Morgan Park’s Key picks Arizona
The odds of landing a Power Five football scholarship are pretty low, especially for a player who sat out four years before returning to the sport as a senior.
Morgan Park’s Shontrail Key is the exception to the rule.
The 6-7, 268-pound defensive lineman took another step on his unusual journey Wednesday when he signed a letter of intent with Arizona.
Key is the highest-profile local recruit for the second of college football’s two signing days. Most of the area’s blue-chip players made it official in December, but Key needed more time after ending his football layoff just months ago.
He played youth football for the Cardinals, based at Harlan High School, and the Bridgeport Hurricanes but quit after seventh grade.
“I was getting hurt a lot, and I was getting kind of good at basketball,” Key said. “So I wasn’t really messing with football at the time.” That generated a lot of surprise. “People always asked me if I play football,” he said.
But his focus was on hoops. He spent a year at Leo before transferring to Kenwood. Halfway through his junior season, Key transferred again to Morgan Park.
He was still a basketball player but thinking of getting back to football. Morgan Park basketball coach Nick Irvin helped nudge the process along.
“He played open gym, and he was rough and physical,” Irvin said. “I went to CJ [Morgan Park football coach Chris James], and I told him [Key] might be good at football because he was tough.”
James is eternally grateful for the heads-up.
“I think that was really unselfish of Nick,” James said. “You can always use a 6-7 guy.”
Once Key was involved in football again, he was all-in. He gave up playing AAU basketball to condition for football and take a crash course in the sport.
“He literally didn’t know how to celebrate,” James said. “Learning the stance, what’s my technique, what front are we playing. It was a steep learning curve, but he got it.”
It helped that Morgan Park has two defensive line coaches who played in Division I: Demetrius Cooper (Michigan State) and Jareem Fleming (Eastern Illinois).
But Key didn’t know exactly when he was going to be able to play. His eligibility still was being processed after the transfer from Kenwood. He found out just hours before Morgan Park’s season opener against Sandburg that he would be playing that night.
When he got the good news from James, Key said, “I was so excited. It was crazy, I was nervous. I was locked in the whole day.”
Key’s stock rose quickly. He’s a three-star prospect, rated 32nd among Illinois seniors in 247Sports.com composite rankings.
He picked up offers from Illinois and Southern Illinois, but Arizona felt like the right fit.
“The coaching staff, they were real genuine to my family,” Key said. “They’ve been recruiting me since October. They’ve been showing a lot of love to me.”
The Arizona coaches like Key enough to envision him playing as a true freshman, a remarkable outlook for someone who has all of 12 games of high school experience.
But that wouldn’t surprise James, who knows just how far his star pupil has come in such a short time.
“I thought he could be a D-I prospect,” James said. “I didn’t know he could be this high.”