One of the most exhilarating moments in sports is when potential, whispered about behind the scenes, explodes into real-deal, right-here-right-now stardom.
For Aaron Fontes, that moment happened in about half a second and about four feet off the ground.
You’ve seen the play already. Watch it again, courtesy of the cameras sprinkled around the sidelines Saturday in Terre Haute, Indiana.
It’s garbage time – you can tell because backup quarterback Kris Brown is in the game, his big No. 12 visible as he turns towards the camera and slings the ball between the goalpost arms of a leaping Indiana State Sycamore. Fontes catches and turns downfield, one step, two steps, three steps, four. A defender closes for the tackle. And then Fontes just…disappears. Ascends. Levitates. Clears him without touching, his legs pedaling in midair like he’s riding an invisible hoverbike.
The defender leaps into space that’s suddenly empty, transformed in an instant into the star of a viral video, a corgi trying to jump off a dock or a tiny frog that turns into a hopeless pinwheel as soon as it leaves the ground. He wasn’t even going low. It doesn’t matter. One second he’s lining up a big hit on Fontes’ waist, perfect form. The next he’s feeling the breeze from Fontes’ cleats on the back of his neck.
The play isn’t even over – Fontes has enough hang time to turn his head in midair, spot another closing defender and spin off him and out of bounds as soon as he lands – but even before his feet touch the ground again, you can tell things have changed. Aaron Fontes is the same person he was five seconds ago. It’s just that people are looking at him differently.
It’s his seventh catch of the game. He finishes with eight, for 93 yards. Before this game, he had a total of four catches and 27 yards in his career.
Back in Missoula, there were plenty of Griz fans turning to their watching companions with a smirk and an I told you so. Fontes, listed at 6-1 and 172 pounds and bearing an uncanny resemblance to rapper (and former star basketball player!) The Game, has been a training camp standout each of the last two years, for obvious reasons – he’s really fast and he makes plays. The hype train really got rolling this spring, when Fontes cut behind the bench and back onto the field to prevent Dylan Simmons from a 100-yard pick-six in the Grizzlies’ spring game.
So for close observers, some of whom tabbed Fontes as a potential breakout star all the way back in fall camp last year, Saturday’s star turn was sweet validation, confirmation that they saw something special in him before the visionless masses.
Jaime Moreno, who coached Fontes in his senior year at Oxnard High School in California, has an even earlier claim.
Moreno watched Fontes grow up in Oxnard, a city of 200,000 on the California coast northwest of Los Angeles, following in the footsteps of his half-brother Jamal Smith, who played at Utah, Sacramento State and Dixie State.
It’s easy to hear the pride in Moreno’s voice when he talks about both his hometown and his former star player.
“When people say you’re from Oxnard around here, they’re like, oh, your kid’s a hard worker, he’s gonna put all his effort in. Nothing’s given to us,” Moreno said. “We know we have to earn everything.”
When talking about Fontes, Moreno rattled off all the bullet points common to high school coaches talking about their former players who have gone on to bigger things – great kid, hard worker, team leader. He remembered great plays that stuck in his memory, like the time Fontes ripped off a 99-yard kick return touchdown against Chaminade, a fancy LA private school that was heavily favored to beat the Oxnard Yellowjackets.
“The way he smoked those…I mean, there were guys that were D-I all around that team,” Moreno said (including current Griz DT Alex Gubner, who wasn’t on that team but did go to Chaminade). “And he smoked them all.”
Now, Fontes will get plenty of important opportunities with the Griz, who graduated Sammy Akem from last year’s team and haven’t found a locked-in second receiver across from Mitch Roberts. New quarterback Lucas Johnson is leading an up-tempo offense that, if it continues to look as good as it has, could make receivers into stars.
Of course, going for eight catches and 93 yards in an actual game probably lessened Fontes’ reputation in some ways. It’s difficult for training camp sensations to be as good on the field as they are in people’s minds before they ever take a snap, to measure up to dreams about what they could be – and the better Fontes plays, the more the expectations will rise.
There will be more ups and downs. But nothing about Aaron Fontes’ success will ever be surprising to Jaime Moreno – not even jumping clean over a defender as casually as you or I cross the street.
“He was a great track star, a great hurdler,” Moreno said. “Hurdling comes naturally to him. So when I saw that on Twitter, I was like, of course he’s going to do that.”
