Bill Ryan/The Gazette Ian Fisher, a senior at Brunswick High School, planned to sign his letter-of-intent to attend James Madison University on Wednesday.

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Brunswick High School football coach Patt Foster held a team meeting the night he arrived to town in early August 2008. He had just been hired, and coming from Georgia, he didn't know much about his new players.

After the meeting, he saw a 6-foot-4, 230-pound kid and sized him up as a “good-looking senior.” Then, the player introduced himself.

Ian Fisher. Freshman. Quarterback.

The position was a bit of a fib. Fisher had quarterbacked his elementary school flag team, but since then, he'd played offensive and defensive line due to leagues' weight restrictions for backfield players. Knowing he could play quarterback in high school helped get him through those seasons, so he didn't necessarily want his coach to know his positional background, fearing he'd get sent back to the line.

Fisher even followed up with an email reiterating how much he wanted to play quarterback.

Little did Fisher know his new coach preferred bigger quarterbacks and didn't automatically see Fisher's build and pigeonhole him to the line.

“He was an NFL-sized quarterback as a ninth-grader,” Foster said.

Foster's vision and Fisher's hard work paid off. Now 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds, Fisher planned to sign with James Madison on Wednesday (after The Gazette's deadline).

North Carolina State, Virginia, Temple and Duke offered Fisher scholarships to play tight end, Foster said he is convinced Fisher could have drawn quarterback offers from FBS programs had Fisher waited to commit.

“Bigger schools, to me, feel like a business,” said Fisher, who passed for 2,682 yards and 19 touchdowns and ran for 711 yards and 11 touchdowns in 10 games last season. “You're in it with the mindset that you want to sign with the NFL. I want to go into it with the mindset that I want to have fun and go to school and enjoy my four years, and if something great happens after that, they're going to find me. Because going to a small school like I did at Brunswick, people always said, ‘Oh, you're not going to get found from there.'

“But I did.”

It didn't take Foster long to find Fisher had immense talent. When a receiver was injured, Fisher, who had earned the starting quarterback job on the freshman team, moved up to varsity to fill the spot. He spent most of those few weeks quarterbacking the scout team, rarely practicing at receiver, the position he played during games.

By midseason, he was the starting varsity quarterback. After Fisher's sophomore year, Foster told him he could “easily” throw for 3,000 yards in a season, and “he thought I was crazy.” As a junior, Fisher passed for 3,027 yards and 27 touchdowns.

“You see his size, and you see his arm strength, and you see those things that are jaw-dropping,” Foster said. “But people don't know the work that went into getting him there. It wasn't necessarily a natural. He had the ability, but he's worked himself to the point that he's at.

“He's relentless in film. He's relentless working on the field. The sky's the limit for him.”

A few days after his high school tenure ended in a playoff loss to Fort Hill, Fisher, out of boredom, watched the game. Shortly after that, he received his highlight film and watched that. Then, he re-watched last year's highlights.

As he saw his powerful throws and crafty runs, Fisher reflected.

“It wasn't just something that was just there for me to take,” Fisher said. “With all the adversity of how big I was and how slow I was and how slow my feet were and how bad my mechanics were — it was something that I had to really, really, really, really, really work for it. After it was all done, going back and thinking about how hard I worked and how much everything paid off, I was just grateful for everything that happened.”

dfeldman@gazette.net

Signing day

Here are the Frederick County region high school athletes who signed National Letters of Intent on Wednesday:

Colton Kmetz, Urbana, Kent State, football

Molly Stuart, Urbana, Shippensburg , field hockey

Chris DiSciullo, Urbana, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, golf

James Jaworski , Urbana, Belmont Abbey, golf

Micheal Spahr, Urbana, Shepherd, football

Ian Fisher, Brunswick, James Madison, football

Carlee Dumars, Middletown, Slippery Rock, field hockey

Ben Lewis, Middletown, Syracuse, football

Courtney Luther, Frederick, Peiffer, lacrosse

Brady Stup, Tuscarora, Towson, football

Randy Baugher, Tuscarora, Glenville State, baseball

Logan Jones, Tuscarora, Goldey Beacom, cross country

Rachel Watkins, Tuscarora, James Madison, track

Ryan Patrick, South Carroll, Shepherd, football

Nathan Hairston, Gov. Thomas Johnson, Temple, football

Avon Davey, Gov. Thomas Johnson, William and Mary, football

Hassan Omar, Gov. Thomas Johnson, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, cross country

Tara Woelfel, Catoctin, Gardner-Webb, soccer

Joe Riddle, Linganore, Maryland, football

Tyler Thompson, Linganore, Monmouth, football

Keith Kluetz, Linganore, Monmouth, football

Kyle Jennings, Linganore, Bryant, football

Nick Lucian, Linganore, Seton Hill, football

Anthony Lucian, Linganore, Robert Morris, football

C.J. Sanders, Linganore, Fairmont State, football