Antoine “Shaky” Smithson became his brother’s keeper.
He did not want his little brother to experience the same cruel, vicious and hard times he did growing up on the rough side of Baltimore.
Smithson, a high school basketball and football star, was one of the students featured in the HBO documentary “Hard Times at Douglass High.”
When he got a chance, he moved far away.
First, he went to East Los Angeles College and then Utah, where he was granted custody of his younger brother, Anthony, in 2009.
Now, Smithson is one of the top returners in the NFL draft, which will be held Thursday through Saturday.
Anthony, a quarterback, is one of the top college recruits in Utah, after leading Highland High to a state championship last season.
Smithson had to get the approval of his mother, Lori, to become Anthony’s legal guardian. She has five kids, and Smithson’s father, Tony, supported the family as best he could before he lost his job as a construction worker and between stints in prison.
Smithson wanted to attempt to break a cycle of dysfunction.
“When my grandmother passed, I was 13,” Smithson said in a telephone interview Monday. “I was forced to help my mother out a lot. I didn’t go to school my ninth-grade year because I was helping my mother out with my little sisters and my little brother. We didn’t want him to go through that.”
He felt that when Anthony turned 14, he had reached a pivotal point in his life.
“In Baltimore, you can go left or you can go right,” Smithson said. “That means you can go to the streets or go right, stay in school and try to reach your potential. We saw that in him, so it was a no-brainer for me to get him when I went to Utah.”
Much like Ray Ray McElrathbey of Atlanta did at Clemson in 2006 to rescue a younger sibling from a tough life situation, Smithson got a waiver from the NCAA to set up a trust to help him raise Anthony with the help of a local church.
Anthony, 17, is flourishing in Salt Lake City.
“It was tough in the beginning, just trying to balance everything,” Smithson said. “I had to make sure that he was doing good in school and was active in sports.”
Smithson had to cut back on his social life.
“I couldn’t party and do the things that my college teammates were doing on the weekends,” Smithson said. “It took away a lot of my free time, but at the end of the day [Anthony has] a 4.0 [GPA], and he led his team to the state championship this year.”
Smithson did pretty well in his spare time as Utah’s top return man. He was the only player in the nation last season with four games of 100 or more yards in punt returns, and he returned two punts for touchdowns. He had an additional game with more than 100 yards in kickoff returns.
Smith was selected to six all-American teams as a returner. He wasn’t invited to the NFL scouting combine, but has had private workouts with Chicago, Arizona and Green Bay.
He was a fan favorite with the Utes and has more than 3,000 friends on his Facebook page.
“It was amazing,” Smithson said of his time in Utah. “Just to go through what I went through to get to this point. ... I feel like I gave him a chance, and today he’s doing great.”
