By Greg Levinsky
Over the course of a week in January, big-time college football programs like Louisville, Miami and Rutgers called Demetrius Campbell to offer him a scholarship.
The junior offensive lineman at Orlando Christian Prep is a well-known commodity to some of the sport’s most notable coaches. He isn’t here in Maine, so let’s change that.
Why should a Mainer care about a 6-foot-6, 300-pound offensive line prospect from a Florida high school? Well, the 17-year-old Campbell lived most of his life here and will always proudly identify as one of us.
“I feel like Maine really made me as a person,” Campbell told me in a recent phone conversation. “The people around me were good people and it was just a great place to grow up.”
Campbell’s gridiron story began in Windham where he grew up. It, at least temporarily, ended rather quickly. He started playing football early in elementary school but stopped after the third grade because his biggest-in-his-class type size rendered him to the offensive line.
“Because I was too big they wouldn’t let me run the ball, so I just didn’t really like it after that,” Campbell said.
So Campbell turned to baseball and basketball instead, including a stint on the AAU circuit with Cooper Flagg. He and his family later moved to Scarborough, and as a high school freshman at Waynflete, he thought about returning to football, now OK with his size and role on the field. But the Portland-based private school doesn’t field a team and other options fell through.
The Campbell family relocated to Florida ahead of the next school year. Lynn Campbell, Demetrius’s father, remembers their tour of Orlando Christian Prep. A football coach intercepted the family as they made their way toward the basketball coaches’ office.
“Oh my God,” Lynn remembers the coach saying as the then-rising sophomore walked the narrow corridor.
“That really deepened Demetrius’s desire to play,” Lynn said.
Campbell returned to football last fall, immediately falling in love with his role on the offensive line. The ability to overpower a defender on his own, the pinpoint movements to open up opportunities for the offense. And of course, the pancake blocks.
Most Maine athletes say they carry a chip on their shoulder. Campbell is no different. His teammates say they’ve never heard of Maine. They tend to doubt we exist and say he’s from Canada
“I’m the first person they’ve heard of from here,” he said.
They’re happy to have him. Campbell broke out this season and with a performance at an offseason five-on-five lineman camp. He’s up to 10 scholarship offers from some of the country’s best teams. Campbell’s older brother, Dom, recently went through a similar process. Now a sophomore on the Howard basketball team, Dom weighed his options out of high school before choosing Notre Dame, later choosing the Bison after entering the transfer portal after his freshman season.
Dom’s journey supplied lessons for Demetrius, as well as Lynn and his wife, Kathleen.
“The biggest thing I took away was we have to back up as parents and not impose what we want for their college experience, rather have him lead the charge,” Lynn said. “It’s one of those things where we step back and let our kids make that choice.”
For Dememtrius, the choice, which should be made by mid-summer, hinges on finding a coaching staff who supports him on and off the field. His phone constantly lights up with messages from college coaches recruiting him.
“I want to be able to go hang out with a coach and just talk about anything with them,” he said.
A mystery to Mainers no more, monitor the name Demetrius Campbell moving forward. He may not play here anymore, but we should embrace him just the same.
