Published 10:31 am Tuesday, August 5, 2025
By Andrew White
Eli Crawford will be attending Troy University next year as a manager. (THOMAS HUGHES | CONTRIBUTED)
Aiden Smitherman signing a scholarship to Huntington College, the alma mater of his head coach. (THOMAS HUGHES | CONTRIBUTED)
By Andrew White | Staff Writer
Chilton County High School had two members of its basketball program sign scholarships last year — a point guard and a manager. CCHS had their point guard, Aiden Smitherman, sign a scholarship to Huntington College in Montgomery, and their manager, Eli Crawford, sign a certificate of commitment to Troy University.
“For my players and future players, it’s an opportunity to see somebody who put in the hard work and effort to go to the next level,” CCHS head coach Thomas Hughes said. “And even more, for people who want to come on and be managers, they can see there are scholarship opportunities for them to go to college and work in athletics even if they can’t go on to the next level.”
Smitherman was known for making Hughes’ job easy, and he has been described as a gym rat. Hughes will even admit that there were many times when Smitherman would beat Hughes to the gym. Hughes also attended Huntington College.
“I am ecstatic, not just for him going, but he’s going to my alma mater, where I went to college,” said Hughes. “And as a coach, to see one of my players go to where I was at college means a lot.”
CCHS will have nine seniors on the team this year, and Hughes is happy to have them see how hard work pays off with Smitherman’s career. However, losing Crawford as a manager will be difficult to replace, given how much hard work and dedication Crawford displayed. Crawford liked things the way he liked things, and he would often bring up organization issues that Hughes had yet to even think of — constantly staying ahead of the punch.
“Losing Eli is going to be really hard for me because I need to replace somebody who handled so many different things, you know, it took a lot of pressure off of me as a coach,” said Hughes.
