SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- The first touchdown of Christian Kirk's football career wasn't much different than the hundreds he's scored since. It was a long sprint that saw the speedster untouched on his way to the end zone. On that occasion, though, the five-year-old version of Kirk, playing running back at the time, had an extra person chasing him.

The grown man in pursuit carried a massive stick, but no malice. He had no intention of taking him down.

"My dad was working the chains on that game and when I broke through, he just took off," Kirk said. "He was still carrying the marker. He ran next to me all the way to the end zone. He just forgot he was working."

In 2014, Evan Kirk's excitement is more manageable when his son breaks into a long touchdown sprint. He works the chains for the occasional game at Scottsdale Saguaro High School. And as Christian Kirk rattled off multiple long scores against rival Chaparral in the season-opener, Evan stood fast with the marker, resisting the urge to take off sprinting. He's had plenty of time to work on restraint, after all.

"Christian's first year with the Raiders in Pop Warner, he had [a state record] 45 touchdowns in a season," Evan Kirk said. "I still have his jersey from that team. His coach put the touchdowns on there. They didn't keep other stats at that time, but they counted touchdowns. He started out pretty successful."

That's not to say the enthusiasm has tempered. These days, a father's excitement just manifests itself differently. Sometimes it's a speech filled with tips on lateral movement. Other times it's a lecture about dedication or some other intangible trait. Mostly, though, it involves the living room DVR.

Christian Kirk does what he can to avoid rolling his eyes when his father presses play. He's seen some version of this show 100 times before. Evan Kirk, a muscular army veteran that doesn't look a day over 32, didn't play college football. But that doesn't mean he hasn't been vital when it comes to shaping his son as both a player and a man.

"I'll be in my room, and all of a sudden I'll hear him yell 'Hey, Christian,'" Kirk said. "I'll come out and he will have the DVR all set up, like, 'You see how he runs? You see how he uses his shoulders? That's what you need to do. He's out there being ruthless and da da da da da.' I'm like, 'Dad, can I go now?' He's like, 'No, you need to watch this other play. I recorded three other plays. You need to see these.'

"When he's done talking and lecturing, it's like 'Amen'," Christian jokes, pressing his hands together in a prayer-like manner. "I'll say something little, and he'll talk for 25 minutes."

Cut through the typical teenage angst and the joking disposition, though, and Christian knows his father's enthusiasm is the sort of thing that has made him great. He wouldn't surrender the hours he's spent watching clips or the road trips he's spent getting lectured for anything. Christian may be young, but he's just wise enough to understand most of the reasons he garnered more than 30 scholarship offers and is on the fast track to college stardom.

"My dad, being that military guy with that background, he's where I get my discipline and my work ethic from," Kirk said. "If I need to be corrected, he's there to correct me. I'm so grateful to have him in my life. I give all the credit to him. I pick stuff up from all the stuff he shows me."

Today, Christian Kirk is wearing a gray vest over a cleanly ironed dress shirt. He presses his red and yellow Under Armor All American jersey against his 5-foot-11, 190-pound frame. The act represents the culmination of a high school football career spent catching passes and breaking long runs. Kirk isn't just an electric player, he's the No. 29 overall prospect in America -- one of just 30 five-stars in the 2015 class.

The ceremony unfolding inside the community room at his high school officially makes Kirk an Under Armour All-American. It also gives him reason to reflect. It seems like a joke when the undersized prospect with elite-level quickness announces that his football career started in the trenches.

Kirk the offense guard might be preparing to sign with a fraternity instead of a football program. That's clear to anyone that has met the compact speedster. It's why it didn't take long for him to find his niche. The skill positions and Kirk were soul mates from the jump. It was only a matter of time until the universe brought them together.

"I played offensive line and defensive until the last game of my first season," Kirk said. "That's when my coach decided to let other players play the skill spots. He let me play running back. That first run was the my first touchdown, the one where my dad ran with the chains."

Years later, the inevitable happened. Kirk, being Kirk, was in Los Angeles studying a high school all-star game in which he wasn't involved. It was on the sidelines of that game that Saguaro head coach Jason Mohns, then the team's offensive coordinator, approached his star freshman with a bit of news. UCLA had extended a scholarship offer to Kirk. The opportunity was the wide receiver's first.

"When Coach Mohns told me that, all my hard work had paid off," Kirk said. "All my dreams have come true. I didn't even believe it."

An Arizona State offered followed shortly thereafter, but once he had two offers in tow, things hit a bit of a lull. It was the first time Kirk realized his size would forever be questioned.

And it may have been that momentary pause that ultimately pushed him to the wooden podium behind which he became an All American.

"I finished my sophomore year without really talking to any other coaches," Kirk said. "I didn't think I was going to get any more offers after UCLA and Arizona State. Other coaches would come out and see me, but they would never offer because they wondered if I could high-point the ball or whatever. It wasn't until I went to the Army combine and the 7-on-7 stuff after my sophomore year that everything really went crazy."

See, the final five schools alive in Kirk's recruitment, Texas A&M, Arizona State, Auburn, UCLA and USC, share at least one trait. None of them ever tried to pigeonhole Kirk into a specific role based on his 5-foot-11 frame.

"I still hate when coaches -- and it's coaches from teams I'm not considering anymore, obviously -- call me a slot receiver. I'm like, 'if you think that's all I am, you obviously don't know me that well or haven't watched me much.'"

Christian Kirk is a defending state football champion and the No. 1 player in Arizona. Before that, he was a bit of a middle school track star. He can also hold his own on a skateboard and knows his way around a BMX track. The natural athleticism certainly plays a part in all of that. The fact that the Arizona-born athlete is at his best when challenged is probably more responsible.

"If you present a challenge in front of him -- football or skateboarding or whatever -- he will conquer it," Evan Kirk said of his son. "He's so driven to master anything he tries to do."

That drive is why Christian lives in the Saguaro High School weight room. It's why he spends hours watching YouTube film. It's also the reason four-star athlete Byron Murphy, a junior at Saguaro, was sent to meet Kirk immediately upon transferring into the program prior to this season.

"Christian is on everyone to stay in the gym," Murphy said. "We'll be in there six hours and he's on everyone. Coach Mohns sends the new guys to Christian when they get here."

"He tells me 'Get them right,'" Kirk said. "So I just show them what I do and how hard we have to work to keep winning."

"Winning" is a bit of a buzzword for Kirk. The senior wide receiver is obsessed with it. It's why, despite his bright football future, he still plays high school football with little to no regard for his body. When Mohns asked him to carry the ball 30 times in a state championship rematch earlier this season, Kirk didn't flinch. Instead, he rattled off 211 yards and three touchdowns to keep his team undefeated.

"He came to the sideline when the momentum started to shift and they started to make the game close and said, 'Coach, put the ball in my hands.' He knew he could get us out of that funk," Mohns said. "He took the red-eye that night to his official visit at Auburn. I sent him a text promising not to use him like a workhorse like that very often. He texted me back saying 'it's all good coach, whatever we have to do to win.'

"This is a five-star recruit that isn't even a running back by trade. He could be trying to stay healthy for all the bigger things ahead of him, but he wants to win now. This teams means so much to him. That says a lot. Kids with the future he has sometimes check out during their senior year. He hasn't done that in the slightest."

And so Kirk will continue to block and run and take a beating. He'll continue to watch YouTube videos of players far and wide. He'll keep taking in lectures from his father and staying on newcomers about their work ethic.

In essence, Kirk will go right on being Kirk. And that bodes well for the future of whichever program lands his letter of intent.

Click Here to view this Link.

Click Here to view this Link.