Terrel Hunt could have called it off and no one would have blamed him.
But a day after his father, Darryl Dockery, died of kidney failure and nearly a year to the day his mother Katrina died of ovarian cancer, the quarterback on Wednesday afternoon sat at a table in the Christ the King gymnasium and signed a National Letter of Intent to play at Syracuse University.
“I owed it to both of them,” said Hunt, a two-sport star at Christ the King. “I worked this hard to get here and I’m not going to just stop. My dad wouldn’t want me to stop anyway. It hurts a lot, but football and basketball are the only things that get my mind off of it.”
Hunt is one of four locals who signed with the Orange. He joins Fort Hamilton wide receiver/defensive back Brandon Reddish, The Post’s All-City Player of the Year; his teammate, two-way lineman Ivan Foy; and Archbishop Stepinac defensive end Donnie Simmons.
Next season, Syracuse will have a total of 10 locals on its roster, which was a point of emphasis for coach Doug Marrone when he took over two years ago. There we two when he came aboard.
“It’s an area that has a lot of talent,” said Marrone, a Bronx product who attended Lehman High School. “When I was in high school, a lot of kids [from New York City] got overlooked. There are a lot of diamonds in the rough that are not only from the bigger programs, but they are at smaller schools, too. We’re not gonna let any kids slip through the cracks.”
Syracuse landed every city player it recruited outside of Lincoln All-American Ishaq Williams, who picked Notre Dame.
“New York has a lot of talent and now everybody can see that when we come as one, we’ll be very hard to stop,” Reddish said.
List of Division I-A players from NYC
Devon Cajuste, Holy Cross — Stanford
Ivan Foy, Fort Hamilton — Syracuse
Tyrell Goodman, Archbishop Stepinac — Akron
Terrel Hunt, Christ the King — Syracuse
Wilbert Lee, Boys & Girls — Connecticut
Brandon Reddish, Fort Hamilton — Syracuse
Donnie Simmons, Archbishop Stepinac — Syracuse
