By DOUG IRELAND, Journal Sports
The north Louisiana chapter of the National Football Foundation makes difficult choices each winter to narrow a field of roughly two dozen high school senior scholar-athlete nominees to a select group of nine $1,000 scholarship winners.
Then it really gets tough. The Shreveport-based S.M. McNaughton Chapter’s board of directors reconsiders the nine chosen from schools covering the north half of the state, and splits hairs to pick just one as its Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
Tuesday, this year’s winner, Hudson Smith of North Webster High School in Springhill, received national recognition.
The National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame included Smith as it unveiled 63 members of the 2026 NFF Team of Distinction, honoring the nation’s top high school scholar-athletes who have excelled at the very highest levels in the classroom, on the field and by making an impact in their communities. They represent 29 states.
“These remarkable young men have pushed themselves to succeed in every arena imaginable: in the classroom, on the field, and in service to their communities,” said NFF President & CEO Steve Hatchell. “Together, they have compiled an extraordinary record that includes valedictorians, all-state selections, Eagle Scouts, team captains and community leaders.”
Selected from a nationwide pool of 3,500 outstanding candidates identified through the NFF Chapter Network, the members of the team all played their final high school football season last fall. Each NFF chapter is permitted to nominate only one player annually, making inclusion on the Team of Distinction one of the highest honors awarded at the grassroots level of amateur football. Criteria to make the team include (but are not limited to) academic achievement, athletic accolades and community involvement.
Smith, a two-time all-district center for the Knights, was nominated by his coach, Christopher Wilson.
Nicknamed “the Governor,” Smith was in fact elected as governor of 2025 Louisiana Boys State. He was North Webster’s student council vice president, and earned salutatorian honors with a perfect 4.0 grade point average.
Smith was named Springhill’s Mr. Main Street for 2026. He was National Honor Society president and vice president of the student council at North Webster, and was a state tournament qualifier in tennis. Smith was in BETA and the Christian Youth Club.
He credited his teaches, coaches, and most of all, his parents for his success.
“They’ve been a huge motivation for me. I’ve wanted to strive to be like them, because they’ve pushed me forward so much,” Smith said in a KTBS TV interview last fall.
He was among 43 National Honor Society members recognized by the NFF, and 42 multi-sport athletes.
NFF officials said this year marks the ninth year of the NFF Team of Distinction, continuing a 73-year tradition of the NFF Chapter Network honoring the nation’s top scholar-athletes at the grassroots level. Since 1954, NFF chapters have served as the driving force behind the Foundation’s mission to build leaders through football, recognizing excellence while strengthening communities across the country.
The NFF Chapter Network includes more than 12,000 members and positively impacts more than 500,000 student-athletes at 5,000 high schools annually. At the center of that mission are the chapters’ annual scholar-athlete awards banquets, which collectively honor more than 3,500 outstanding high school football players each year while providing more than $1 million in scholarships to support their academic futures.