Football Across Minnesota: He’s an offensive lineman, but with strings attached

FOOTBALL ACROSS MINNESOTA | Week 3

MOORHEAD, MINN. – Sam Smith jogged onto the field at Park Christian High with his teammates for pregame warmups Friday night. All the players began stretching or tossing footballs to get loose, except Smith.

The 6-7, 260-pound lineman ran directly to the sideline, dropped to his knees and opened a case that was placed on a bench. Without removing his helmet, Smith pulled out his violin for inspection and rosined his bow.

Smith is set to play college football next season, but his first love has always been music and the beautiful sounds of a violin.

“I love how you can express emotions through music,” he said.

Smith combined both of his passions on a perfect fall evening Friday along the North Dakota border. He performed the national anthem on his violin as part of Senior Night festivities, then cleared holes for his running backs in Park Christian’s 48-14 win over Norman County East/Ulen-Hitterdal.

Smith has committed to play football at Division II Sioux Falls of the NSIC. He also is working hard to master “Praeludium and Allegro” by composer Fritz Kreisler in his violin sessions with a private instructor.

“I really enjoy the piece,” he said.

Offensive tackle and concert violinist aren’t typically found together in the same sentence, but Smith’s path is hardly traditional.

He didn’t play organized team sports growing up. He tried baseball briefly when he was young but not for long. He took up taekwondo and earned his second-degree black belt.

Home-schooled until eighth grade, Smith never felt a strong pull toward sports.

He started playing violin around age 6 using the Suzuki method. He learned by ear first, and then how to read music later.

Every year, his mom Polly took him and older sister Sara to a music camp at the International Peace Garden along the North Dakota-Canada border.

Smith would sit in on fiddling jam sessions. Fiddle is the same instrument as violin, only played differently.

“You can improvise a lot more,” he said.

Smith threw himself into classical violin, earning a spot in the top orchestra in the Fargo-Moorhead Area Youth Symphonies. He has performed at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis.

He practices an hour to 90 minutes every day. Though he doesn’t have one favorite composer, he is particularly fond of German composer Johannes Brahms from the 1800s.

“While verbally people can convey a lot of emotions,” Smith said, “it becomes so much greater when applied to music because of the different ways you can play, especially with string instruments.”

He practices with his area symphony every Sunday for several hours. He also belongs to a school orchestra and takes private lessons.

Oh yeah, he also built his own computer not too long ago.

“I love problem-solving,” he said.

Football provided him that challenge.

Smith signed up for football in ninth grade without having played the sport. He watched Chicago Bears games on TV because his dad Paul grew up in Chicago, but Smith knew very little about the game.

He was 6-4 and raw athletically as a freshman. Park Christian coach Matt Baasch had to teach him what a huddle meant, how to get into a lineman’s stance, the proper techniques in blocking, how plays operate.

“It was like someone you had taken off a deserted island and teaching him everything,” Baasch said.

Smith’s first impression of football?

“It was a lot, to be honest,” he said.

He kept working at it and improving. He played sparingly on junior varsity as a freshman. He got varsity playing time as a sophomore, then made a big leap as a junior.

Smith approached Baasch and expressed interest in playing college football. Baasch supported that goal but challenged Smith to invest himself completely into training and doing everything required to play at that level.

Baasch previously coached at Shanley High in Fargo. One of his players was Connor McGovern, an offensive lineman who is an eight-year NFL veteran currently with the New York Jets.

McGovern lives in Fargo in the offseason. Baasch asked him to train Smith this past summer. The two worked multiple days every week for three months on technique, athletic development and intricate details of the position. McGovern called his pupil a classic late bloomer, eager to be molded.

“The nice thing about him not having played is he doesn’t have any bad habits,” McGovern said in a phone conversation from New York.

Smith also attended college camps for the first time. He went to the Gophers camp, along with South Dakota State, North Dakota State and a few others.

The feedback evaluation from college coaches was almost universal: raw with high potential, which is what Baasch told every coach who recruited Smith.

Smith wears size 15 shoes and has a frame that “could carry 330 pounds and not look chubby,” Baasch said. “He’s just a giant human being.”

