Impact Of A Scholarship: Shane Hall

Those efforts started to pay dividends when his high school coach approached the upperclassmen at South River High School and asked for a list of schools they would consider going to. Hall certainly set his sights high.

“So like the far too confident kid that I was, I just took a screenshot of the Top 20 list was at the time and sent that as my list,” says Hall. “And he told me that might be a bit too ambitious. ‘Why don’t we start thinking about maybe sprinkling a few Division II or III schools in there?’ And I said, ‘Nah. Trust me, that’s the list. I’m going to make it to one of these.’

“And I got better and better and better and trained hard. And with my coaches help, I got there.”

But Maryland wasn’t the first school to take notice or show interest in Hall. That would be Towson, which just happened to be the alma mater of Hall’s father, Clay, who played football for the Tigers from 1987-89.

“Towson was the first program that reached out and started following me,” says Hall. “And at first, it was a little tepid, like, ‘Hey, we’re kind of interested in you.’ And all I could think of was, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing. Are you kidding me?’

“Then at the end of my sophomore year or beginning of my junior year, they told me ‘We’d love to have you.’ And I couldn’t believe it. It was incredible. It was my first taste of somebody actually wanting me. And that kind of went to my head. And then the thought crossed my mind, ‘Well, if they really want me, I wonder if any of those other schools do too?’

“And then I started doing more camps and more showcase stuff, and sure enough other schools started calling. And all of a sudden those Townson calls were nice, but I’ve got Maryland and Hopkins interested in me now, so we’re on a different playing field.

“I remember actually meeting with Towson at XFINITY Center during a Top 205 camp and they tried to offer me and Scott LaRue a spot at Towson. They said we’ll give you X amount and we’ll give him X amount. We need you guys. And we were like, ‘Okay, yeah, that sounds good. But then we talked to each other and we’re like, ‘But it ain’t Maryland.’”