It’s the fall of 2002 and you are at the Monte Vista vs. San Ramon Valley football game. As the most anticipated game of the season, over 10,000 fans are packed in and around the Monte Vista football stadium. With just seconds left on the clock, everyone in the stands was looking at the one person who could take his team to victory against the San Ramon Valley Wolves. And that person was Kyle Wright.
But before Wright was the center of attention, he carried his ambitions and hopes for the future on his shoulders.
Growing up Wright was attracted to both baseball and football. He loved being active and was drawn to baseball early on, with aspirations to play in college, but after a few years, he added football to his list of goals.
“I told my mom on my seventh birthday that I wanted to play college football at Florida State University,” Wright said.
Determined to reach the goal of playing at the next level, Wright dedicated hours to training both physically and mentally. He was performing a minimum of 100 dropbacks each day. Wright’s level of dedication and motivation allowed him to reach unimaginable heights.
“I was kind of obsessed with being as good as I could be,” Wright said. “From a really early age I put in a lot of work along the way to get there.”
Wright has always enjoyed watching football games as he was both a San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Raiders (now Las Vegas Raiders) fan. It was these teams that he constantly drew inspiration from.
“I grew up in Southern California when the Raiders were there, and they had a player named Bo Jackson who was a childhood hero of mine,” Wright said.
When Wright entered high school, he continued his love for baseball, but scored major success in football as his varsity team’s quarterback. In his sophomore year, Wright moved from Napa to Danville where he was quick to earn a spot on Monte Vista’s team.
Although Wright was seen as a star on the football team, his focus was still on baseball which he had been playing at the varsity level since his freshman year.
In Wright’s junior year, his football career took off. Monte Vista had won the North Coast Section (NCS) championship title for the first time since 1987.
After the NCS win, it wasn’t too long before Wright started gaining not only local attention, but also state-level. Wright was recognized as one of the top quarterbacks in California, which scored him an invitation to the Nike Football Camp.
“[Nike scouts] travel around the country and kids get invited to come and showcase their skills,” Wright said.
With Wright performing well in these high level camps, he quickly began to gain national attention.
Towards the end of his junior year, Wright was still playing centerfield on the baseball team, but succumbed to an unfortunate injury that put his season to a halt.
While his baseball aspirations were derailed, his football career was booming. The summer before his senior year, Wright focused on one thing: football.
“That summer, I went to the Elite 11 [quarterback camp],” Wright said. “And I came out of it as the number one ranked high school quarterback in the country.”
With this ranking came an immense amount of curiosity as to where Wright was going to take his football career beyond the Mustang stadium.
“I was fortunate to kind of have had the opportunity to pretty much go wherever I wanted [for college],” Wright said.
Wright began receiving calls from college coaches across the country. By the end of his junior year, he had over 50 offers to play Division 1 football. It wasn’t an easy choice for Wright, so he decided to make a cross-country trip visiting schools from the University of Southern California to the University of Miami, and any big football schools in between. Throughout Wright’s cross-country trip, ESPN followed right behind as they waited to see what school the top prospect would choose.
Before Wright’s senior year, he planned on making his decision on where he would attend college to allow him to focus on his team rather than being bothered by the future. So with a packed stadium and reporters from the local news stations to ESPN, Wright stood on a podium at the Monte Vista track to announce his commitment to the University of Miami.
“At the time, Miami was the number one team in the country,” Wright said. “Miami had won the national championship the year before, and they ended up playing in the national championship the year I committed as well.”
Throughout Wright’s senior year season, his most anticipated game wasn’t the playoffs, nor the NCS championship. Rather, the entire town and team were anticipating the MV vs. SRV football game. While Wright was ranked the number one quarterback in the nation, SRV’s quarterback, Sam Keller, was also ranked in the top five. Not only that, but both teams had high records as MV was 9-0 and SRV was 8-1.
On the night of the SRV game, over 10,000 people packed the MV stadium. There were fans on all the bleachers, all around the field, and even on the hill behind the bleachers. The game was even broadcast nationally. The game was a high-scoring affair with both teams trading the lead multiple times. Late in the fourth quarter, SRV was ahead of Monte Vista by just a few points. With ten seconds left in the game, MV had the opportunity for one more play. Wright threw a touchdown at the last second leading to Monte Vista’s victory with a score of 46-44.
“In the way we won was just kind of stuff of high school legends, you know, of how we won, who we did it against, and how we did it,” Wright said. “People still to this day come up and want to talk to me about that game.”
After that victory, Monte Vista met the SRV team one more time at the NCS Championships. The game was held at the Oakland Coliseum, where the Raiders played at the time. From one monumental rivalry game to an even bigger one, Monte Vista pulled through with a score of 35-14.
With Wright ending his monumental season as the back-to-back NCS champion, he was awarded the Gatorade National High School Football Player of the Year award. This award automatically qualified him for the National High School Athlete of the Year award at the Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly (ESPYS), where he ended up runner-up to National Basketball Player of the Year, LeBron James.
“That friendship [with LeBron] carried over to college for a few years after we met at the ESPYS,” Wright said.
After his successful senior season, Wright played for the University of Miami Hurricanes where he unfortunately suffered an injury that slowed his career. After he graduated, he played for the Minnesota Vikings and then the San Francisco 49ers as a practice squad member.
While Wright still enjoys reminiscing about his days on the Mustang field, he has touched down at a new stage in life working at Insightly. But he still loves watching the game and enjoys seeing his daughter cheer at football games.
As Wright looks back on his time playing football at Monte Vista, he recognizes that the school’s success was not only because of him. In both his junior and senior years, the varsity football team had a perfect combination of coaching and players. Not only were his teammates highly skilled, as many ended up playing Division 1 football in college, but the coaching staff was as well.
“I think that the stars and the timing aligned for us, within all of those categories (players, coaching, friendships) that made Monte Vista in the early 2000s, a really special place to be,” Wright said.
