You Are Athlete Columbus Showcase (MS Standouts)

<p>You Are Athlete has been able to showcase some exciting young talent since adding a stop in Columbus, Ohio and the year 2026 was no different as a handful of top middle school talent in Michigan and Ohio came together to compete.</p>   <p>These four young prospects stood out at the middle school level and showed strong flashes during the middle school part of the You Are Athlete showcase in Columbus last weekend.</p>   <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />   <h2 class="wp-block-heading">2030 OL Andrae Smith Jr (Ohio)</h2>   <p>Andrae Smith Jr is an exciting prospect along the offensive line that immediately catches your attention with his massive 6-foot-4 and 265 pound frame as a rising high school freshman. He is built well for his age, not holding a lot of bad excess weight despite being a bigger prospect for his age, which will help him pack on strong weight during his high school football career.</p>   <p>He has very long arms and they are impossible to work around as even the best edge rushers in attendance could not bend around the talented young tackle. To pair with the length, he can remain low in his stance throughout the rep which helps give him a consistently strong anchor that makes him tough to work through.</p>   <p>He can throw his initial punch high at times, which did lead to him getting beat inside on a rep or two, but as he keeps fine tuning an already advanced technical skillset, he has the potential to be a prominent prospect in the state of Ohio for the next several years.</p>   <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> https://twitter.com/shaynep_media/status/2037931101734256832?s=20 </div></figure>   <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />   <h2 class="wp-block-heading">2031 EDGE Masin Westry (Ohio)</h2>   <p>Masin Westry was a dynamic and explosive pass rusher off the edge in the showcase event and his success extended to the best-on-best segment at the end, where he won his reps and knew how to work off previous moves that he had won with.</p>   <p>He has a good reactionary ability to adjust his method of attack to what the offensive lineman gives him to work with and that was a large part of why he won his reps in the end. He used his explosiveness to bend around the tackle in his first rep in the best-on-best segment. That led to the tackle shooting wide to contain Westry from beating him to the edge, so the young edge rusher adjusted and converted speed to power by attacking his chest that had now opened up and walking him back into the quarterback and eventually putting the offensive lineman on the ground.</p>   <p>As he continues to get bigger and stronger, he will be an exciting young edge rusher prospect to monitor in Ohio.</p>   <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> https://twitter.com/shaynep_media/status/2037931637044887863?s=20 </div></figure>   <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />   <h2 class="wp-block-heading">2030 LB Micah Ben'Israel (Michigan)</h2>   <p>Micah Ben'Israel is an intriguing linebacker prospect from the state of Michigan that stood out during the entire event on Saturday. He has impressive size and burst for his age and has a bright future ahead of him as both a tailback and linebacker, but his best potential might be at the latter.</p>   <p>He was excellent when breaking downhill and in some middle school highlights that have been posted, it seems like that has translated strongly to games. This allows him to be an exciting playmaker at the second level of the defense and can take away rushing lanes at such a young age.</p>   <p>He had a solid showing in coverage and improved throughout the event. His physicality and short area burst gave him the ability to make plays on the ball in the air and break it up at the last second. This will be a prospect to know in the state of Michigan.</p>   <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> https://twitter.com/shaynep_media/status/2037912030653382930?s=20 </div></figure>   <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" />   <h2 class="wp-block-heading">2030 QB [player_tooltip player_id='2082451' first='Brock' last='Smith'] (Michigan)</h2>   <p>[player_tooltip player_id='2082451' first='Brock' last='Smith'] is a young quarterback prospect from the state of Michigan that stood out in the middle school portion of the showcase.</p>   <p>He already has good size at six feet tall with enough velocity to fit throws in tighter windows, something that showed up on the football field in games at the middle school level. He showed great anticipation during his eighth grade season, which only strengthened his ability to make any throw that the defense gives him.</p>   <p>While it was not particularly showed in an event like this where his focus was on throwing the football, he is a dynamic athlete with a lot of natural ability as a runner, giving him a high ceiling with true dual-threat upside.</p>   <p>He has clean mechanics and does a good job of stepping up into the pocket, both of which will help him immediately at the high school level. If there was one thing to improve on, it would be getting rid of the ball quicker as he will not be able to shrug off front seven defenders at the high school level, but if that is the biggest thing you have to learn as a young quarterback, you likely have a pretty strong future.</p>   <p>As he continues to get older, he will get even bigger and stronger, which will only help his game. He is a young quarterback to have on the radar right now in the state of Michigan.</p>   <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> https://twitter.com/BHoward_11/status/2037954272919265571?s=20 </div></figure>

You Are Athlete has been able to showcase some exciting young talent since adding a stop in Columbus, Ohio and the year 2026 was no different as a handful of top middle school talent in Michigan and Ohio came together to compete.