Northgate’s Chase Smith looks like the All-American boy: clean cut, articulate and polite. He is a good student and an even better leader. In fact, he’s the kid every football coach wants his daughter to bring home for dinner. So are Fayette County’s Kip Rossi, Starr’s Mill’s Chad Gloer and Sandy Creek’s Tyler Betsill. These four young men just happen to represent the 2005 edition of what is often referred to by college recruiters as “tweeners.” I’d prefer to call this group, “The Four Horsemen of High School.” They are record-breakers, play-makers, and name-takers. However, according to the recruiters, they are also too small, too slow, and too short to play college football. Or, are they?

I have had the privilege of watching all “Four Horsemen” play for the past two varsity seasons. They inspire me. They cause me to love the game a little bit more every Friday night. They become the game, and the game becomes them. They were born for the gridiron.

I remember the pre-season jamboree game of the 2004 season when I made my way down to the sideline and immediately noticed a linebacker flying all over the field making every tackle. He wasn’t the best football body on the field but he was the best at making plays. It was Betsill.

I met Rossi when I asked him to be a guest on ChalkTalk Live (my Saturday morning high school sports talk show) a few days previous to Fayette County’s big region game with Newnan. We scheduled him to be on the show at 8:30 a.m. You may recall the Cougars forged a miraculous fourth quarter comeback and beat the Tigers. Rossi played incredibly and his disappointment was heart-felt. Our station studio is located in Newnan, a good 40 minutes from Fayetteville. Rossi was in the studio 15 minutes early and was one of our favorite interviews of the season. He is lights out on the field; he’s even better off the field.

I remember watching Gloer, 5’9”, clean 325 pounds last winter at a weight meet. I watched him clear nine feet in the standing broad jump at Velocity Sports Performance. The kid just attacks everything he does with such great passion. Anyone who was in the stadium the night Starr’s Mill hosted the University of Brookwood in the AAAAA quarter-finals this past November can tell you about “the hit.” Gloer hit a Brookwood running back so hard it knocked his helmet into the cheap seats. He is better known on campus as “Chopper. Who can argue?

Finally, I remember Smith. He was a 5’ 9”, heat-seeking missile. He looks like Urkle and plays like Urlacher. Did I mention that number 44 had over 400 tackles in his career at Northgate?

There’s your line-up of “tweeners.” These boys are chasing the dream. They want to play college football. They believe they can. Their coaches believe they can. Their families believe they can. I believe they can. However, for the “tweeners” it can be an excruciatingly painful process to find a college football staff willing to offer them scholarship money; most simply walk-on somewhere.

These boys will graduate in May. They will move on to the next chapter and challenges of life. They will play again. They will find a way. They always do. They have dreams. They are young men of passion and character. They inspire others to dream. They were born for the gridiron. Keep looking to the horizon for there will come a Saturday, on some campus, on a field of dreams where the PA announcer will call the names of Gloer, Betsill, Rossi and Smith.

The “Four Horsemen of High School” will ride again. They have a trail to blaze.

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