This is the fifth entry in our Class of 2025 series.
Pine Bluff High School football Coach Micheal Williams couldn’t help gleaming over the thought of standout defensive end Keyon Smith.
“Keyon is a very interesting kid because he never missed practice, he never was late, he did everything right, he was always ‘yes, sir; no, sir,’ and he never did anything (wrong),” Williams said, likening his qualities to current University of Missouri tight end Jordon Harris. “That’s really unusual when you’re talking about kids here in Pine Bluff. That’s very abnormal.”
What may seem abnormal speaks to the reliability of a young man who played bigger than his 5-foot-11, 215-pound frame while earning his Zebra stripes — all while earning the title of valedictorian.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Smith will lead the Pine Bluff class of 2025 into H.O. Clemmons Arena for graduation at 6 p.m. Friday. The arena is inside the Kenneth L. Johnson HPER Complex at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
Smith finished atop the class just two years after coming over from Dollarway High School as part of its merger with PBHS.
Williams and his coaching staff devised more complex defensive schemes using the former Fighting Cardinal’s smarts, helping Pine Bluff stay in contention in most games.
“He was smart enough to know the difference between one scheme and another scheme, so we were able to keep him on the field,” Williams said. “Keyon’s slightly undersized to be a defensive end, but we could never take him off the field because of that.”
Academically, Smith proved tough to beat.
He earned multiple scholarships to the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, including an $8,000-per-year Silas Hunt Distinguished Scholarship, $4,000-per-year Accelerated Student Achievement Program award, $5,500-per-year Honors Path Program scholarship and $3,000-per-semester Engineering Career Awareness Program award. A UA admissions counselor said in April that Smith was the only one of almost 7,000 incoming freshmen who received the Engineering Career Awareness, Accelerated Student Achievement and Honors Path program awards.
“It means a lot to see all the hard work pay off, all the work put in, the effort, the extracurriculars, the afterschool time … it’s really big,” Smith said.
All he has to do now is choose a major — electrical or mechanical engineering.
“I was posed a question: Do I want to control how the plane flies or what it looks like on the exterior, so what the plane looks like?” Smith said. “How the plane flies, I felt like, was my decision better geared toward me. However, mechanical, looks and designs, all of that, still sounds appealing.”
A Gentlemen’s Club and robotics team member, Smith is leaning toward mechanical engineering because he likes to work on things hands-on. In electrical engineering, he said, one must have a cognitive ability to engineer.
When Smith was filling out his application, the lights went out in his Northside neighborhood.
“I was kind of upset and I was in my own head,” Smith said. He reasoned: “I’ve got to make up something in my own head, something that can work through storms that can perhaps adapt energy from thunder, something that can provide a power boost rather than take out energy all together.”
Smith must still brainstorm how to put his UA degree to work once it’s in tow.
“I haven’t quite thought that far ahead for the electrical,” Smith said. “For the mechanical, I do like American muscle cars, namely Fords. It’d be nice to get a job there and work at Ford Motor Co.”
His grandfather owned a Ford F-150 and gave him a 2008 Mustang, helping him build a loyalty to the brand — up to this point.
“Things are liable to change. They can very well change,” he said.
His academic prowess isn’t likely to do so.
“I’ve had classmates challenge me and push me to do better,” Smith said. “I also wanted to be a leader. I have to know the subject just as well, if not better, than my other classmates and the teachers. And then having a strong family for a backbone to support me, it helped me tremendously.”
A spirit of academic pursuit in the family helps as well. Smith’s older sister Breyonna Freeman graduated from UAPB last Saturday with a degree in psychology. He has two younger sisters, Ajayah Smith and Jada Lloyd.
Smith credited his freshman teachers with picking up on his academic talents.
“They came to me and would speak to me, and they were like, ‘Hey, you’re doing good,'” Smith said. “Compliments go a long way, so I thought of myself as a good student, good scholar. So, I just took that and pushed farther and saw what that made of me.”
