When surveying the numbers of the Claremont High School football team, it’s easy to get distracted by those other than in the win column.
After enduring a two-year stretch during which it won a total of two games, the Wolfpack has started its second consecutive season with four wins in its first five games. It’s the statistics compiled by quarterback Daniel Kessler and his receiving tandem of Tanner Kuramata and Aaron Dockery, however, that are much more fun to talk about.
Kessler, a three-year starter, is the second leading passer in a CIF-Southern Section that consists of 567 schools. The 6-foot-4, 220-pound senior has thrown for 1,513 yards — three less than Cerritos Gahr’s D.J. Lopez, according to maxpreps.com.
Kuramata and Dockery rank No. 1 and 2 in the Inland Valley in receiving yardage at 120 and 103 yards per game, respectively.
“We’ve been throwing the ball as well as anybody,” Claremont head coach Mike Collins said. “Daniel Kessler picked up where he left off last year and he’s even better this year. He’s stronger and more accurate.”
Kessler’s 16 touchdowns opposite five interceptions lead the CIF-SS. He is averaging a whopping 303 yards per game against a schedule that has hardly been filled with cupcakes.
Before Friday’s 56-0 shellacking of Ontario, Claremont knocked Rowland from its No. 1 ranking in the CIF-SS Southeast Division, handed a .500 Walnut team a 25-point loss and handily defeated a Cajon team that has won 18 games combined the past two seasons. In other words, there is some substance to those numbers.
Kuramata, the third-leading receiver in the CIF-SS, already has 598 yards and four touchdowns on 39 receptions. Dockery, whose 513 yards rank eighth in the CIF-SS, has five touchdowns and 27 receptions, giving the senior an average of 19 yards per catch.
It all adds up to 33.8 points per game for a Claremont team that boasted an identical record at this point last year before finishing the season with one win in its final five games.
Of course those last five games marched the Wolfpack through the Baseline League, which accounted for three of the four CIF semifinalists in the Central Division playoffs last year.
Claremont led Upland in the second half of the final game of the regular season, one that determined the Baseline League’s fourth-place team and eventual wild-card playoff selection. All Upland did was turn that playoff berth into the 2009 CIF championship.
It is a new-look Sierra League that now awaits Claremont this season.
“The group we had last season was close to doing some big things,” Collins said. “I thought we finished the year playing at our highest level. We just played the CIF champion in our last game. And played them to the end.”
