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The thing that strikes now-Aspen High School football head coach Eric McCready the most about Henry Hurd is simple: his love for the game.
McCready, laughing, recalls when Hurd — who enters his senior year this fall for the Skiers — came in as the tall, gangly freshman that maybe seemed best suited for his other sports, basketball and baseball.
“It was always odd to me seeing him as a freshman on the football field. He was never like, ‘Oh, he’s a naturally gifted football player.’ He wasn’t,” McCready said. “He was easily more gifted of a baseball player and a basketball player, but he just loved football.”
The second thing that McCready thinks of is Hurd’s unwavering, tactical drive for the sport. One that four years later has led to a more-filled-out Hurd climbing up the state rankings and earning a coveted Division I football commitment to his preferred school.
Hurd announced on June 21 his commitment to Brown University to continue his career on the gridiron — and get an Ivy League education.
“I love the coaches the most of any school; they were great in the recruiting process,” Hurd said. “I love the offense they run there, that they throw it 47 times per game on average and to big receivers and tight ends like me. … I wanted that D1 football but I also wanted a good academic school, so that actually narrowed the list down quite a bit.”
Hurd said he was “targeted and focused” in his recruiting, looking for the right program. He said that while some recruits try to rack up as many offers as they can, he honed in — and got — four specific ones: Brown, Northwestern, Notre Dame and Princeton.
It was no surprise to McCready that Hurd — who scored a perfect 36 on the ACT in his freshman year — brought the same intentionality he had on the Aspen turf and in the classroom to picking his next step.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had somebody that’s just dedicated and committed to football, to want to try to pursue that at the next level,” McCready said. “Henry is one of those kids: very special, not only talented but very purposeful for a high school kid.”
Hurd, now 6 foot, 5 inches tall and 215 pounds, according to his Twitter profile, has rapidly ascended the state’s prep prospect rankings. According to Prep Redzone Colorado — and accessed via Hurd’s Twitter page — Hurd is currently ranked 15th overall in the state, and top three at tight end.
In his junior year, he earned an all-state honorable mention leading all classes in receiving yards, receptions and touchdowns.
McCready praised his ability to catch the ball anywhere within the range of his frame.
Hurd joins a Bears program he calls “on the rise.” They had a 5-5 record last year, reaching .500 for the first time since 2015.
In a high school sports culture pushing more toward club and private prep schools, Hurd said it was important to him to show he could get where he wanted to by wearing the Skier red.
“It’s really important for me to do it from here, my hometown,” Hurd said. “I just wanted to prove it can be done. You don’t need to play at all these big schools, you just need to work hard.”
Hurd thanked his coaches for investing in him and his dad for sacrificing countless hours taking him to Denver on weekends for training, and spending almost all of last summer in Chicago training, as well.
“I’ve been really blessed to have such an amazing coaching staff … they’ve been super invested in me,” Hurd said. “And another person is my family, my dad, has really sacrificed so much for me.”
Hurd said he isn’t sure what he’ll pursue academically at Brown yet, noting that their business and economics departments were interesting to him.
But before all that, he’s got his senior year at Aspen to finish, with some still to prove wearing the pads.
“Especially at all the skill positions, but really everywhere, we’re finally seniors,” Hurd said. “We’ve had a couple of disappointing years for the talent that we’ve had, but we got 20 kids in the weight room everyday. We’re finally building that culture back up … now we have all those kids there. I think that’s huge for us and I’m really excited to see what we can do this year.”