FOLEY — With a signature on his National Letter of Intent Wednesday, March 22, Snook Christian Academy senior Robert Dunn will reunite with a former baseball teammate on the Faulkner Eagles’ squad after graduation.

Dunn will have familiar faces at Faulkner in Brady Long, a member of Snook’s Class of 2022, who signed with the baseball team last summer as well as Hayden Joiner, a classmate of Dunn’s, who signed with the Eagles’ football team Feb. 1.

“It's exciting, it’s a little takeaway from Snook,” Dunn said. “It'll be fun, I'll get to know them more up there than I did here and continue to play baseball with Brady, which that'll be a great thing.”

Last Wednesday was the end of a long recruiting road for the 5’ 9”, 185-pound athlete who leaned on the words of his coaches to help maneuver through his college choices.

“They were just telling me to go where I feel at home, where I feel comfortable, where I feel like I'm going to make a big impact,” Dunn said of his coaches’ message.

He continued to return to his familiarity with the program and decided he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to join a program as close knit as Faulkner’s.

“Just the family environment with the whole team. Being up there and being able to practice with them, really the family environment (convinced me to go there),” Dunn said.

And so, he put pen to paper last Wednesday to cement his commitment with all of his supporters around him.

“Very energetic and happy. Just don't know how to explain it,” Dunn said of the day’s emotions.

While he is going to remain an Eagle, he knew going from Snook Christian Academy (K-12 enrollment of around 350 students) to Faulkner University (undergrad enrollment of around 2,000 students) would certainly be a change in pace.

“It's a lot different, it's a bigger school, more years to play baseball,” Dunn said. “It's just different but we'll get up there and get it going.”

Dunn said the 2023 season for the Snook Eagles had been going well where they already surpassed last year’s win total, including a 4-0 sweep of the Central Christian Tournament earlier this month.

“This season has been going pretty good, better than last year,” Dunn said. “We're going through a little down patch right now, but we're going to pick it back up and stride through it.”

He was also among the key seniors on this year’s Snook football squad that made it back to the playoffs for the first time since 2018, just two seasons removed from not having a team due to a lack of participation.

Now, one of those seniors is signed to play football (Joiner), one was named the school’s first AISA all-star (Philip Butts), another was named the program’s first all-state player (Kareem Harris) and Dunn is signed to play baseball at the next level.