Miami baseball camps and a Canes ‘fanatic’: The ties that helped push Elijah Arroyo to UM
.JPG "North Marion High School Coach Stephen Field on the field as Booker T. Washington hosts North Marion at Traz Powell Stadium in a preseason game on Friday, August 21, 2015.")
Elijah Arroyo got off the phone with Stephen Field on Thursday and immediately went to call his grandfather. Marvin Hudson is a Miami Hurricanes “fanatic,” Arroyo said, and the hotly sought-after recruit knew he could trust his advice.
Arroyo told his grandfather he was thinking of orally committing to Miami — the team Hudson helped teach Arroyo to love by taking him up to games in Miami Gardens and decking him out in Hurricanes gear when Arroyo lived in Palmetto Bay. Hudson told Arroyo to sleep on the idea and see how he felt the next day as he gave his grandson an honest assessment about his feelings toward the current state of the program.
“He told me the good things and then his concerns about Miami,” Arroyo said. “He knows a lot about them.”
On Friday, Arroyo still felt the same way. He called Field, the Hurricanes’ tight ends coach, to tell him he wanted to be a Hurricane. “The pick is in,” the four-star tight end tweeted and Sunday he publicly announced his commitment to Miami on Twitter.
Arroyo didn’t always think the Hurricanes would be the choice, though. Born in Orlando, Arroyo moved to South Florida when he was a baby and became a Miami Hurricanes fan, attending baseball camps in Coral Gables and rooting for the Hurricanes every Saturday. At 7, Arroyo moved to Mexico, and he lived in Cancun until he was about 12, when he moved to Texas.
Until last year, Arroyo was mostly a left-handed quarterback. He played quarterback for the freshman team at Independence in Frisco as a freshman in 2017, then started his sophomore year as the junior varsity quarterback for three games before Knights coach Kyle Story finally pulled him up to varsity, where he rode the bench as he transitioned to his new position.
Between his sophomore and junior seasons, Arroyo grew about three or four inches to his current 6-foot-4, 210-pound stature.
“All of a sudden,” Story said, “I was looking way up at him rather than eye to eye.”
Arroyo transformed from an unknown into one of the top tight end prospects in the country. The junior caught 48 passes for 648 yards and five touchdowns last year as offers started to trickle in for the under-the-radar prospect. The SMU Mustangs were one of the first in the mix and Arroyo started to build a relationship with offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee. When Lashlee left Dallas for Miami in January, Arroyo was one of the first players he made an offer to. Arroyo doesn’t often show much emotion, Story said, but he showed up at school the next day with a big smile on his face.
Since then, Arroyo’s recruitment has exploded. He’s now the No. 13 tight end in the country, according to the 247Sports.com composite rankings for the Class of 2021, and holds more than 20 offers.
“If you would’ve told me that this was going to happen last year or like a year and a half ago,” Arroyo said, “I wouldn’t believe you.”
Still, other teams were ahead of the Hurricanes, Arroyo said. Even when he put out a top 10 last month, Arroyo didn’t know he was going to commit to Miami. Until Saturday, the Texas A&M Aggies held the vast majority of predictions in the 247Sports Crystal Ball projection for where Arroyo would end up.
The Hurricanes didn’t vault into the lead until last month.
“It was really just during this quarantine stuff,” Arroyo said.
Arroyo started talking with Field more and more, and the tight ends coach started having frequent film sessions with the athlete. Arroyo already knew all about Miami’s tight end tradition, but Field started to lay out specifically how the Hurricanes might use Arroyo, who didn’t play with his hand on the ground at all in 2019. Lashlee said his offense values athletic tight ends and Arroyo, who is also a high jumper with a personal best of 6-2, looks like a fit in the spread.
The family’s familiarity with Florida helped during this time, too. Arroyo still has a lot of family in South Florida, and he has an idea of what campus is like even though he never got to visit as a recruit.
Arroyo is the first out-of-state commitment in the Hurricanes’ 2021 recruiting class, but Miami has always truly felt like home for the blue-chip prospect.
“He’s got the stuff all over his garage about Miami and the football team,” Story said. “His parents were really excited about Miami, as well, with the family being there, with parts of their family being there, and I think that had a big influence.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2020 at 4:09 PM.
