After just that one season of high school football, and after a one-day camp at Duke in June, he committed this summer to the Blue Devils.
It sounds like a neat story, what high school sports should be about. Two coaches help a student discover his true athletic calling, one that leads, rather quickly, to a Division I scholarship at one of the better academic institutions in the nation.
There's only one problem.
That's not exactly how it all went down, Nash said. Oh, that meeting did take place. But the senior contends it had nothing to do with his decision to go out for football.
What persuaded him? A deal he made with a friend, Marquis Roberson, a lineman on the football team.
"We made a bet," Nash said. "If I played football, he had to play basketball."
So much for guidance counseling.
Not surprisingly, Nash won that "bet."
So did Duke.
The Blue Devils will get a wide receiver with great size (6-foot-4, 185 pounds), speed (4.4 seconds in the 40-yard dash, St. Clair said), hands, and smarts who can elevate to get the ball. Nash has a 3.3 grade-point average, plans to take three honors courses in his senior year - English, history, and science - and wants to study pre-veterinary medicine at Duke.
"If he wasn't as academically inclined, he would have never been able to pick up the intricacies of playing wide receiver as quickly as he did," St. Clair said of Nash, who continues to play varsity basketball. "You tell Anthony, you show him it one time, he has it down."
If only getting him on the football field was that easy.
St. Clair had tried during Nash's freshman year to put him in a helmet and pads. Nash recalled telling St. Clair that he would come out, but didn't. So St. Clair gave it another shot, this time with basketball coach Keith Cochran. Their approach was simple.
