Smithtown West's Nick DeVito shines at fourth annual National Football Foundation QB challenge

Nick DeVito became Smithtown West’s starting quarterback as a junior and led the Bulls to an 8-2 record and a playoff win.

He showed that he’s ready to emerge as one of the top signal-callers on Long Island at the fourth annual National Football Foundation Boys QB Challenge on Saturday at Smithtown West. The rising senior impressed in various skill tests to win the overall competition.

“It’s really cool. To do it at the home turf makes it even better,” DeVito said. “My receivers really helped me out today. My family has always been with me, so for them to come out today and [to] make them proud, it feels good.”

DeVito threw for 850 yards and eight touchdowns and ran for 240 yards and four scores last season. He was one of 15 quarterbacks who endured tests of accuracy, anticipation, touch, arm strength, mobility and football IQ.

Smithtown East’s Antonio Marrone won the IQ award for the second year in a row. Before the skills challenges, the athletes took a written test in which they had to dissect different defensive looks.

“We had to identify fronts and blitzes .  .  . That’s more of a college thing,” Marrone said. “In high school, it’s more about knowing what coverages a defense runs and what blitzes they send.”

Marrone, Long Island Lutheran’s Peyton Robinson and Luke Taff of Half Hollow Hills West tied for second place in the overall competition.

Ethan Dizon of Syosset won the accuracy test. He threw for 1,613 yards and 15 TDs as a junior. Two years ago, Syosset’s Mustafa Mozawalla won the overall competition to put himself on the map.

“For me, the college recruiting process has been a little slow, so hopefully this will speed things up and coaches will see me more,” Dizon said. “Accuracy is a big thing that college coaches like. Hopefully getting the accuracy award will help a lot.”

His receiver, Raghav Ghosh, won the most outstanding receiver award.

Northport’s Simon Blissett dazzled in the long ball test, unloading passes of 63 and 62 yards to win the arm strength competition. Saifullah Asra, who will take over as Farmingdale’s starter in his senior year, earned top marks for anticipation.

This year, the NFF added another component. Each team that had a QB selected to participate in the challenge competed in a 7-on-7 evaluation on Wednesday that was graded by Jonathan Gill, who coached college football for more than 20 years — including at Long Island University — and serves as the director of the Long Island QB Challenge.

On Friday night, the NFF hosted a leadership symposium at Orlin & Cohen in Woodbury, where the quarterbacks heard from several speakers with college and NFL experience.

The speakers were John Paci III, a former Hansen Award winner from Huntington who played with the Jets and Washington; Michael Willett, the CEO of WalkOn Nation, who starred at North Babylon and played for Central Florida; Danny Bonaventura, a Hauppauge native who is associate athletic director for academic affairs at Robert Morris, and Mike Pellegrino, the 2009 Hansen Award winner from Connetquot who won two Super Bowls with the Patriots and currently is the Bills’ defensive backs coach.

“It’s really important to come away with something more than, ‘Hey, we got some free apparel and we competed,’ ” said Len Genova, president of the NFF’s Suffolk chapter. “It’s about informing them, and hopefully they took one thing away from each of the speakers. If they did and it’s something they remember, then it’s a big win.”

The challenge has been a major success the last four years and Genova plans to keep growing and improving the event.

“It gives you a game-like environment and you’re competing in July,” Marrone said. “I think it’s gonna keep growing and the drills will keep advancing. I’m excited to see what it turns into in the future.”