10:00 a.m.

In the Middleton High School library people are speaking above a whisper, and no one is telling them to stop. Books have been pushed aside. Athletic jerseys and baseball caps have been spread across the tables. Several football players are joking loudly with each other, but one is sitting quietly pressing the top of a bright, red pen over and over again. Click ca-click. Click ca-click.

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It’s National Signing Day.

Defensive back, Sherod Murdock seems the center of attention. “Man, you’re always in the spotlight,” says a teammate giving him a playful shove as another member of the media snaps his photo. Murdock was intent on signing with Alabama but changed his mind at the last minute. After a few words of praise and encouragement from his coach, he stands, thanks God, his coaches and his family and places a cap on his head bearing the University of Pittsburgh logo.

1:30 p.m.

There are a total of 10 people at the Tampa Catholic High School signing ceremony - two parents, one aunt, one member of the media (that’s me), a few coaches and a young man who seems to have it all.

Matt Kelly, a kicker for the Crusaders, is a star athlete as well as a star student. Kelly has taken on the toughest classes even when his academic advisors thought the course load could be too much. “Academically he looks for a challenge,” says Carol DeMarinis, Assistant Principal of Academics. “He fights for a challenge.”

Kelly will face his next challenge as an athlete and an engineering major at Dartmouth. His mother says that he’s interested in aerospace, but he won’t declare and emphasis just yet.

With six members of the ceremonial crowd behind him and three taking pictures, Kelly signs his way into the Ivy League.

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