Santa Barbara High senior quarterback Deacon Hill has been bumped up to the four-star level for college football prospects by the recruiting site 247Sports.
The 6-foot-4, 225-pound Hill, who has committed to Wisconsin, was a three-star recruit during his junior year.
His rise to the next level gives Wisconsin seven four-star recruits in their 2021 class and six Top247 prospects, said Evan Flood of 247Sports.com.
“I love the upside with Deacon,” 247Sports national director of scouting Barton Simmons told the website Badger247,com. “He’s a big dude and he’s not going to run away from anybody, but he’s more athletic than you think in terms of his pocket movements and agility.”
Hill rushed for three touchdowns to go with 13 TD passes and 1,074 passing yards during Santa Barbara’s playoff run to the CIF-SS Division 8 finals last fall.
Video Highlights of Hill’s junior season
“He also looks like he has one of the strongest arms in this class,” Simmons continued. “He can flick the ball down field effortlessly regardless of conditions or base set-up. I think delivery is getting more and more important in today’s game and he can play with arm angles really effectively. He’s also a first-year starter with really strong athletic pedigree who seems to me to have a really high ceiling.
“There’s just a lot to like to me.”
Hill comes from an athletic family. His parents, Pe’a and Cathy, were both collegiate athletes. Sisters Sami, Kodi and Abbi are water polo players. Sami and Kodi were All-Americans at UCLA, and Abbi just completed her freshman season with the Bruins, earning first-team All-American honors. Sami played on the U.S. water polo women’s national team that won the gold medal at the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.
As a junior, Hill passed for 3,102 yards and 35 touchdowns, completing 58.1 percent of his passes. He had only seven interceptions.
“We hinted at this year ago that Hill could be a candidate to move up over the course of the next year as he got more Friday night action,” 247sports national recruiting editor Brandon Huffman told Badger 247. “He moved up after his junior season and, following good offseason performances at the Under Armour Camp and the Elite 11 Regional, the continued development couldn’t be ignored any longer and Hill moved into the Top 247.”
Hill and the Santa Barbara football team are waiting for the school district to release its phase one plan on fall sports teams returning to activity.
Santa Barbara, San Marcos and Dos Pueblos just completed their dead periods.