A Cougar quarterback named Gesser is going to Husky Stadium.
No, this isn’t a flashback to the 1999 or 2001 Apple Cup game featuring then-Washington State quarterback Jason Gesser.
Instead, Seton Catholic junior quarterback Kolten Gesser, his eldest son, and the No. 2 seed Cougars are off to Seattle’s Husky Stadium for Friday’s Class 1A state football championship game against No. 1 Royal, a clash of two undefeated teams who met in last year’s state semifinals.
For Seton Catholic to fulfill a season-long goal of reaching the program’s first state title game, Kolten Gesser has shined as the conductor of a Cougars team averaging 46 points through 12 games. The third-year starting QB has thrown for 2,351 passing yards with 41 touchdowns and just one interception.
“For all these guys on this team, they’re making my job really easy because the defense is getting the ball back in our hands and our O-line is giving me plenty of time. I’m just getting the ball in playmakers’ hands,” Kolten Gesser said.
Gesser has become a student of the game in the process, diligently watching game film, learning how to read and anticipate opposing defenses while having the confidence to put the ball on the money for his receivers. To break it all down, often the first person in Gesser’s ear walking off the field is his dad, Seton Catholic’s associate head coach and offensive coordinator.
“He’s put in so much work, off the field as well as on the field, and doing all the right things that, when you see the rewards start coming from it, you feel very proud of him and very excited for him,” Jason Gesser said. “To be out here firsthand, helping him along the way and seeing him go out there just thriving and really kind of just coming into his own, words can’t describe it as a dad.”
Kolten Gesser and his teammates insist Friday’s state championship tilt at the 70,000-seat stadium is just another game in a long season, but it’s a moment many kids dream of growing up playing the sport.
In Gesser’s case, the backdrop for those early memories were snow-covered fields in Pullman playing tackle football during elementary school recess, plus flag football games in the fall, often during daytime hours because most fields didn’t have lights.
As the son of a former collegiate and professional quarterback, perhaps it was a given Kolten Gesser would follow in his father’s footsteps, though he said he gravitated to the sport naturally.
He had an obvious talent for throwing the ball, and he learned early how much he enjoyed the chess match in sports, whether he was pitching a baseball game, or playing quarterback trying to deceive a defense. That aspect has been especially fun for Gesser and the Cougars this season.
“With our O-line giving us a lot of time, we can actually get into progressions and reads, moving guys over and figuring out how to read defenses and kind of play games with them,” Gesser said. “That’s been super fun for me, learning that stuff, because I love the mental side of the sport.”
Tapping into his dad’s football knowledge has also been a huge help. Jason Gesser said he tried to gradually introduce concepts to Kolten Gesser when he was younger. By the time he reached middle school and the family moved to Clark County, it was common for the two to be playing Madden or watching a game on TV when his dad would pause it to point out a detail.
“You see how this corner is playing this? Or you see how this safety is playing that?” Jason Gesser explained. “That’s where we kind of started it, and then really over these last two years, he’s just excelled. I’ll be up late at night watching film, he’ll be downstairs and I’ll text him, ‘hey, you still up?’
“He’ll be like, ‘yeah, I’m doing homework.’ And I’ll pop down for 5, 10 minutes and I’ll go through some things that I’m seeing or, ‘hey, here’s how they’re playing, here’s how we gotta attack this.’ He’s constantly getting things.”
Father and son share a bond over football, and as offensive coordinator and quarterback in the same household. Though the two are in sync most of the time, Kolten Gesser said understanding how his dad communicates helps a lot, which has led to a familiar saying in their house.
“I have to listen to what he’s saying, not how he’s saying it,” Kolten Gesser said. “He’s very nitpicky and likes to fix things right away when something is broken, so trying to have that patience with him, and then he has to have the patience with me because I’m the same way.”
Some of it comes with the territory of being a coach’s son.
“They’re always giving me crap at home — ‘listen to what he says, not how he says it,’ ” Jason Gesser said. “The thing is, like, whenever you’re the coach of your kid (and) your kid is the quarterback, you’ve gotta be sensitive, because everybody thinks, oh, it’s the coach’s kid. I’m always harder on him than anybody else, and he’s hard on himself already.”
Kolten Gesser first grabbed the reins as Seton Catholic’s starting quarterback just two games into his freshman season after teammate Joe Callerame suffered an injury. The move eventually paved the way for Callerame, this year’s Trico League MVP, to carve out a unique role as a multifaceted skill player.
Meanwhile, Gesser and a youthful Seton squad took their lumps that fall 2022 season, going 5-5 and falling to Montesano in a Week 10 playoff game.
Then came last year’s surprise state playoff run to the semifinals with games at King’s, Cashmere and lastly, Royal, which went on to win the state title. Still young, albeit immensely talented, the Cougars started believing in themselves even more.
“The more we won games, the more we realized how good we can be,” Kolten Gesser said. “The more it kind of flipped to, we know we’re going to win, even when we’re down, like, we know we can find a way to win the game.”
Led by a quarterback who exudes that confidence, the Cougars are in good hands.
“More than anything, he just loves to compete. He’s a frickin’ competitor,” Jason Gesser said. “That’s the fun part of seeing him, whether he’s on that day or not, he’s going to compete.”
