Emporia High graduate Michael Kennett still remembers the day he learned what a curveball was.
He was only 7 then, playing catch in his grandmother’s yard with his cousin Shaun Hill.
Kennett was expecting a straight, easy toss. What he got was much different.
“I remember thinking,” Kennett said, “that was the fastest ball I’d ever seen come at me.”
Kennett, now 24, remembers crying, then throwing a fit after the ball whacked against his skin.
Little did he know the fireball — the one from his 11-year-old first cousin — came from what would later be a million-dollar arm.
The name should sound familiar for NFL followers and fantasy football geeks alike.
Shaun Hill, for the last two weeks, has been the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers.
In those games, the lowly 49ers have gone 2-0.
Those impressed by Emporian Clint Bowyer’s rise from dirt racer to NASCAR star should find it just as easy to cheer for the Kansas kid Hill — one that believed in his quarterbacking abilities when literally when no one else did.
After graduating from Parsons High School, Hill received almost no looks from college coaches as a quarterback. His only Division-I and Division-II offers came as a punter.
Hill didn’t want to give up on the position. He signed with Hutchinson Community College, where he still had to compete for the starting job.
In his two years there, he earned all-conference honors. He also played well enough to sign on with Maryland.
Again, Hill was guaranteed nothing.
His senior year, he won the starting job, then led the Terrapins to an ACC Championship and also the Orange Bowl.
After all that, he was once again told he wasn’t good enough — this time by NFL scouts.
Hill went undrafted, but that didn’t deter him either. He signed on with the Minnesota Vikings, won the third-string quarterback job, then went to NFL Europe for a one-year stint there.
Then, he waited, clipboard in hand the whole time. He served six years as a backup QB in Minnesota and San Francisco.
Until this year, he’d had only two snaps in the NFL. Both of them were kneeldowns in 2005.
His opportunity finally came three weeks ago. When 49ers backup quarterback Trent Dilfer went down with an injury, Hill stepped in and completed 22 of 27 passes for 181 yards and a touchdown in a 27-7 loss to Minnesota.
He did it all while an anxious Kennett listened to a radio broadcast of the game back in Kansas.
“Honestly, I was just hoping he wouldn’t mess up and throw interceptions,” Kennett said. “I was fine with him making the short passes and getting completions. I just wanted him to look good and get a job for next year.”
Hill looked even better the next two weeks.
He completed 21-of-28 passes for 197 yards with a passing and rushing touchdown in a 20-13 victory over the Bengals, then threw three more TD passes in a 21-19 win over Tampa Bay the next week.
Hill, who won’t play in the final game because of a back injury, has done so well that some fans have called for him to be the starter over former No. 1 overall draft pick Alex Smith.
As for Kennett, he doesn’t curse the fact that the football genes missed him.
“I’m not frustrated because it takes a lot of work to get where Shaun’s at, and it takes a lot of natural ability and talent as well,” Kennett said. “A lot of people don’t get that far.”
Kennett played only one season of football, and that was a youth flag football league.
He said he had the ball thrown to him once when was standing alone in the end zone.
Naturally, he dropped it.
Kennett, a cross country runner in high school, didn’t try out for the EHS football team, and his parents, Danny and Vickie, didn’t allow him to play in tackle football leagues.
“At the time when I was little, I didn’t really know why they wouldn’t let me play football,” Kennett said. “Now that I’m older and I can look back and see the scrawny person that I was and that I was a pretty big crybaby, I can understand why they didn’t let me play.”
Kennett still has been able to become involved with the sport. Now a teacher at Logan Junior High in Topeka, Kennett was an assistant coach on the 7th-grade football team last year.
Maybe it’s in his blood.
Or maybe he’s still just a little scared of curveballs.
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