Wade Schaef
Wade Schaef may be the most interesting teenager at Coupeville High School.
I’m not joking. The kid is a dream come true for a sports writer.
Ask a few questions and deep, introspective quotes roll off of his tongue — or, at least, from his texting fingers — and I am impressed. Dang impressed.
Ask the junior wide receiver/corner about his strengths on the gridiron and he delivers like a pro.
“My strengths personally would have to be catching the ball. Which is good, since I’m a receiver,” Schaef said. “I’m pretty even-tempered too, so not much should be able to get under my skin on the field.
“I’m really agile while running, so I can adjust myself pretty well to make the QB look good,” he added. “I’m a pretty quick kid too, so I will be able to beat kids down field.
“My routes that I run are crisp and I would say just shy of perfect, making the defensive backs job hard to cover me,” he added. “I’m also a small kid, but still strong for my size.
Not that he doesn’t think he can’t fine-tune his game. The kid has his head screwed on the right way.
“I think I should work on everything that I’m asked to do, so that I am good all around, and since no one is perfect, it’s the logical thing to do,” Schaef said.
“As a player I want to unite my team, both on and off the field, make sure everyone has fun because that’s important,” he added. “Because when you have fun you are loose and ready to go, which makes everything easier.
“For a team, we all want to go undefeated and really show everyone what we can do. The Wolf program needs to be feared, unlike it has been, and we are all going to work our butts off and make that happen.”
A change in coaches can throw a team off, or fire them up, and the transition from Jay Silver (now head coach at Mount Vernon) to new top dog Tony Maggio, seems to fall into the latter category.
Schaef captured the conflicted emotions of many of the players, who had come to be close to their former coach, while also being thrilled that the job went to a popular choice already deep inside the program.
“Silver was a good coach and I was sad he had to go, but it had to be hard for him living in Mt. Vernon,” Schaef said. “The transition was real easy and relaxed since everyone but the freshmen knew Maggio as the line coach and had been with him for a bit.”
“Both Silver and Maggio operate in a way that is a lot alike,” he added. “They joke around and have fun but get on us too, if we need it. We don’t often need it, though, so that’s a good thing.”
A star on the baseball field as well, Schaef juggles sports, school, work at Kim’s Cafe, hanging out with buddies like fellow multi-sport athlete Carson Risner and dates with his girlfriend.
All while being thrifty, always a sign of a guy with brains.
“I usually hang out with a selective group of friends but that’s just because of transportation issues. I don’t want to waste the gas,” he said.
A fan of video games, weight training and history class, who hopes to attend college with plans of being a nutritionist or personal trainer, Schaef is the rare football stud who can admit to a softer side when it comes to his preference in movies.
“I love all movies, except for the horror genre. I’ve watched a few of those, but most just scare me too much,” Schaef said. “I really like movies about sports, or anything that is violent and has lots of action in it; comedies are really good too most the time.
“I’m a softy for romance movies too, they are just so touching.”
Coming from a guy (me) who has seen 13 Going on 30 too many times to admit, and really liked Confessions of a Shopaholic, all I can say is, good on you, Mr. Schaef. Good on you.
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