Tag: Chaminade-Madonna Prep (Hollywood FL)

ESPN channels to air 6 high school football games during kickoff event

ESPN will air six high school football games, including matchups with top-10 teams Bishop Gorman, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Bosco and Chaminade-Madonna.

As prep football gets back into full swing, the Worldwide Leader in Sports will bring back its ESPN High School Football Kickoff for the 15th year.

From Aug. 16-25, ESPN will feature six games featuring 28 players ranked in its top 300 for the classes of 2025 and 2026. According to the press release, eleven of these players have committed to Div. I college football programs.

Related: Watch high school football live this season on the NFHS Network

Though it’s just the first week of the season for many teams, this event will showcase some of the best matchups of the season, including two games between top 10 teams: Bishop Gorman (Las Vegas, Nev.) plays St. Thomas Aquinas (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.), and St. John Bosco (Bellflower, Calif.) goes up against Chaminade-Madonna (Hollywood, Fla.).

Below is the full schedule and the channels on which the game will appear. All times are Eastern Time. The rankings align with the USA TODAY High Sports Super 25 preseason rankings, released earlier this week.

Friday, Aug. 16

No. 12 Carrollton (Ga.) at Woodward Academy (College Park, Ga).

Game time: 8 p.m.

Channel: ESPN2

Thursday, Aug. 22

Grayson (Loganville, Ga.) at Thompson (Alabaster, Ala.)

Game time: 8 p.m.

Channel: ESPN2

Friday, Aug. 23

No. 10 Milton (Ga.) vs. No. 16 American Heritage (Plantation, Fla.)

Game time: 7 p.m.

Channel: ESPN

Saturday, Aug. 24

No. 3 Bishop Gorman (Las Vegas) at No. 8 St. Thomas Aquinas (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)

Game time: 4 p.m.

Channel: ESPN

No. 5 St. John Bosco (Bellflower, Calif.) vs. No. 6 Chaminade-Madonna (Hollywood, Fla.)

Game time: 8 p.m.

Channel: ESPN2

Sunday, Aug. 25

Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, (Ga.) at Baylor School (Chattanooga, Tenn.)

Game time: 1 p.m.

Channel: ESPN

Gavin Owens, 2025 pro-style quarterback from Rabun Gap Nacoochee High, participates in drills from during Dabo Swinney High School Camp (USA TODAY Network)

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Ohio State football commit Jeremiah Smith is showing why he is the nation’s top recruit

Jeremiah Smith has three touchdown catches already for Chaminade-Madonna.

It isn’t even halftime yet and Jeremiah Smith has three touchdown catches. The five-star wide receiver, an Ohio State football recruit, is showing why he is the nation’s top high school player.

And why the recruiting services need to wake up and make him the No. 1 recruit in the nation.

Smith, a wide receiver out of Chaminade-Madonna (Hollywood, Florida), is the most complete wide receiver to come out in quite some time. He has the requisite size (6-foot-3, 198 pounds), very good speed and possesses excellent balance, footwork and agility.

An excellent route runner, he uses his frame well and consistently comes down with contested catches.

Chaminade-Madonna, ranked No. 2 in the nation in the USA TODAY HSS Super 25, is up 44-0 on Lakewood (St. Petersburg, Florida) at halftime. This touchdown is spectacular, but shows the subtle ability to stop his route, turn, and then powerfully shrug off a defensive back for a touchdown.

It’s some pretty nice balance to get into the end zone on this touchdown catch.

With what presumably is going to be a win this weekend, Chaminade-Madonna will improve to 10-0 on the season.

Highlights: Chaminade-Madonna takes down Miami Central in fight of top-5 teams

Chaminade-Madonna football staved off Miami Central in a game with explosive first-half offenses and then dominant second-half defenses.

The high school football scheduling overlords blessed us early in the season with heavy hitters facing off on Thursday, a national matchup between two top-5 teams in the Super 25 as No. 3 Chaminade-Madonna (Hollywood, Fla.) took on cross-town Miami Central (Fla.)

The Chaminade-Madonna Lions staved off the Central Rockets with a 31-28 that consisted of a high-powered offensive dual in the first half, defensive dominance from both sides in the second, and a weather delay that forced a pause of almost two hours.

The teams combined for 52 points in the first half as Chaminade-Madonna quarterback Cedrick Bailey, a North Carolina State commit, passed for four touchdowns, two of which were caught by five-star Ohio State commit Jeremiah Smith. On the other hand, the Rockets went to the ground, as three players rushed for touchdowns. At one point, Central held the lead but finished the half trailing 31-21.

Central shut out Chaminade-Madonna in the second half. The team could barely make up any ground because the Lions’ defense matched them step-for-step, trading interceptions and punishing offensive players.

The Rockets managed a third-quarter touchdown, but neither team scored in the fourth quarter and Central spoiled the chance to tie with a missed 26-yard field goal attempt.

In the end, after an explosive first half, the defense sealed the game. Three-star Chaminade-Madonna safety Curtis Janiver, a Florida Atlantic commit, had two interceptions, including one with less than a minute and a half remaining to put the game away.

Chaminade-Madonna maintained its spot as the best team in Florida and improved its record to 5-0 as Central fell to a 1-2 record that completely misses the mark on how good of a team it is — its two losses are both to top-3 teams, with this three-point defeat at the hands of the Lions and a four-point loss to No. 2 Bishop Gorman.

Central’s schedule is brutal. Chaminade-Madonna made a case as not just a top-3 team but maybe a top-2 or top-1. Once again, thank you to the schedule overseers for putting this rotation together.

SCORES:

National

Super 25

After Thursday night, is future Ohio State wide receiver Jeremiah Smith the No. 1 player in the nation?

Ohio State football commit Jeremiah Smith was tremendous again on Thursday night.

It’s time to have a real conversation that Ohio State football commit Jeremiah Smith might be the top recruit in the nation. The future Buckeyes wide receiver is turning in big performance after big performance.

And, after Thursday night, Smith has had yet another big performance in a battle of two teams ranked in the USA TODAY HSS Super 25 football rankings.

A class of 2024 recruit, Smith was tremendous on Thursday night for No. 3 Chaminade (Holywood, Florida) in a 31-28 win over No. 5 Miami Central (Miami, Florida).

The five-star wide receiver had two touchdown catches including a spectacular one-handed grab where he showed incredible coordination and body control.

It is hard to not begin thinking of Smith as possibly the top recruit in the nation. Not only are his statistics gaudy (he came into the game with 516 receiving yards and seven touchdowns in the season’s first four games) but he is consistently making big plays.

These are the kind of plays that project well to the Big Ten and Ohio State next year.

 

Smith isn’t simply overpowering opposition, as top recruits often do at this level. He is playing at a different level with uncontested catches but also repeated instances of battling for balls and coming down with clutch catches.

He is using the entirety of his 6-foot-3, 200-pound frame as well as his great length to make the kind of catches that he will need to make on Saturdays next fall.

A consensus five-star recruit, three recruiting services have Smith as the second-best player in the nation. There is only one outlier as ESPN has Smith as the ninth-best recruit in this class.

But if Smith hasn’t already made a convincing case, he could very well be the No. 1 recruit in the nation by the time signing day rolls around.