Stewart eager to lead Cougars to strong finish this season


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PROVO — With the taste of a win fresh in their mouths, the Cougars will get back at it this weekend with an old Mountain West Conference foe in UNLV. At this week’s “BYU Football with Bronco Mendenhall,” coach Mendenhall said that the win in Tennessee gave his team a new outlook on the season and that they’re ready for whatever comes next.

“The attitude of the team even in the stretches where we were close, but not getting the victories, they were resilient and tough, but not much smiling going on,” Mendenhall said. “It just is more fun and it’s much more rewarding for myself as the head coach to see smiles because they’ve been working really, really hard … it just gave them the sense that this could be a really good team, and this could be a really good finish.”

Bad luck was a constant companion for the Cougars in October, starting with the loss of Taysom Hill and ending with a four-game losing streak. This week’s player guest was senior quarterback Christian Stewart, who stepped up in Hill’s stead and led the team through that difficult stretch.

“To me the ultimate evaluation for any leader at quarterback is how well does the team do under your leadership,” Mendenhall said. “Stew kind of inherited this thing mid-stride, mid-game, but to his credit, I think he’s really done well leading the team, and I’m anxious to see what he does down the stretch to help us.”

Stewart’s road to BYU was a long and winding one. After high school, he came to BYU as a preferred walk-on where he spend his freshman season. He returned home from his mission in Japan to learn that the Cougars had offered Taysom Hill a scholarship, and he decided he might be better off playing football down at Snow College. His second year at Snow, he led the team to an 11-1 season where it finished third nationally among D-2 schools.

After a great season at Snow College, Stewart decided to focus more on academics, and returned to BYU as an accounting major. While visiting his dad’s Sunday School class, a BYU coach approached him about coming back to the team, and from then on, he worked his way up the depth chart until he was given the opporuntiy to start this season.

“It’s definitely been an interesting season for me, one that I definitely didn’t anticipate,” Stewart said. “But I’ve worked my way to be prepared for the opportunity at hand. So I’m excited. I’ve really enjoyed it, and I’m excited for the potential that we have to finish out this season.”

Stewart said that before Hill went out in the Utah State game, his main goal was just to help the team in any way he could, including talking with Hill on the sidelines, and giving him a second perspective on coverage. Mendenhall says the camaraderie between the two quarterbacks is something not commonly seen between a backup and a starter.

“When I went to visit Taysom after his injury … one of the very first things he said was how much he appreciated Stew and his help this year,” Mendenhall said. “[Taysom] said, ‘rarely is a backup quarterback as loyal and as helpful and pulling for a starter’ as much as he felt. So that was one of the coolest compliments that I think I’ve heard. Stew is a great competitor, but also really selfless, which is a neat combination.”

Now in the homestretch of the season, Stewart says the team is ready to get back on the field and finish strong.

“I feel like we’re a confident team, and we’re really excited,” Stewart said. “We want to be back on the field. Getting that taste of winning, it only excites you and it makes me wanna play, get down on the field and get going. We don’t care who we’re playing; we don’t care what the weather is. We have four opportunities left this season, and for me in my career, and we want to make the most of them.“ Sydney Carlson is a KSL Sports Radio intern and producer at BYUtv Sports. You can follow her on Twitter @sydneykayc

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Sydney Carlson

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