Get to know Deacon Hill, Iowa’s water-polo-loving quarterback now thrust into spotlight

IOWA CITY — Deacon Hill and one of his best friends had an idea at about 3 a.m. on a summer morning.

It was during Iowa football players’ two weeks off before summer workouts began. Hill’s connecting flight from Dallas to Los Angeles had just landed after a lengthy delay.

“We pulled an all-nighter and headed out to the beach at like 5:30, catch some waves,” Hill said. “I love surfing. … The water felt great.”

Now, the quarterback who learned how to swim at age 2 is riding a different type of wave — figurative ones rather than those on the beaches of Malibu — as he takes over as Iowa’s starting quarterback for the injured Cade McNamara.

“Being the starting quarterback at a Big Ten school is obviously a blessing,” Hill said. “I’m very excited, but at the same time, you don’t want to get it that way from somebody else’s unluckiness.”

The excitement aside, teammates like linebacker Jay Higgins understand what Hill is trying to do is not an easy task.

“If you would’ve asked me to go in there for (Jack) Campbell last year in a big game like that, I don’t know if I would have been able to make the transition so smooth,” Higgins said. “So definitely hats off to how he came in and finished the game for us.”

Hill is “clearly” the No. 1 quarterback, Iowa Coach Kirk Ferentz previously said, although Music City Bowl starter Joe Labas is another option for the Hawkeyes at the position.

Hill appeared sparingly in three of Iowa’s first four games, but Saturday’s game against Michigan State was the first time he played substantially since high school. He went 11-for-27 with one touchdown and one interception, with five dropped passes deflating his numbers.

“Deacon stepped in and did a really nice job,” Ferentz said Tuesday. “And not a big surprise. We’ve seen great improvement with him in the last eight weeks.”

Iowa is going from McNamara — a quarterback where sneaks were “really not on the menu” because of a past quad injury — to a 258-pound quarterback who “always liked the QB sneak.“

"In high school we ran one under-center play, and it was the QB sneak,“ Hill said. ”So that's probably one of my favorite plays."

Having such a hefty quarterback behind him “definitely makes things a lot easier” for center Logan Jones on those plays.

“You got another freaking offensive guard behind you running the football,” Jones said.

One of Hill’s most notable attributes is his arm strength. “Throwing the deep ball” is one of his favorite things as a quarterback although he is “just concerned with what the team needs and what the coaches need from me.”

Hill believes the farthest he has thrown a pass is “like 73, 74” yards — an estimation his teammates will surely not dispute.

"He can launch that thing,“ Jones said. ”It’s ridiculous. He’s a big boy. He can throw that ball pretty far.“

Hill’s arm strength came from his first sport, water polo, rather than football.

“Growing up, I played my first game when I was four years old,” said Hill, who hails from Santa Barbara, Calif. “It was my first love.”

Hill’s introduction to water polo was in part thanks to one of the people his sisters played basketball with, Kiley Neushul.

Neushul’s mother noticed the Hill sisters’ hair was “kind of green on the ends” from pool chlorine and suggested they try water polo. The sport then turned into a passion for Hill and his three sisters, Sami, Kodi and Abbi.

Kodi, Sami and Abbi competed for UCLA in water polo. Sami went on to compete in the 2016 Olympics with Team USA and win a gold medal alongside Neushul.

Deacon, the only son in the Hill family and the only one not to play water polo at the college level, misses the sport.

“I’ll probably play when I’m older,” Hill said. “We always talked about doing a little siblings team. So that’d be fun.”

The Hill water polo team would be hard to beat considering Sami is “locked down in the cage” and Abbi and Cody both are a “monster” in the pool.

“I’d kind of be the weak link compared to them,” Hill said.

Hill would have the benefit of his arm strength, though.

“If you throw it hard enough, they shouldn’t be able to block it,” Hill said.

One of the early challenges for Hill as a quarterback was adjusting from the throwing motion in water polo that involves “a lot more wrist action” to the football throwing motion.

“In football, it’s like trying to get that spin on the ball; you’re flicking it,” Hill said. “Water polo you’re kind of directing of where you want the ball to go.”

His high school coach, J.T. Stone, also was his quarterback coach when he was in fourth grade and “was always trying to fix” Hill’s water polo tendencies.

“He’d get mad when I would go back to my water polo stuff,” Hill said. “But then I ended up quitting water polo my sophomore year to focus on football.”

Now, Hill appears to be a few days away from his first career start at the college level.

“I guess it worked out,” Hill said.

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com