WATSONVILLE — A year after his world was turned upside down, inside out and every other direction imaginable, Corralitos native Aidan Daily signed his letter of intent to play football for the University of Memphis Tigers.
“I’m beyond excited,” Daily said in a phone interview on Monday. “It took a long time to get to this point. It was a really, really long process for me but it feels good to finally be done with it and committed to a school.”
Daily, a star two-sport athlete at St. Francis and a 2014 graduate of the private school in Watsonville, was regarded as one of the top junior college punting prospects in the nation after two years at Cabrillo College but ran into a flurry of roadblocks after his 2015 season came to an end.
Daily was verbally committed to play at the University of Akron starting in 2016 but decided to back out of the commitment because he wanted to stay home for a year with his father, who was set to have surgery to remove a benign tumor in his back near his spine.
His father’s surgery went better than expected and Daily decided that he would be ready for the 2016 season. He said he had an offer on the table from Northern Illinois University to play last fall but had to ultimately turn down the scholarship because he had broken his ankle wake boarding just hours before the Huskies reached out.
He had to redshirt last season and wasn’t fully healthy until about two months ago. Even though he had missed out on two scholarships, Daily said he had no doubt that he would make it back to the field and earn another.
“I knew that no matter what, I was going to come back,” said Daily, who officially signed with the Tigers on March 20. “I’ve worked too hard and too long to just give up like that.”
Memphis is an NCAA Division I program in the American Athletic Conference and is in the middle of a football renaissance under second-year head coach Mike Norvell, who led the Tigers to an eight-win season and a bowl game appearance during his first year at the helm — something no other Memphis rookie head coach had accomplished in the program’s 100-plus years of existence.
The Tigers carried a trio of senior punters into their 2017 spring season in Evan Michael, Nick Jacobs and Spencer Smith. Both Jacobs and Smith saw time behind the long snapper last season. The latter led the duo with 45 punts, averaging a little more than 45 yards per punt and sticking 11 inside the opponent’s 20-yard line.
Daily, who said he would petition to have last year’s season count as a medical redshirt so that he could redshirt this upcoming fall, said he spent time around the rest of the punters, kickers and long snappers during his visit with Memphis and explained that was one of the biggest reasons he signed with the Tigers.
“They’re really tight knit and you could tell that they’re their own little family within the football family,” he said. “They all just joke around like they’re best friends. That was really nice to see.”
Daily was a bright spot for the Seahawks despite the program’s struggles over the past few seasons. As a freshman he averaged 37.4 yards per punt and left 16 inside the 20, according to the stats kept on CCCAAsports.org. He only continued to impress as a sophomore, averaging 37.8 yards per punt, while landing nine inside the 20 and forcing 16 fair catches to only five touchbacks. Daily was also the Seahawks’ kicker, nailing six field goals — including a 47-yarder as a freshman — and 26 extra points in two years.
At St. Francis, Daily punted and was also the team’s place kicker during his junior and senior seasons. A terrific athlete in his own right, the 6-foot-1, 185-pounder also played four years of varsity soccer for the Sharks. Starring at striker and defender as a senior, Daily helped the team record its winningest season in program history.
Daily, who started playing soccer in kindergarten, had a handful of offers to play soccer at the collegiate level but decided that he wanted to pursue football heading into his senior season.
“I had a better feeling about playing football,” Daily said.
