Mr. Smith visits Harvard

Duncan Smith, a senior two-sport standout at Seymour High School, is in a position most American teenagers can only dream about as he ponders life after high school. The three-year starter on Seymour’s football team has earned plenty of accolades on the gridiron during his prep career. As a starting forward on Seymour’s boys basketball squad, he gives the Eagles hooptsers a reliable scoring and rebounding presence on the low post game in and game out. It is Smith’s remarkable ability in the classroom, however, that has some of the most prestigious academic institutions in the free world all the sudden paying attention to an honor student at a high school situated in the small mountain community tucked in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. His astronomically high ACT score from earlier this year is another reason that some of the nation’s elite colleges and universities are filling his family’s mailbox with letters and questionnaires. As a senior quarterback on Seymour’s 6-5 Region 1-3A runner-up team of 2006, Smith completed 56 of 132 passes for 834 yards. Those are solid numbers for a prototypical drop back quarterback at the high school level. The fact that the strong-armed, 6-foot-2, 190-pounder has never made anything below an A in the classroom though, was probably given more consideration this fall when Harvard called and invited him up to Cambridge, Massachusetts for the annual Harvard-Yale football game. Smith, who is on track to be the SHS Class of 2007 valedictorian, was accompanied by his father, Jim Smith, as well as another family member three weeks ago when he flew to Boston before making the short trip to Cambridge as an official visitor of Harvard at one of the nation’s oldest college football rivalries. “We had a great time on the trip,” said Jim Smith. “Duncan was very impressed with everything he saw. “(Harvard’s) offense is set up exactly like he wants to play in. They used a spread offense with the quarterback dropping back and throwing out of the pocket probably two-thirds of the time.” Jim Smith said his son has been contacted by all the Ivy League schools with the exception of Cornell. He said Princeton and Yale have had their eyes on Duncan for about a year now. “He’s a Southern boy but he was very impressed with what he saw up there on the visit. Harvard told him that he was one of the top choices of about six quarterbacks that they are recruiting.” Harvard defensive backs coach Dan O’Brien is responsible for football recruiting in the Southeast for the Harvard Crimson, a Division I-AA football program. He’s been Smith’s primary contact through the initial courtship between the two parties. “Duncan got a letter about a week after we got back to touch base saying ‘we look forward to talking to you in the future,” said Jim Smith. “(Harvard) also sent us a letter with a geographic map of the United States with 31 states blacked out, indicating that Harvard has a football player on its roster from all the states that were blacked out,” Jim Smith explained. “Tennessee wasn’t blacked out, and at the bottom of the letterhead it said ‘Duncan you may be one of, if not the first player from Tennessee to ever play at Harvard.” Harvard might be the most glamorous college vying for Duncan Smith’s talents, but it’s certainly not the only one. According to his father, besides the Ivy League schools, Smith has also been contacted by Davidson College, along with a few others, including Maryville College. Davidson, which has probably been recruiting him the hardest since the end of the high school season, is a small college in North Carolina that plays in the Southern Conference and was once coached by famed former Alabama assistant Homer Smith. Davidson is considered by some to be like an Ivy League school in the south. Vanderbilt University, another prestigious southern school for higher education is also a possibility for the Seymour High senior. Vanderbilt is very interested in Smith the student. The only draw back for Vandy is it hasn’t offered Smith a chance to play on its football team. Whatever scenario works out for Smith, all indications are he’s headed for a very bright future. His proud father trusts his son to make the right decision whatever it may be. “He looks at it all like it’s an honor just to be considered to go to one of these great universities to get an education and maybe play football,” said Jim Smith. “I asked him if (Harvard) decided to give you the chance to go there—about 1,000 miles away from home—would you do it? “He said that if he didn’t, he would probably regret it the rest of his life.” Harvard does not offer typical football scholarships like most universities do. Instead, it uses different athletic and academic grants that allow the prospective student-athlete help in paying the school’s yearly tuition, estimated at around $47,000. The yearly tuition at Vanderbilt is even higher at about $48,000. Jim Smith, who himself played football at Carson-Newman College, said his son seems to have his priorities straight. “He said he’d love to be able to play football in college, but he realizes that it will be about 90% academic and about 10% athletic at any of these schools that are recruiting him. I think he’ll be able to adapt and persevere wherever he decides to go.” Longtime SHS athletic director and football coach Gary Householder said the school has never had a player recruited by an Ivy League College before Smith. Householder said the last SHS quarterback to earn a scholarship at the next level was Jason Davis, who signed with Virginia Tech in February, 2000. Davis was rated as one of the top 20 quarterbacks in America that particular year.