McALLEN — McAllen High’s Hunter Curl and Holden Hood have taken the football field together for as long as they can remember. From their Pop Warner days in elementary, to playing side-by-side at Morris Middle School, Curl and Hood have been nearly inseparable.
When the clock struck zero on their high school careers at McHi, however, the two best friends were unsure if they’d share the field again.
Still, the duo knew they both wanted to play at the next level. After nearly four months of trying to figure out their collegiate futures, the duo made an official decision.
Surrounded by their coaches, family and friends, Curl and Hood signed their national letters of intent to play football at Southwestern University on Tuesday at the McAllen High Gym, setting them up to take the field together for another four years.
Southwestern is a Division III program in Georgetown that competes in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference.
“He (Hood) has been a great friend to me my entire life,” Curl said. “I’ve been a great friend to him. I couldn’t ask for someone better to sign with and play football with. We always had the dream to keep playing football after high school and now it’s happening.”
The duo played a key role in leading the Bulldogs to an 8-2 regular season record and their first playoff appearance since 2017 this past season.
Curl took over as the Bulldogs’ starting quarterback during the second game of his sophomore year, helping lead McHi to 29-13 comeback victory over Edinburg North.
“Hunter decided he was going to take the job,” McAllen High offensive coordinator Phillip Romero said. “He did a really good job in a scrimmage against Palmview where everybody started calling him the next version of Johnny Manziel. There was Manziel magic, but we had Hunter magic. He decided it was going to be his job and wasn’t going to let anybody take it from him.”
Since then, Curl has etched his name into the program’s history books, ranking No. 4 in all-time passing touchdowns (42) and No. 5 in all-time passing yards (4,113). As a senior, Curl threw for 1,896 yards and 23 touchdowns, adding 586 yards and seven touchdowns on the ground.
Hood, a two-year starter for McHi, lined up at multiple positions for the Bulldogs, including defensive end and defensive back. He tallied 74 total tackles, three tackles for loss, three forced fumbles, one sack and one interception as a senior.
“We’d put him in so many different places that other teams had to prepare for him,” McAllen High defensive coordinator Ernie Alonzo said. “Coaches would ask me where I was going to put No. 40. That number has a story itself. When I first got him, I thought of him like Pat Tillman, a guy who sacrificed for everybody else. He did that for us. We put him in so many places that at times it wasn’t what was best for him, but what was best for the team. He’s going to be very difficult to replace.”
Curl plans to be a pre-med major at Southwestern, while Hood intends to major in business.
“It’s super exciting knowing we’re both going to be there together,” Hood said. “We’re going for different reasons. He’s a quarterback and I’m a defensive end. But we’re both going to make the best of it. We’ve been talking about this forever. We never thought we were going to go to the same place. It’s just a blessing.”
