SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. -- For years, San Clemente High football coach Jaime Ortiz has heard from college coaches about how his campus is one of their favorites stops while on the recruiting trail. Part of that is due to the steady stream of talented football players who have come through the school, but mostly it’s because any time spent in the isolated beach town feels like a vacation.

“I have a lot of college coaches who tell me, ‘Hey, when I retire, hook me up,’” Ortiz said.

Located about 70 miles down the coast from downtown Los Angeles, roughly halfway to San Diego, San Clemente represents the southern-most tip of Orange County. Its quaint downtown contributes to a distinct small-town vibe, and its historic pier is the scene of a postcard come to life.

Locals take pride in there being just one high school in town, and it sits a mile and a half uphill from the beach. Several national championship banners for surfing hang inside the gym. San Clemente, to be clear, doesn’t feel like it should be a football hotbed. In California, that status is usually reserved for private schools or large public schools in densely populated urban areas.

Over the past few years, though, the school has bucked that trend and in December won the Division 1-A state bowl game to claim its first state title. The Tritons were led by quarterback Jack Sears, who has since enrolled early at USC, where he’ll hope to one day replace the same player he followed in high school: Sam Darnold.

The school also produced former Utah quarterback Travis Wilson and former Boston College quarterback Chase Rettig in recent years, but it’s not lost on Ortiz how unlikely it is for a public-school program like his to send successive quarterbacks to USC.

“Some coaches didn’t believe me that I had back-to-back guys,” he said.

Sears, like Darnold, wasn’t one of these quarterbacks who was on the recruiting radar from a young age. As a sophomore, he would play about half the junior varsity game at quarterback on Thursday nights and on Friday nights, with varsity, he was one of Darnold’s favorite targets and became an all-league receiver. As a junior, Sears took the baton from Darnold, and the team didn’t miss a beat.

In April, Ortiz attended a USC coaching clinic where he met USC quarterbacks coach Tyson Helton for the first time. Sears’ impressive junior year didn’t drum up the type of recruiting interest Ortiz thought it should have.

“I told Tyson, ‘I’ve got a guy I want you to meet,’” Ortiz said. “He’s a dude.”

Then he met with Tyson’s brother, head coach Clay Helton, who was heavily involved in Darnold’s recruitment.

“He’s just like Sam,” he told him. “He’s very similar.”

USC offered Sears a scholarship after Tyson Helton went to San Clemente to watch him throw, but he originally committed to Duke. However, after taking his official visit during the season, Sears had a change of heart. He came back from North Carolina and told the Duke coaching staff he was having second thoughts and eventually backed off his pledge and flipped to USC, where he saw Darnold have so much success.

At 6-foot-3 and just over 200 pounds, Sears has the necessary size colleges look for, and though ESPN ranks him as the nation’s No. 5 pocket passer, Ortiz said Sears could just as easily have been classified as a dual threat. In a playoff game, Ortiz recalled a quarterback draw Sears took 65 yards for a touchdown during which he stiff-armed a defender at a crucial time of the game.

“It was like I was watching Bo Jackson against the Seahawks back in the day,” Ortiz said.

Darnold was the same way. In high school, he played quarterback like a linebacker, and part of what made him so effective this past season for USC was an innate ability to make something from nothing. He doesn’t have the same top-end speed as Sears, but Darnold’s athleticism and elusiveness is something special.

And that’s something that has been understood in San Clemente for years.

San Clemente basketball coach Marc Popovich has known Darnold since he was in second grade. Popovich has run a youth basketball camp for about 10 years, and Darnold was one of the first kids to come through.

“He was kind of a pudgier kid,” Popovich says. “If you saw a picture of Sam at like 8 or 9, he was a pudgy, little guy, but he was always really good and really talented. My players coached the kids in those camps, and my players from that time are all now like, ‘Coach, I knew he was going to be good when he was in third grade.’”

Popovich encountered a similar dilemma that the USC football coaches had this past year. As a sophomore, his first year on the varsity team, Darnold didn’t begin the year in the starting lineup. But after coming off the bench for about eight games, it became clear he was too talented not to start. By the time league play rolled around, Darnold was a fixture in the starting lineup. He led the Tritons to their first league title since 1975 and was named league MVP.

“The thing with Sam is that every day you would see something and say, ‘That’s not normal. That’s not something a high school kid should be able to pull off,’" Popovich said. “That kind of thing. We knew early on he was doing things a normal kid shouldn’t be able to do.”

The same can be said of San Clemente. It's producing quarterbacks at a rate that a normal school shouldn't be able to do. And USC is all the better for it.