The highest-rated senior football player in Class AAAAAA this fall has never played a game in the classification, but he’s likely to be a well-known name there by the end of the 2020 season.
Smael Mondon has played his entire career in Class AAAAA with his Paulding County teammates, who will be moving up one class this year as a result of the Georgia High School Association’s most-recent reclassification.
Mondon is the No. 3 senior in Georgia, according to the 247Sports Composite ratings, behind only Bleckley County’s Amarius Mims and Prince Avenue Christian’s Brock Vandagriff, who play in lower classifications. Mondon is a five-star recruit with a reported 37 offers, including Oklahoma, Georgia, Alabama, Auburn and nine other SEC schools.
However, the recruiting process for Mondon, like for so many other players, has been interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. Among other things, a recruiting trip to Oklahoma last week had to be canceled.
“He is one of the better people that is in our school building,” Paulding County coach Van Spence said. “He’s a kid that’s got all these accolades, all this potential notoriety. Kirby Smart. Gus Malzahn, Jeremy Pruitt and Lincoln Riley all came on our campus in January. And that's pretty neat, but he's the same humble kid. I always like to focus on the positive that he still cares about his teammates and it’s not about him. He’s excited. He wants to play ball at Paulding County, he wants to do the best he can for Paulding County and let the chips fall where they may. Just a great kid.”
Mondon is being recruited as an outside linebacker but plays all over the field for the Patriots – offense, defense and special teams. As a junior, he was selected honorable mention all-state by the AJC as a linebacker/running back and first-team all-state by the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association as a defensive back. He also was the Patriots’ second-leading rusher and fourth-leading receiver in 2019, and he has played some quarterback in the Wildcat formation.
“He's just a guy that understands the game,” Spence said. “I mean, he understands the game. It's easy to him as far as blocking schemes, fits, route concepts. He just gets it. And the cool thing about him, in a generation where you have all these big-time 7-on-7 teams and all these camps and showcases, he’s never been to a single one of them. He’s just a Paulding County kid. He's not really into all that stuff. In his mindset, he was just going to work hard, put some quality tape out there and good things will happen, and it's really been a breath of fresh air to watch. He’s 6-3, 218 pounds, runs a low 4.5, he power cleans 325, 330. He's just a freak of an athlete, but it’s all just hard work. And he’s just extremely intelligent.”
This fall, Paulding County will move up with fellow region rivals Carrollton, East Paulding and Rome into Region 5-AAAAAA. They will join returning Region 5 teams Alexander, Douglas County and South Paulding as well as Dalton, which moved over from Region 6. Carrollton, Rome, Alexander, South Paulding and Dalton made the playoffs last season. Paulding County finished 3-7.
“It doesn’t really affect us because we were right on that cusp,” Spence said of the move to AAAAAA. “But what does hurt us is that our new region – I know that some people might try to argue – but I do believe our region is the toughest region top to bottom in the entire state of Georgia. I really do. It's going to be difficult. There are no weekly, ‘Well that's a game we should win,’ because, honestly, looking at our upcoming schedule, every single week in our region we’ll probably be the underdog. … But just like I told our kids, we really don’t care what [the other teams] are doing. We’ve just got to basically continue to work hard and teach these life skills of hard work and pushing through tough times. It's going to take them far, because that's the big picture of what we're trying to do. It’s gonna be fun.”
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