No one seems to have the answer right now to the biggest question facing Riley Quick in the next year.
Will it be football or baseball or both in the future for the Hewitt-Trussville two-sport standout?
“I honestly don’t know,” Huskies’ baseball coach Jeff Mauldin said this week.
Quick and football coach Josh Floyd echoed that response.
“I’m really still not sure yet,” Quick said Monday between a football workout and flying to south Florida to play a summer baseball game.
It would seem to be a nice problem to have.
A 6-foot-5, 250-pound offensive lineman, Quick is one of the top 10 recruits in the state for the Class of 2022. His brother, Pierce, is already an offensive lineman at the University of Alabama.
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“He has a ton of potential,” Floyd said of Quick’s possible football future. “He’s so athletic to be so big and long. He just moves really well. He’s obviously had a lot of big offers. The main thing for is just deciding what to do.”
Quick had a breakout junior season in baseball for Mauldin’s Huskies. He went 9-2 with a pair of saves and a 0.99 ERA. He averaged 11.5 strikeouts every seven innings. He was named the Alabama Sports Writers Association Class 7A Pitcher of the Year and the AL.com Birmingham Co-Player of the Year.
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“He pitched our biggest games and every time he took the ball, we felt like we were going to win that day,” Mauldin said. “When he was on the mound, he was just a calming influence over the team and coaches and everyone involved.”
It’s not unusual obviously for athletes to play football and baseball in high school. Some have even done it successfully on the college level. What is unusual for Quick is that he plays the offensive line – and sometimes defensive line – in football and pitches in baseball.
That is a rare combination.
“One of his biggest challenges moving forward I think will be the weight issue,” Floyd said. “That’s the question from college coaches (about his potential to play both sports). Riley could be 280-290 pounds pretty easily. They can put that on quickly in college. Can he do that and then pitch in baseball? That is what makes it a unique situation. If you are an SEC offensive lineman, you aren’t going to be able to play at 240 of 250 pounds. They are going to want him closer to 300 pounds.”
It’s been a busy month already for Quick. In addition to football and baseball workouts, he already has visited Ole Miss, Auburn and Mississippi State. Those schools have talked to him about both sports. He also visited Alabama for baseball specifically. He told AL.com he also would like to visit Florida and Florida State at some point.
“They are all really nice schools, really good schools,” Quick said. “I’m just trying to make the decision that is best for me.”
Quick’s stellar junior baseball season has complicated his decision. In addition to choosing to play baseball or football or both in college, he also faces the potential to be drafted in baseball next summer. In fact, Mauldin said it is highly likely he will be drafted.
“I’ve talked to his dad,” Mauldin said. “I know they feel truly blessed that Riley has the opportunities that he does. It’s also kind of a nightmare honestly because you have football people pulling on you, baseball people pulling on you, some say do both, some say you can’t do both. The positions he plays in each sport make it difficult.
“It’s a horrible situation in terms of trying to please everyone. I think he’s going about it the right way. He is going on all these visits and seeing what people are saying and reading their body language. I think once the summer is over, he will decide which schools to take official visits to, then maybe make a decision sometime mid-to-late fall. That’s just my guess.”
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