Daily Journal Boys’ Athlete of the Year: M-A’s Matt MacLeod

His numbers alone make MacLeod one of the best athletes on the Peninsula this past season. He threw for nearly 3,400 yards and accounted for 41 touchdowns — 36 passing and five more rushing — all while completing nearly 70% of his passes as the Bears advanced to the semifinals of the CCS Division I bracket.

A late decision led him to play basketball for the first time since his sophomore year and he was an important cog that helped lift the Bears into a PAL South co-championship that they parlayed into the program’s first CCS title since 1989.

A late arrival to the baseball team, MacLeod made up for lost time, eventually leading the team in a number of categories, including batting average (.389), hits (28), runs scored (17) and OPS (1.045).

But MacLeod’s impact goes well beyond the numbers and when combining his statistics with his intangibles, it adds up to MacLeod being named the San Mateo Daily Journal’s Boys’ Athlete of the Year.

“How much time you got?” said M-A head football coach Chris Saunders, when asked about MacLeod’s impact on the team.

It was a similar response from M-A head basketball coach Mike Molieri.

“[His numbers] don’t indicate how important he was to the team,” Molieri said.

For MacLeod, it was his senior year and he wanted to make the most of it.

“I had a great time,” MacLeod said by phone from his dorm room on the campus of Miami University-Ohio, where he is a preferred walk-on for the RedHawks football team.

“I think you can learn to be a leader … (but) for the most part, I think it’s pretty instinctual.”

Being a leader is a lot more than just barking orders and demanding accountability. There is a nuance to being an effective leader and his high school coaches helped bring that out of him. But it takes a great athletic mind to know the proper time, place and way to guide a team.

On the football field, it was a no-brainer. As the starting quarterback, a leadership role is just assumed and as anyone who follows football knows, as the quarterback goes, so goes the team.

So when the Bears dropped their first two games to start the season, there was no panic because “Matty Magic” was leading the team. M-A went on to win nine in a row, including five straight in winning the PAL Bay Division title, before losing to St. Francis in the semifinals of the CCS Division I bracket. During the season, he has seven games of 300 yards or more passing.

He put the CCS on notice in the opener against Bellarmine, a 56-41 loss. But MacLeod did his part, accounting for 548 yards of offense — a career-high 401 yards passing and another 147 yards rushing — while accounting for six touchdowns. He capped his high school career with a 307-yard performance in a 49-28 loss to the Lancers.

“You have to be the leader at quarterback,” MacLeod said. “I spent so much time playing football, it was just natural (to assume a leadership role). … I was just used to being a leader.”

When MacLeod decided to play basketball for the first time in two seasons, he wasn’t sure what was expected of him. Sure, as the starting quarterback the team looked to him, but he would be coming off the bench for the Bears basketball team. Sometimes it can be hard to be a leader if you’re not starting.

“I think it was hard being a leader from the bench,” MacLeod said. “There were definitely times where I was like, ‘When can I say things? Can I get on people?’”

MacLeod said he deferred to Ryan Anderson and Connor Cadigan, a pair of teammates who put in time during the COVID season of spring 2021. While concerned about stepping on toes, MacLeod said he would talk with Anderson, especially, about what it takes to lead a team.

“I went out of my way to do this,” MacLeod said. “I went out of my way to get them to be leaders.”

MacLeod, meanwhile, decided to lead in the best way he knew how. When he did get his chance to get on the court, he was Mr. Energy. If not a leader in word, he was a leader in action.

“Our team was a very emotional group. Sometimes that emotion would take over the team and he was the calm among this volatile group,” Molieri said. “When we made our run, you could see the composure (because of MacLeod).”

After a loss to Carlmont in late January, the Bears won 10 in a row, capturing a share of the PAL South title before beating Los Altos, Mountain View and Everett Alvarez for the CCS Division I championship, before losing in the first round of the Nor Cal tournament.

Not coincidentally, the Bears found their best results when Molieri inserted MacLeod into the starting lineup.

“It was no coincidence that when we put him in the (starting) lineup, that we went on a little run,” Molieri said. “He was the one person who consistently was the one to keep the players focused. He’s not afraid to speak out.”

Because of the Bears’ deep basketball run, MacLeod was late in arriving to the baseball team and, much like the basketball season, he deferred to a teammate to handle the team leadership responsibilities, instead focusing on helping the team with his play and behind the scenes.

“Our main leader was (catcher) Ethan Bergan. He really put his all into the baseball season,” MacLeod said. “The baseball and basketball guys had been working all offseason and I hadn’t been there. It’s definitely hard (to walk straight into a leadership position). [Bergan] had been there the entire time. He was at every workout.”

Again, MacLeod showed that a player can lead with his play and he did it on the baseball diamond. Manning center field and the leadoff spot in the batting order, MacLeod set the tone for a baseball team that needed key wins down the stretch to qualify for the playoffs.

While the Bears were knocked out in the first round of the Division III bracket, the fact they made CCS after a 2-7 start speaks volumes about the grit and determination the Bears had.

And that can be traced to MacLeod.

In fact, when any of the Bears’ teams were facing adversity — be it football, basketball or baseball — there was a common denominator in surges at the end of the season: MacLeod.

“He did a lot of the heavy lifting. He was behind the cart, pushing it,” Saunders said. “Matt was so hungry, he knew, instinctively, what it took to be successful.”