A flight delay at the Richmond, Virginia, airport due to weather issues Monday evening provided Hunter Smith a rare break from a hectic schedule.
Just consider the Foxcroft Academy junior’s most recent weekend. He won four events at the Penobscot Valley Conference small-school track and field championships in Dover-Foxcroft on Friday, then left as the meet ended for Boston to catch a flight for Richmond to participate in the Blue-Grey All-American Bowl’s Mid-Atlantic Super Combine.
There he matched his individual football skills as a wide receiver — a position the 6-foot-4, 180-pound Smith doesn’t play in high school — against approximately 50 invitation-only peers from along the Eastern seaboard, many of whom already have committed to major NCAA Division I programs such as Virginia Tech, West Virginia and Maryland.
Players were chosen for the super combines from among approximately 7,500 athletes who attended Blue-Grey regional events during the past year.
“Sunday morning we went out and did drills and then competition drills to see how we would do against the competition there,” said Smith. “We did one-on-ones where a wide receiver would go against a defensive back with a quarterback throwing, and you’d be evaluated while they filmed you.”
The event, held at the training base of the NFL’s Washington Redskins, was one of five “super combines” being held around the country to provide participants greater recruiting exposure. And while college coaches weren’t allowed to attend, results from the combine will be made available to colleges around the country.
“I think I definitely held my own against everybody there,” said Smith.
Those results and player evaluations from a Blue-Grey staff that includes past and present NFL players also will help in the selection of participants for two nationally televised annual Blue-Grey All-American Bowls.
Smith said he made the Blue-Grey staff take notice with his combine’s fastest time in the the shuttle run.
“You run 5 yards to right, tap the line, 10 yards to left, tap the line, and then 5 yards back to your starting point,” said Smith, an All-Eastern Maine Class C quarterback and defensive back at Foxcroft last fall. “It’s used for receivers because they want to know how well you move and how shifty you are.”
Smith also posted the third-best performance in the broad jump and ran a personal-best time of 4.68 seconds in the 40-yard dash.
“It’s not too great,” he said, “but considering how tall I am it wasn’t bad.”
Smith was one of 12 wide receivers at the combine, the rest of whom were much smaller.
“I was like Megatron (Calvin Johnson) of the Detroit Lions, you could say. He’s about 6-5, and everybody else there was way shorter, about 5-8 or 5-9 and about 150 or 160 pounds and real quick, agile kids,” he said.
“I was the only one of my kind there, the tall wide receiver, but a lot of college coaches I’ve talked to said that’s what they’re looking for, tall receivers that play like Randy Moss or Megatron who can go up over a cornerback’s head.”
Smith played wide receiver his first two years at Foxcroft and earned all-conference honors as a sophomore. He then was switched to quarterback early in his junior season in order to get more touches during games. Smith rushed for 1,037 yards and 22 touchdowns in helping coach Danny White’s Ponies finish with a 7-3 record and reach the Eastern C semifinals.
The multi-sport standout, the son of former University of Maine basketball star Dean Smith, was the 2015 Big East Conference basketball player of the year and a defending state champion in the high jump. But he sees his collegiate athletic future in catching footballs rather than throwing them.
Smith is expected to be one of the most highly recruited Maine high school football players in the Class of 2016. Early Division I connections have been established with the University of Maine and Ivy League schools such as Dartmouth and Harvard.
“I’m trying to find an academically inclined school more so than football,” he said. “I don’t exactly plan to go to the NFL. Maybe it’s a possibility, but I’m definitely looking to get that degree and the best school possible I can get that degree from is probably where I want to head.”
Still, Smith hopes any exposure gained from his Blue-Grey combine appearance will increase those collegiate options.
“Mainly this combine was a turning point for me in getting myself out there,” he said.
Smith, who will be among the favorites in the long and high jumps and 110 and 300 hurdles at Saturday’s Class C state meet at Yarmouth High School, plans to spend the summer focusing on football and basketball.
He’ll attend several football camps or single-day college combines as well as compete around the Northeast and Canada on a Maine U-17 AAU basketball team that will cap off its schedule in late July at the AAU 11th-grade national championships in Louisville, Kentucky.
