittsburg coach Victor Galli said of Aguilar, “He’s a really good quarterback playing behind a really good quarterback. It’s nice to have someone like that as an insurance policy.”
Now he could be Clayton Valley’s QB1.
“He’s good, hasn’t missed a practice, has improved tremendously,” Murphy said. “Very coachable, great kid, his teammates love him. Completely reliable. I don’t have one negative thing to say about him. He’s a great kid, and he’s made our backup from last year, Mason Lovett, oh my God, that kid is a different kid. His work ethic, his commitment, his work on his own, going to camps. He’d have never done all this if it wasn’t for Christian.”
Both quarterbacks will need to make sure their arms are loose because Murphy said he plans to throw the ball “way more” than in previous seasons.
“I got out of double tight, partly because Christian came over and we have more receivers than normal,” Murphy said. “I wanted to try something new. I’ve been doing my offense for 30 years.”
Clayton Valley opens the season at home against Salinas on Aug. 26. It closes the regular season at home against De La Salle on Nov. 4.
Then maybe, just maybe, a postseason date against Pittsburg.
“That would be fun to play that game again,” Aguilar said. “Me and my friends have been talking about that at Clayton — how ironic that would be to play them.”
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