Karter Musgrove — Quarterback, Class of 2034 — Central Elementary School, Banning, California

Karter Musgrove was nine years old the day he found out he would be playing 11u.

There was no 9u or 10u team with the SoCal Bulls that year, so the decision was made for him. He remembers asking his dad the obvious question on the way in.

“I was nervous and was talking to my dad like, why?” the Class of 2034 quarterback said. “I had no choice but go up.”

He backed up at quarterback and started most of the season at safety, which meant a nine-year-old spent a full year being asked to tackle boys two years bigger than him. His own summary of that experience is one line long and it is the best line in his questionnaire: “Those boys can hit!!”

He also says everything turned out great. Both things are true, and a player who can hold them at the same time is usually worth watching.

Football came to him through the house. His dad played, then taught his older brother, and Karter picked it up sideways — watching the lessons meant for somebody else until he wanted them for himself. Five years in, the position chose itself.

“I like to continue to learn, take command of the field, show my God-given abilities and to be able to make great plays,” he said. “My teammates are who make me better, as I challenge them to get better also.”

Ask him what the job actually requires and he does not mention arm strength or footwork.

“You gotta have great command, respect and accountability for the position of QB,” he said. “The rest will follow.”

That is a 10-year-old describing leadership as a prerequisite rather than a reward, and it is consistent with the thing he says he is still working on. The hardest part of playing quarterback, by his own account, is not physical.

“Being able to have a short-term memory when bad plays are made, and to accept that every play will not always go my way,” he said. “I will make my mistakes but will grow and learn from them.”

He is not guessing at that. He learned it in a season where he was the smallest option on the field, getting hit by players who had a two-year head start.

The coaching list is long for someone his age. He trains with Coach Simba and Coach Ace, and he was quick to name Coach Tone and Coach Blizzy of the SoCal Yung Buccs — “they get on me every time,” he said, in the tone of someone who has figured out that this is the good kind of attention. He made a point of shouting out the Beaumont Cougars and the SoCal Bulls too, the programs that got him here.

The quarterback he studies is Jayden Daniels, who he describes as his cousin: “Very elusive, a winner, great vision, and always does it with a smile.”

The smile part matters to him. So does the next part, which is less about what he can already do than about who he is becoming around a new group of teammates.

“To be more vocal and to work more on building my relationship with my new team,” he said of what he wants next, before signing off with a line that reads exactly like a fourth grader who has decided he is not done being underestimated.

“It’s gonna be a fun year. Stay tuned.”

A note for Karter’s family

There is a version of Karter’s story that only exists if somebody writes it down. A nine-year-old playing 11u because there was no other team, lining up at safety against boys two years older, and deciding that was fine — that is a genuinely good story, and in five years nobody will remember it happened unless it lives somewhere permanent.

That is most of what a Quarterback Magazine membership upgrade does. It turns a season into a record.

The upgrade puts custom QB Magazine graphics in his hands — designed pieces built around his name, his number, and his team, the kind of thing that looks sharp on a feed and gives a young player something real to be proud of after a good weekend. For a Class of 2034 athlete, those graphics are also the beginning of a paper trail: a stack of professional-looking moments instead of phone photos scattered across a camera roll.

It changes who sees them, too. When Quarterback Magazine shares an athlete’s feature and graphics, the audience is not the same one Karter already has. His followers are family, teammates, and people around Banning who know him. Ours is full of trainers, coaches, camp directors, and other football families across the country who don’t yet.

And it compounds. One graphic is a nice weekend. A published feature, graphics through the season, and a profile that keeps growing year over year become a body of work — so that by the time it actually matters, the name has been in circulation for years rather than months. Class of 2034 is an enormous runway. Very few players get to start this early.

Most of all, it lasts. Seasons end and rosters change, but what gets published stays published. Years from now, the account of a nine-year-old who got moved up because there was nowhere else to put him — and who came out of it saying everything turned out great — will still be there, in his own words, with his coaches named in it.

More info: quarterbackmagazine.com/memberships