Matthew Goldyn — Quarterback, Class of 2029 — Shadow Ridge High School, Las Vegas, Nevada
Matthew Goldyn knows exactly what the book on him says. He wrote it down himself.
“One of those challenges is my height,” the Class of 2029 quarterback said. “I’m only 5’10”, so I’ll be a shorter quarterback.”
Then he described the plan, and the plan is not about growing.
“One way I’m overcoming that is getting faster, stronger, and being able to read a defense better than anybody ever could — depicting what they’re going to do in under a second.”
Under a second. That is an oddly specific number for a sophomore to put on a mental skill, and it is the most revealing thing in his questionnaire. He is not trying to be a taller quarterback. He is trying to be an earlier one.
He came to football late and sideways. Goldyn played baseball his whole life and only picked up football about five years ago, on the theory that he might be good at it.
“I loved watching the sport and playing for fun,” he said.
Then, freshman year, he tore his ACL and missed his entire first season of tackle football.
He does not dress that up either. “That was a lot of hard work to come back from,” he said, and moves on — which is a familiar move for anyone who has actually done an ACL rehab. It is nine to twelve months of unglamorous, repetitive work with no audience, performed by a kid who had barely gotten to play the sport he was rehabbing for.
What he enjoys about the position tells you how he got through it.
“What I enjoy most about playing quarterback is the hard work and dedication you need to play the position,” Goldyn said, “as well as the mental and physical challenges you face both on and off the field.”
And then, unprompted: “I also love being a leader — not just on the field and in the weight room, but off the field during community service and things like that.”
When he breaks down what the position requires, he does it like a study guide, mental side first: reading a defense, knowing who will come open and when, changing reads quickly based on what he is given. The physical list comes second — strong core and legs, overall fitness, the ability to run.
His two favorite quarterbacks are picked for reasons that are almost transparent about his own situation. Drew Brees, because Brees was listed at six feet and still put the ball on a line with precision. And Bo Nix, for the part that had nothing to do with throwing.
“Because of the adversity he faced,” Goldyn said. “Being run out of town at Auburn, finding a home in Oregon, and performing so well there.”
He trains with Coach Womack, who he describes without hedging as the best quarterback coach in Nevada. Womack is also the third name on a list Goldyn keeps of coaches who changed his career, and he can recite what each one taught him.
Coach Anderson, his baseball coach growing up: life is tough and you will not always get what you want from it, but the heart you put into the game is how results come.
Coach Johnson, his first real football coach: the work you do off the field when nobody is watching is what shows up on the field, and the people who skip it do not show up in the big games.
Coach Womack: that even as a smaller quarterback, he has the attributes — he just has to put in the work now.
Three coaches, three lessons, all of them about effort rather than talent. He has been told the same thing from three directions, and at some point a player either believes it or does not.
Goldyn appears to have believed it. His team sits at 6-0, and his stated short-term goal is the simplest one in this entire questionnaire: finish 9-0. Keep playing the way he is playing. Get stronger and faster.
Longer term, it is the mental and physical sides again, plus leadership, plus one line that is the actual point of everything above it.
“Get ready to fight for the starting job on varsity.”
He is a converted baseball player, a year of tackle football down to an ACL, and three inches shorter than the list says a quarterback should be. He has spent that entire time getting ready for a fight he has not had yet.
Building the Résumé: What an Upgrade Adds This Season
Matthew’s whole plan runs on getting in front of people early. He wants to read defenses faster than anyone, and he wants to be ready when the varsity job opens up. A Quarterback Magazine membership upgrade applies the same principle to the part he cannot control from inside a helmet — whether anyone outside Las Vegas knows what he has been doing at 6-0.
An upgrade puts custom QB Magazine graphics in his hands: designed pieces built around his name, his number, and Shadow Ridge, ready to go out the night of a performance rather than a screenshot of a stat sheet. For a sophomore who is going to be evaluated partly on how he presents himself, material that looks like it came from a publication does quiet work every time it goes out.
It also changes who sees it. When Quarterback Magazine shares an athlete’s feature and graphics across its platforms, the audience is not the one Matthew already has. His followers are classmates, teammates, and people around Las Vegas who were at the games. Ours is trainers, camp directors, and college staffs who have never heard the name — which matters more than usual for a quarterback whose measurables will get him overlooked by anyone working off a list instead of film.
The value is in the repetition. One graphic is a good Friday. A published feature, graphics through a 9-0 run, and a profile that keeps growing become a body of work — so that when a coach hears “Matthew Goldyn” during his junior evaluation, it is the sixth or seventh time rather than the first. Class of 2029 still has runway, and runway is worth the most to players who use it before they need it.
And it lasts. Seasons close, film gets replaced, undefeated records become a line in an old schedule. What gets published stays published. Years from now, the record of a converted baseball player who lost a year to an ACL, decided the answer to being 5’10” was to see everything a second sooner, and went out to fight for a varsity job anyway will still be there — in his own words, with all three of his coaches named in it.
More info: quarterbackmagazine.com/memberships