High school football preview: Senior year is homecoming season for Amherst's Cy Christensen

Cy Christensen decided to go home. Amherst may be a new school for the senior quarterback, but he's always lived in the community. And after spending three seasons chasing down records at Clearview, he will cap his career with the Comets. "I've lived in Amherst my whole life," Christensen said. "I was open-enrolled at Clearview. I have a ton of friends at Amherst. I've been around them forever and I felt that it was just time to come home to Amherst. There are a lot of great people here." Moving to the Southwestern Conference will be a step up in class. The schools are bigger and seven of them made the playoffs, including defending Division II state champion Avon — also the nine-time defending league champion. Clearview didn't play an SWC team during Christensen's three seasons. The last SWC team the Clippers faced was, oddly enough, Amherst in 2018. That was the last of five games played between the schools from 2011-18, with the Comets winning four. But Christensen has the luxury of preparing for that gauntlet with an experienced offensive line to protect him against an Amherst defense that returns eight players with starting experience. "Our defense is great," Christensen said. "We have a great defensive coordinator with a ton of experience. Every day at practice it's just a battle on both sides of the ball. We're just giving each other looks on both sides of the ball. You never know who's going to win that rep because we have a ton of good players on each side of the ball." Christensen was on track to break multiple school records had he remained at Clearview. In fact, he was probably just one or two games away from doing so. He finished his three years with 5,828 yards and 58 touchdowns, just shy of Roger Engle's records of 6,293 yards and 61 touchdowns. But if Christensen gets to 7,000 yards, he will be recognized on the OHSAA statewide leaderboard. Last season he completed 145 of 219 passes (66 percent) for 1,970 yards and 19 touchdowns to just five interceptions in 11 games. He also ran for 147 yards and a touchdown on 39 carries. "He's known all these guys forever," Amherst coach Tom Thome said. "David Dudziak, our starting slot and corner, Cy's dad and Dave's dad played high school and college ball together. They had been playing AAU basketball together. So in terms of making friends and gelling, Cy's been doing that his whole life. "He's a tremendous talent. Our system is a little bit different than Clearview's, but he's been doing a tremendous job. There are things he can do that are uncoachable." Amherst intends on designing more running plays for Christensen. Quarterback Cole Norris led the team in rushing with 1,259 yards and 15 touchdowns on 168 carries last year. It also will require Christensen to throw more intermediate routes, something he said was not a staple in the Clearview playbook, which had him push the ball downfield. Thome said Christensen has not backed down from the challenge, diving into the playbook from Day 1 and attacking the areas of his game he needed to elevate so he could thrive in Amherst's system. "We've played AAU since fifth grade and our dads grew up together," Dudziak said. "We've known each other for a long time. We've been throwing together since we were freshmen, so it wasn't hard at all to get our chemistry going. He didn't throw a lot of short routes at Clearview, but he came in here and got the timing down. He's a great guy to have, a great teammate and a great friend. He's very positive in the locker room." Contact Chris Sweeney at (440) 329-7135 or ctsports@chroniclet.com. Follow him @CSweeney1686 on X.