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Natale's Dominant Play At QB Sparking Hun's Sizzling Start
By Bill Alden
Dominic Natale fell in love with playing quarterback as an eight-year-old when he was introduced to the position at a football camp in Texas.
From the start, Natale relished the pressure surrounding the position, embracing the feeling that he had to act as a coach on the field.
Natale, a native of Warren, starred in youth leagues and two years ago was the starting QB for the Delbarton School freshman team.
Finding himself stuck in the Delbarton pecking order behind a more experienced signal caller, Natale played safety the last two seasons. Unable to endure the forced separation from the quarterback position, Natale transferred this year to the Hun School where he had the opportunity to start due to the graduation of star postgrad Chris Malleo.
Delbarton's loss had been Hun's gain as Natale has produced some incredibly polished QB play to help spark the Raiders to a sizzling 3-0 start.
Last Friday, Natale hit on 13-for-21 passes for 224 yards and four touchdowns as Hun posted a 36-29 win at Germantown Academy. Natale hit tight end Craig McGovern for scoring strikes of nine and 52 yards and hooked up with end Dan Sica on TD passes covering 15 and 21 yards.
A week earlier, Natale had thrown for 263 yards and four touchdowns to engineer a come-from-behind 41-19 win over Mercersburg.
While Natale experienced some initial jitters when he took his first varsity snaps in Hun's opener at Hill on September 13, he has relished just about every second of play since.
"I was a little nervous against Hill, I'd been waiting to start since my sophomore year," said Natale, who hit on 10-for-17 passes for 162 yards in Hun's 31-0 season-opening win.
"After my first play, everything was fine. I was seeing all my reads and doing fine. It's an awesome feeling to finally start."
Natale knows, however, that he has had plenty of support as he had gotten off to his hot start. "The line has been doing a great job, it has taken the pressure off me," added the 6'3, 185-pound junior who is a boarding student at Hun. "I was a little concerned at first about mixing with the postgrads but we all get along great. Things have meshed almost from day one of preseason."
Hun head coach Dave Dudeck is amazed at how quickly Natale has meshed his skills under fire. "He's much further along than I would've dreamed," said Dudeck, who is off to the first 3-0 start in his five year tenure at Hun.
"I will go as far to say that out of all the quarterbacks I have coached, he has the best footwork. His arm is very, very good. He has great instincts for the game. I think with Dom it's just comes down to him getting game experience."
In Dudeck's view, Natale will utilize that experience to end up as a major college quarterback.
"He's a Division 1-A quarterback, I feel real good about saying that," asserted Dudeck with a smile. "He needs to get a little bigger, hopefully he'll be around 200 pounds when it is all said and done. He's very, very motivated to play football. He's a student of the game.
In addition to his skills, Natale has a quiet aura about him that inspires confidence in his teammates. "He's a humble kid, he's not boisterous," said Dudeck, whose club is girding for what could be the Mid-Atlantic Prep League game of the year as it hosts undefeated archrival Lawrenceville this Saturday.
"He's fit in perfectly. You can tell that the kids really want to play with Dom. They look at him as one of the things that really makes the team go. He makes us a different team when he's at QB."
As Natale looks forward to this Saturday's showdown against the Big Red, he's confident in the team he'll be leading. "We have the talent," said Natale. "It's just a matter of putting it together as a team. Everybody has stepped up. We want to go 9-0."
And with Natale returning to the position he loves, Hun has a leader at the helm who may just help it achieve its goals.
