DOVER-FOXCROFT, Maine — Most football fans will spend time this weekend in front of a television watching the first round of the National Football League playoffs.
Hunter Smith will be playing football in an NFL stadium.
The highly regarded Foxcroft Academy senior wide receiver is scheduled to leave Wednesday for Tampa, Florida, where he will participate in Saturday night’s Blue-Grey North-South All-American Bowl, a high school all-star game featuring many of the nation’s top football recruits in the Class of 2016.
The game will be played at Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. It will be live-streamed on the Impact Football Network.
The 6-foot-4, 180-pound Smith will be one of about 100 players from around the country competing in the game, a cast that includes North squad teammates who already have made verbal commitments to accept athletic scholarships from such top NCAA Division I programs as Notre Dame, Nebraska, Virginia, West Virginia, Arizona, Minnesota, Maryland, Syracuse and Illinois.
Smith is one of six wide receivers on the 47-player North roster and the only player from New England.
“It’s going to be some crazy competition with some crazy good football players,” said Smith, the son of Dean and Laurie Smith of Dover-Foxcroft. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, so I’m just going to go as hard as I can and hopefully compete with these guys.”
Hunter Smith and the rest of the North-South all-stars will practice twice both Thursday and Friday and have a final walk-through session on Saturday before the game.
Smith’s wide receiver position coach for the North squad will be Troy Brown, the former three-time Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots.
“It’s not really a football camp where they teach you technique,” Smith said. “You already have to know that because you’ve already been selected as an all-star. It’s basically just putting in plays and then getting to work out with your guys and do some scrimmaging on offense and defense.”
The workouts also provide a chance for the players to be scouted by college coaches either live at the scene or via live video-streaming, and with the National Letter of Intent signing period for Division I football set to begin Feb. 3, the stakes are high for many of the all-stars.
“A lot of guys are going down there to prove themselves to several college coaches who are looking at them, so that’s going to raise the competition level immensely,” Smith said. “These guys are going to be competing hard, so that just tells everyone else that we’ve got to step up our games, too.”
Smith said he is considering a “couple offers” from a recruiting process that was slowed during the fall by a hip injury that sidelined him for his entire senior football season.
He’s back to good health now and hopes a successful appearance at the all-star practices and game might draw additional attention from scholarship-level coaches less familiar with him.
Smith subsequently suffered a dislocated left hip during an Aug. 28, 2015, preseason game, but after six weeks without putting any weight on his leg, he began physical therapy that enabled him to resume competitive athletics last month with the Foxcroft basketball team.
Smith, a quarterback and defensive back on the Ponies’ football team, also has spent time working on his pass-receiving and route-running skills even after recent snow made local fields unplayable.