Park Christian plays Nine-Man football, so Smith rarely encounters an opponent his size. That will change in college when he faces NSIC competition. His coach expects him to be a different player in college, too.

“I have the perspective of him when he was a freshman, then sophomore, then junior and now a senior,” Baasch said. “You watch that progression and you’re like, ‘I don’t know where this will end up, but I know it’s a lot better than what it is today.’”

Smith hopes to continue to play violin in some capacity in college and beyond. His joy for both sports and music was evident Friday night as he removed his shoulder pads, grabbed his violin and performed a wonderful rendition of the national anthem.

Once he was finished, he quickly put his shoulder pads back on and was ready to take the field for the game’s opening possession. He made a nice block.

. . .

FOOTBALL FAMILY

A member of the Rostberg family has coached the Hutchinson football team for 55 years. First Grady Rostberg for 29 years, then son Andy for 26 seasons. They have seven state championships between them.

Andy can’t recall either of them starting a freshman at quarterback. Until now.

“I have a pup at quarterback,” he said.

The pup is his son, Graydon, named after his grandfather and still only 14 years old.

Graydon is 6-1 and 175 pounds “so he’s plenty big,” his dad said, but Rostberg also knows that youthful mistakes are inevitable.

“I just have to keep reminding myself, OK, he’s 14,” Rostberg said. “We knew it was going to be a roller coaster.”

The defending Class 4A champions started 2-0, lost two in a row and now face a big showdown Friday at home against Becker. Rostberg and his staff felt comfortable making Graydon the starter because “he’s not a typical ninth-grader.”

Graydon spent Friday nights on the Hutchinson sideline as a ball boy for as long as he can remember. He attended practices and watched video at night with his dad, learning the offense at an early age.

“He’s been on the sidelines for more big games than most of the players have,” Rostberg said.

Still, a freshman must prove himself to older teammates. Graydon worked to build that trust one practice session at a time.

In the season opener, he threw a 44-yard touchdown pass on a post pattern in the first quarter against Glencoe-Silver Lake.

“Everybody went, ‘OK, I guess the boy can play,’” Rostberg said.

That was a confidence boost for the youngster, too.

“I made that throw and I’m like, all right, here we go, I think I can fit in here,” Graydon said.

Graydon turns 15 in late December. By then, he already will have one varsity season on his résumé. His responsibilities at home won’t change.

“He’s still got to unload the dishwasher and take the garbage out,” his dad said.

. . .

WEEKEND REWIND

The five best things we saw on social media this weekend:

“I keep telling people, the way this defense is ran, you’ve got to have a crazy person at the head of it.”

— Vikings cornerback Shaq Griffin on the unpredictable and unconventional scheme of defensive coordinator Brian Flores.

. . .

UP NEXT

Viking vs. Packers, noon, Sunday, Lambeau Field. The Vikings are undefeated and the talk of the NFL. The Packers are 2-1 and have won both games with Malik Willis filling in for injured starter Jordan Love at quarterback. This rivalry never lacks for drama and compelling story lines, and this meeting offers plenty of both.

. . .

DAILY DELIVERY + FAM

Each week this season, my colleague Michael Rand and I will review a few FAM topics together and post our chat to YouTube. This week, we talked about Park Christian senior Sam Smith and his two passions: football and violin. Watch our video here.

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A FAM FINAL WORD

The weekend provided polar opposite examples of how a defense should look and function. The Gophers defense fell apart in the second half against Iowa. Their inability to hold up in the trenches and stop the run had a demoralizing effect. Conversely, the Vikings continued to put on a defensive clinic by smothering the Texans offense and making life miserable for quarterback C.J. Stroud, using unique blitzes and coverage schemes.

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Thank you for reading Football Across Minnesota (FAM), my weekly column that tours football topics in our state from preps to pros. I’ll publish this column on Tuesday mornings. I appreciate feedback, so please reach out anytime. Thanks again — Chip (@chipscoggins on X; email me at chip.scoggins@startribune.com)

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Want more Football Across Minnesota? Chip’s previous columns are here: