FISHER -- When Jeff Palmer took over the Fisher football program last winter, there was still a big question mark surrounding the team. The Bunnies' search for a new coach was done, but they didn't have anyone who looked right to fill the most important position on the field.

They needed a quarterback, and Palmer got an idea not long after accepting his new role.

He saw an athletic kid in the weight room "just getting after it." He didn't talk to anyone, didn't even look at anyone. He just got right down to business, and that work ethic immediately caught Palmer's attention.

"I'm watching him, and I'm like, 'This kid's built pretty good. We need to get him on the football field,'" Palmer said.

The kid's name was Blake Green, a sophomore at the time who was in the middle of his basketball season. He had just wrapped up his golf season the previous fall and had baseball waiting for him in the spring.

Palmer didn't care what sports Green played. All he knew was he hadn't seen him at football workouts. But his first pitch didn't go exactly as planned.

"Blake's a golfer," Palmer said with a laugh. "He was in the weight room working out, and he was like, "I think I want to play golf, coach.' I said, 'Yeah, you can play golf. You can play football Monday through Saturday, and you and I will play golf Saturday afternoon.'"

A natural fit

Green appreciated the offer but wasn't sold. He played football for one year in fourth grade and didn't have the greatest of experiences, so he went the golfing route and hadn't looked back. This worried Palmer, who was starting to get attached to the idea of having Green under center.

"I finally got to a point where I told the guys, 'We've got to get Green. If we don't get him, I'm not real sure what we're going to do at quarterback,'" Palmer said. "Just a really good athlete, a super high-caliber kid, the exact type of kid I want at that position."

Ahead of summer workouts going into Green's junior year, senior fullback Jeremiah Todd jokingly threatened to break Green's golf clubs if he didn't come out for football.

"He's a really smart kid," Todd said. "I've played other sports with him, and I knew he was a great athlete and a smart athlete, so he'd be great for the quarterback position."

Palmer eventually met with Green and his parents to give them more information on what to expect. He didn't guarantee that Green would play quarterback, though that was the plan the whole time, but emphasized that he was too talented of an athlete to not be on the football field. Green had no intention of joining before that conversation, but he slowly started to warm up to the idea.

Fisher participated in a three-day camp toward the end of June at Eastern Illinois University, and Green decided to give it a shot. His plan was to get a feel for whether he liked playing football, but "I ended up having a great time and learned a lot."

"The camaraderie has been great," Green said. "It's been a super good environment, and it's kind of caught me off guard. I didn't expect it to feel like we're a family on the field. It was Jeff saying, 'Hey, you're an athlete. You have the rest of your life to play golf. Come try it out.' I came out, and just feeling that camaraderie made me want to keep playing."

Showing improvement

Just like that, the Bunnies found their signal-caller, and he's continued to develop through the first two weeks of the season.

"Everything there is to know about football," Green said of what he's learned so far. "As far as mechanics and fundamentals go, we've been hammering that pretty well. Working with a football team is a whole new kind of feel. You're like a commander at quarterback and have a lot of responsibility."

Fisher has a run-heavy offense, with Green only passing the ball 14 times in his first two games, a 42-0 loss at Heyworth in Week 1 and a 37-14 loss at home against Tuscola in Week 2. He showed clear improvement and was much more efficient last week, completing 3 of 5 passes for 38 yards, including a 21-yard touchdown to Jakob Howell.

"The first week, there was a lot going through my head with it really being my first football game," Green said. "The second game, it kind of slowed down, and we simplified things. Everybody having a little more confidence and fire behind us definitely felt better going into the second game."

Palmer said Green is progressing faster than he anticipated, which is exactly what this team needs in order to get the culture back to where it was just five years ago.

Changing the culture

Fisher made three consecutive trips to the Class 1A playoffs from 2017-2019. Since then, there's been a revolving door of coaches to come through the program. Palmer is the fifth coach the Bunnies have had in the last four years. Even so, nobody was worried about another big change this time, as Palmer had been around the team as an assistant coach in previous years.

"I love Fisher, I grew up there and I just want to make sure we could have some consistency," Palmer said. "These guys have been through five coaches in four years. For me, that was the biggest thing, to bring some stability. ... The biggest thing for us is understanding that these guys have just been kicked in the teeth so much. When you're changing offenses and defenses every year, they never get a chance to settle down."

Palmer has simplified everything in an attempt to encourage the players to react on instinct and not think as much. It's worked so far with Green, and plenty of others are following suit.

During all this change throughout the last few years, the Bunnies have struggled to win. Their 0-2 start to this season marks 22 straight losses, with their last win coming on Sept. 10, 2021, a 51-40 victory at Fieldcrest.

"The big thing for these guys is they haven't won, so they have to overcome, 'We can't win,'" Palmer said. "We just need to get in there and compete and hang around in games and get these guys to overcome the mentality of 'We can't win' because they can. They're capable of it."

And with Green joining the team and a more positive vibe surrounding the program, the Bunnies feel closer to getting back in the win column than they have in a long time. Their next opportunity is this Friday, as they host Gibson City-Melvin-Sibley at 7 p.m.

"It's been rough, but I look at the seniors around us, and everybody's bought in despite the hardship," Todd said. "They're wanting to change the culture for this year and the next years to come. It would mean so much to be the class that started the rise back to prominence for Fisher football. I've got a brother who's a freshman, and it would mean the world to me to see him get a better situation than I had for my football career. If we can make that happen, that would be spectacular."