How 5 a.m. summer workouts helped Germantown's Daniel Anderson become UNC football commit

When Daniel Anderson’s alarm rang at 4:45 a.m., he wasn’t particularly happy about it. For starters, it was the summer and the offseason for football.

Anderson, who plays strongside defensive end for Germantown football, eventually got out of bed and went to his training.

After two hours of weightlifting, pushing a sled and doing bear crawls, Anderson came back home around 7 a.m. and passed out in his bed after breakfast.

That’s how it went for the majority of last summer.

Anderson began to see the results and midway through the summer.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Anderson said. “I’m at the gym at 5 am. Everybody else is asleep. It’s a journey.”

Anderson’s hard work paid off as he committed North Carolina football. He is No. 6 on The Commercial Appeal's Dandy Dozen, which features the top prospects in the Memphis area for the Class of 2024 decided by the newspaper.

Anderson is a three-star recruit, according to 247Sports. He is the No. 25 overall prospect in Tennessee.

Anderson committed to UNC on March 30. He had offers from 13 other schools such as Western Kentucky, Troy, Indiana and Arkansas State.

More: Commercial Appeal's Dandy Dozen for 2023 season to be released Friday

More: Memphis high school All-Region football teams for the 2022 season

The 5 a.m. workouts translated to success on the field during his junior year. He had 46 tackles, 12 tackles for loss and eight sacks.

Anderson was looking for a school that had the best combination of academics and athletics. Dartmouth, Penn and Stanford also showed interest.

“Your academics are showing out as well as your athletics,” said his dad, Sebastian Smith. “We had the opportunity to see all the things that North Carolina has to offer.”

Anderson was a late bloomer. He picked up football in the fifth grade and fell in love with the game in seventh grade.

“I wanted to see what all the hype was about,” Anderson said.

In high school, Anderson and his father thought he had to do something else to get noticed by colleges. That's how the 5 a.m. workouts started, and his dad went with him to help with the training.

“I told him, ‘Daniel, there’s an opportunity here for you to really embed yourself in this thing, but you’re going to take a little bit of extra work,’” Smith said.

Once they got to the gym, Smith told his son that while other players were at home sleeping, Anderson was working.

“You’re not going to find many high school or college kids up at 5 a.m. in the morning,” Smith said.

“He believed that he was a Power Five football player. I believed that he was a good football player, but it was going to take extra work to get to where he wants to get to."

Reach sports writer Jerry Jiang at JJiang@gannett.com or on Twitter @j_jiang30

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: TSSAA football: Daniel Anderson a UNC commit after 5 a.m. workouts