Route to D-I: Be Spalding’s hardest worker
Self-motivated Carter hits pay dirt: Playing at Virginia
Coach Kyle Schmitt will never forget it. Football worked out on the back end of Archbishop Spalding’s turf in the spring, when lacrosse reigned and consumed most of the field. Schmitt chewed the idea whether Jahmeer Carter could make it as a lineman in the perilous MIAA A Conference as a freshman, despite the effort he’d seen from him as an eighth grader at Spalding’s camp, despite having known Carter’s father back to their days together at University of Maryland.
That stopped the second Carter hit the bag. The impact echoed across the field.
“It was a pop of, ‘This is a varsity football player.’ He’s 14, but he’s going to be able to play varsity football,” Schmitt said. “It’s pretty apparent real quick is he going to be able to stick people and block, and that happened.”
In his four years starting for the Cavaliers, Carter was a consistent force as steady and as reliable on both sides of the ball as mountains. Carter, who signed his national letter of intent to play college football at the University of Virginia on Wednesday, restrained MIAA defenses littered with Division I-bound players so that Spalding could average 32 points per game this season.
He’d then walk right back out onto the field as the units swapped, racking up 25 solo tackles, seven tackles for loss and four sacks as the nose guard.
As Carter screwed the bright-orange Virginia cap atop his head on Wednesday, looking out to his family, coaches and teammates assembled to watch him take the next step, the Glen Burnie resident felt like the right puzzle piece had been fit into place.
After all, Carter had known he’d be going Division I since his freshman year, and not because Virginia offered him then.
“It’s something I expected. It’s something I worked hard for,” Carter said. “I’m not really surprised, but I’m thankful though.”
Carter accumulated hours of quiet moments alone — running 100-yard sprints on his own, lifting and stretching on days where Spalding had nothing on the schedule.
As Schmitt watched a video of Saints quarterback Drew Brees working on his own the Sunday before New Orleans took on the Indianapolis Colts last Monday, all he could think about was Carter.
The Spalding coach remembers buzzing out after school late, on a non-practice day, and seeing Carter alone, barely visible in a far corner of the field, practicing his motions over and over again.
“We provided a ton of opportunities, but Jahmeer’s a guy that worked on his own,” Schmitt said. “Coaches can’t give a guy that. I can’t make him work on his own when no one’s looking, and he did that.”
On weekends, while many athletes all around Anne Arundel County slumbered, Carter trained with his father, Ferron. While Ferron Carter worked as a strength and conditioning coach for various college and high school programs, his elementary school-aged son pushed and pulled objects around the house. By the time Jahmeer Carter reached middle school to begin picking up the football skills he’d need, his work ethic was already miles ahead.
“It’s his willingness and wanting to get better every day,” Ferron Carter said. “I don’t have to push him or force him to get up. He’d do it on his own.”
The first time senior defensive end Julian Amoako saw Carter, it was under the heaviest weights in the workout room.
“He was the hardest worker at Spalding, in my opinion,” Amoako said. “He motivated everyone around him, underclassmen upperclassmen.”
This year, after three weeks of drubbing non-conference opponents, Spalding ran into barbed wire. It ended its season having lost four straight to A Conference foes Calvert Hall, Mount St. Joseph and twice to McDonogh.
“If the score was high, it didn’t matter. Jahmeer played hard every single snap until the end of the game,” Amoako said. “We were in games losing or winning, the energy was always up.”
Carter experienced nervousness exactly once in his Spalding career. After his effort on the offensive line contributed to a 52-point victory over St. Mary’s in Spalding’s 2016 opener, he never felt that pressure again.
“The amount of work I put in is the biggest thing. I felt like I could compete with anybody,” Carter said. “It gave me a confident edge.”