Former Perry standout K.J. Smith has a new football home, and he's already there
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
The athletics career of K.J. Smith has been one almost worthy of a book.
He had developed into one of the top athletes at Perry in a solid decade, an impact member of the Panthers’ football and basketball teams. His college future could have been in either sport.
Then he was hit with juvenile dermatomyositis, way back in 2014, during his junior year in high school. It ended his basketball season and delayed his senior football season until it had started –his first week of practice came before the third game of a 1-9 season - chasing away colleges in both sports.
He eventually walked on to Georgia’s football team, and had a good spring – with three tackles, two breakups, and an interception in the spring game – and preseason.
Nevertheless, being a walk-on on a national championship contender makes for an even tougher battle to get coaches’ attention.
But Smith will finally get a chance to play college football, albeit in another state and on a slightly different level than a top-5 Division I program.
Smith signed recently with North Alabama, a program making the move from Division II to Division I, joining the Big South in football.
The athletics program will be in the Atlantic Sun, headquartered in Macon, in all other sports. The two conferences have an alliance regarding football membership. The Lions are competing in 2018 as an independent after a long and successful history as a Division II program in the Gulf South Conference, an era that ended last season with the program’s first losing season since 2002.
He is immediately eligible.
UNA opens the season on Sept. 1 at Southern Utah, and welcomes Alabama A&M a week later in the home opener. Odds are better that Smith will be ready for more snaps by then.
For more, visit the Huntsville (Ala.) Times-Daily story here.