Spain Park’s Neil Caudle announced his decision to play football for Auburn University at an impromptu press conference Monday, then the highly touted quarterback wowed spectators at the 7-on-7 passing camp at Mountain Brook High School.

Caudle, ranked by several recruiting services as one of the top quarterback prospects in the country, made his verbal commitment to the Tigers just before the start of the camp.

The 6-foot-1, 191-pound senior threw for 1,624 yards with 15 touchdowns and 10 interceptions last season before injuring his knee in the eighth game of the season. Caudle completed 129 of his 200 attempts.

He will travel to Southern California later this month to participate in the EA SPORTS Elite 11 Quarterback Competition, one of the nation’s premier quarterback events for high school talent.

Not all eyes at the Mountain Brook passing camp were on Caudle, who had a strong showing Monday.

Head coach Watt Parker kept a close watch on the three quarterbacks he expects to compete for the starting position at Chelsea High School.

&uot;We can’t live by the run alone, people will set up 10 in the box to try and stop it,&uot; Parker said.

The 4A Hornets were one of the smaller schools competing at the camp, with hopes of getting a look at inexperienced players against some top 6A and 5A competition.

&uot;We like to be balanced. We’re probably about 80 to 20 (percent) run-pass and we’d like maybe to work that down to 60-40 and this gives us and opportunity to see if its worth working on.&uot;

The passing camp also gave coaches from two other Shelby County schools the opportunity to let their quarterbacks develop a better rapport with backs and receivers.

New Thompson Head Coach Brian Maner worked with starting signal-caller Chris Myles, who returns for his senior year and Oak Mountain’s Richie Franklin entered the camp looking to begin his first full season as the starter for the Eagles