Michael Rudden — Quarterback, Class of 2030 — Jacobs High School (incoming), Algonquin, Illinois
In the fall of 2025, Michael Rudden broke his hand.
Three weeks out. Then he came back — not after it healed, but in a cast — and quarterbacked his team into the playoffs.
That is the whole story, and he tells it in a single sentence without a trace of drama: “I broke my hand in the fall of 2025 and was out for 3 weeks of my season and came back playing in a cast and getting my team to the playoffs.”
Anyone who has thrown a football knows what that costs. A cast changes your grip, your release point, your ball placement, and your confidence, usually in that order. Rudden played through all four adjustments during the only stretch of the season that counted, and did not mention any of it as a hardship. He mentioned it as what happened.
He is entering his fifth year in the sport, and the origin is the same one a lot of kids have.
“Watching college and NFL when I was younger and wanting to be like those players,” the Class of 2030 quarterback said.
What kept him at the position is less common. Ask him what he enjoys most about playing quarterback and the answer is not about the ball at all.
“I enjoy playing with my teammates and being a leader on the field,” Rudden said. “I like to help out my teammates when they don’t understand a play or are unsure what to do.”
That is a quarterback describing his job as making ten other people less confused — which is, in fairness, most of the job. It also lines up with how he defines the position: being a leader, being confident, being a team player, and being able to take criticism and stay coachable.
The last one is not an accident. Rudden has been working with the same quarterback coach since fifth grade — Sam Hohensee, known to everybody as Coach Ho.
“He has so much knowledge and experience, was always pushing me,” Rudden said, “and because of him I have succeeded as a quarterback.”
Four years with one voice, and the thing he credits is the pushing. That is the tell. Plenty of young players want a coach who tells them it looked good. The ones who last tend to want the opposite, and they figure it out early.
He has built out from there with camps: QB Universe in St. Louis, Next Level Rise and Fire, and Coach Ho’s own QB/WR camp. This summer he is scheduled to attend the Manning Passing Academy, which is a different tier of room to be in.
The quarterback he looks up to is Tom Brady, and the reasons he gives are leadership and love for the game — not the résumé, not the rings.
His proudest team moment came in seventh grade, when his team made it to the Super Bowl.
And his goals now are as unglamorous as everything else about him. Short term: be the starting quarterback at Jacobs High School. Long term: get stronger and become a more skilled quarterback.
No mention of stars, offers, or attention. Just a kid from Algonquin who already found out what he will play through, and who plans on being better next year than he was last year.
For the Rudden family
Michael played a stretch of last season with a cast on his throwing hand and got his team to the playoffs doing it. Outside of the people who were in those stands, almost nobody knows that happened — and in a few years, without a written record, it will be a story his family tells rather than something anyone can look up.
That is what an upgraded Quarterback Magazine membership is actually for: making sure the things a young player earns are recorded somewhere that outlasts the season.
The upgrade puts custom QB Magazine graphics in his hands — designed pieces built around his name, his number, and his program, made to look the way published football material looks. For a player about to walk into a high school building for the first time, having something professional with his name on it is a small but real way to arrive as somebody rather than as a freshman nobody has heard of.
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 Michael already has. His followers are teammates, classmates, and families around Algonquin. Ours is trainers, camp directors, and coaches across the country — the rooms he is starting to enter, like the Manning Passing Academy, and the ones after that.
The effect compounds. One graphic is a good weekend. A published feature, graphics through a season, and a profile that keeps growing turn into a body of work — so that when his name comes up during high school, it is not the first time anyone has encountered it. Class of 2030 leaves a lot of runway, and runway is worth the most to players who begin using it before anyone is asking.
And it lasts. Seasons end, teams change, film disappears into old phones. What gets published stays — the article, the graphics, and the profile at quarterbackmagazine.com/profile/michael-rudden. Years from now, the record of an eighth grader who came back from a broken hand and played through the cast to get his team to the playoffs will still be there, in his own words, with the coach who has pushed him since fifth grade named in it.
More info: quarterbackmagazine.com/memberships