McCarthy becomes first Hitchcock winner from Alabama Christian Academy

Montgomery Academy’s Leighton Robertson and Alabama Christian’s Miller McCarthy were the recipients of the 2021 Jimmy Hitchcock awards. (Contributed)

By TIM GAYLE

Miller McCarthy was the 62nd recipient of the Jimmy Hitchcock Award but the first in the history of Alabama Christian Academy.

Usually, those are honors that could be awarded to several different individuals, but a five-minute conversation with McCarthy will easily convince you why he is such a deserving winner.

“I definitely think it’s super exciting to be such a big part of what’s happened here the last few years, all the records and all that stuff, but being a captain is more about leading your team somewhere than it is about being the face (of the team) or getting all the attention,” McCarthy said. “You just do as much as you can for your teammates to help them succeed and I wouldn’t be anywhere close to where I am now if I didn’t have them backing me up and a great coaching staff and a great school.”  

McCarthy was honored earlier in the week at the annual banquet along with the 32nd female recipient of the award, Montgomery Academy’s Leighton Robertson. Robertson attended the event last year because her brother William was the male recipient, marking the first time a brother-sister duo has won the award. It also marks the third consecutive year a Montgomery Academy senior has won the award. 

But while Robertson was familiar with the award, McCarthy was not.

“When I was a freshman, I was one of the freshman nominees,” he said. “Up until the time I was nominated, I had not heard of it. Now that I’m a senior and I’ve won it, I realize how big a deal it is.”

He is fairly unique in the small-school field, a student-athlete who plays one sport. As a freshman, he was already turning heads with his performance in the classroom.

“He could have taught the class,” said ACA defensive coordinator Michael Summers, who teaches freshman AP world history.

By the time he earned a starting position, he was named captain of the defense, an unheard-of honor for a sophomore.

“I questioned it at the beginning,” McCarthy said. “When he asked me to do it, it was just something that was, ‘Yeah, sure, step up and do it.’ You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do for your team. It was definitely a big step up from what I was expecting, starting my first year, but it was definitely not something that I thought was too overwhelming.”

He would be named captain in 2019 and again in 2020, holding the position throughout his career as the starting linebacker for the Eagles.

“He does the right things all the time,” Summers said. “Whether we’re in the weight room, on the field, off the field, he does the right thing. In the weight room, he’s a fierce competitor, on the field he’s a fierce competitor. He played his entire junior year with a torn labrum. He’s the smartest player I’ve ever had, most dedicated I’ve had as it pertains to knowing the game plan. He’s just that kind of kid, the kind of kid you want your son to grow up to be.”

Summers isn’t talking about McCarthy as an athlete or McCarthy as a student, but rather as a person. He is one of four children adopted by Patrick and Katie Beth McCarthy and, as the oldest, he takes care of his younger siblings as if they were his own children. That made his selection as the Hitchcock Award winner a very special night for the McCarthy family.

“They see us as all their kids so they have the same reaction as if I was biologically related,” McCarthy said. “They were super excited and it was really great to see them have the reaction they did.”

McCarthy finished his career as the Eagles’ all-time leader in single-season solo tackles (115) and career tackles (315) on the field and as a salutatorian with a 4.5 grade-point average in the classroom. Summers knew a player with McCarthy’s instincts could contribute on the collegiate level and tried to get his star recruited but McCarthy declined the opportunity.

“For a period of time, we were actually talking to (colleges) about him playing football, but his parents adopted a baby,” Summers said. “Miller has taken complete ownership of taking care of her and wants to stay as close to home as he can because he wants to be around the baby.”

Instead, McCarthy will attend Alabama, focusing on biology and the university’s pre-med program. And just in case people urge McCarthy to explore Nick Saban’s walk-on program, the 5-foot-11, 195-pounder is a realist.

“As much fun as sports are and as much fun as I’ve had over the past four years, I kind of realized that while it may be fun to play in college it’s not something that could be a career for me,” McCarthy said. “So I decided to pursue (the pre-med program). Ever since I was little, I’ve always been interested in medicine and science, so it just seemed like one of the things I could be good at.”