Signal Mountain's Jack Teter hands off to Kaleb Menzel while playing East Hamilton earlier this season.For someone who never was supposed to play school sports, Jack Teter has built a pretty fair career as an athlete at Signal Mountain.
Now a two-year starter at quarterback and with a fourth straight season as a basketball starter on the horizon, Teter almost had his athletic career derailed before he reached middle school.
A bicycle accident almost ended all hopes. As a 9-year-old, he rode up on a curb and tried quickly to get off. The front tire hung and he was flipped forward and a handlebar knifed him, splitting his pancreas in half.
"I remember being in the hospital. They were going to try to sew my pancreas back together, and then they said, 'No surgery.' It was growing back together," he recalled.
Although there remained for a good while the question of his being able to run and jump, he obviously recovered and has blossomed this year as a left-handed passer in a program whose meat and potatoes always has been the running game.
At first glance the 6-foot-2, 225-pounder's numbers are anything but gaudy with 1,300 passing yards and just 125 attempts in 11 games. But this year alone he has 19 TD passes, and his only interception came after the ball bounced off the intended receiver's chest. Six of the TD strikes have come in the last two games.
"We've thrown a little more the last couple of weeks, and the loss to Notre Dame (in the second game) was a reality check for the team," Teter said. "I think we realized that we can't just go out and try to win a game early and that we have to work for it."
He is a quarterback who has made his coach happy, and numerous quarterbacks who've played for him from Lookout Valley to Lakevew-Fort Oglethorpe to Soddy-Daisy and now Signal Mountain will quickly attest to the fact that Bill Price is, at the very least, demanding.
"I'm so tough on quarterbacks, but Jack has done a great job and he has kept us out of turnover situations," Price said. "I'm on him so much about not making mistakes when he throws the ball, and he's handled that very well."
Teter shrugged when asked about playing for such a hard-nosed and old-school coach. A postgame comment last Friday in which he referred to his coach being stubborn proved that he has accepted and even embraced the relationship that has been forged over the last two seasons.
"He says what he has to say to get me to do what I'm supposed to do. It was tough last year, but I have gotten used to it," Teter said.
Price and Teter's teammates have watched the quarterback blossom into both a team leader and a solid threat.
"At the beginning of the year I thought he was careless with the ball," Price said. "In the last four weeks he has been concentrating and also throwing the ball to different people. He's so much better than most people realize -- 37 touchdowns and just three interceptions."
The Eagles play Friday at unbeaten Loudon.
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him at Twitter.com/wardgossett.