BRADENTON, Fla. — Jalen Carethers, four weeks removed from his final game as a basketball player at Radford, was at a loss. Sports had always come easily to him, but now he was standing in the middle of a multipurpose field at IMG Academy, cradling an oblong ball in his hands and doing his best to figure out how to make this foreign object fly.
“Where on the foot do you want to hit it?” he said.
Michael Ablett, a national talent manager for the Australian Football League, advised Carethers to snap his leg and make contact with his forefoot.