Top 2026 QB Noah Grubbs Proof That It Takes A Village
Over the past year, Noah Grubbs has emerged as one of the top quarterback prospects in the entire 2026 class.
The Florida native has coaches from the nation’s premier programs - Notre Dame, Ohio State, Michigan, Florida, Miami and North Carolina to name a few - pursuing him and fans perusing his every word in search of a hint that he may choose their school and whether he may do so soon.
It’s got to be a lot for a 16-year-old to handle.
But while Grubbs is a hot commodity in the world of college football recruiting, back home at Cypress Loft Place in Lake Mary, Fla.,, he’s just Noah.
“Everyone around me always says, ‘Hey, he's got 24 offers, all these colleges, how does he deal with this?’” his father, Colonel (Ret.) Ephraim Grubbs says.
“I say, ‘You have to remember he's still the baby in our house. He's still a sophomore on the high school team. Noah's still got to carry the football bag.
“He's still the youngest kid on our street. So he's still Little Noah to everybody else except for you. You guys see him like that. He doesn't see himself like that.’”
Grubbs has three older brothers - Lieph (27), Adam (23) and Eli (19) - who were all very athletic in their own rights, earning scholarship offers in golf and baseball, although they chose not to play in college.
“Because of his stature in the family of being the baby, Noah just took to every sport really as a young two, three-year-old,” Col. (Ret.) Grubbs says.
Growing up, Grubbs played basketball, baseball and golf.
He still golfs left-handed, a possible byproduct of mirroring his older brother’s swing while sharing buckets of balls at the driving range as a youngster. As an 8-year-old, Grubbs filled out his brother Eli’s 12U baseball roster for a tournament in Cooperstown, N.Y.
A 30-year military veteran, Col. (Ret.) Grubbs spent most of active duty time in the 82nd Airborne Division and retired out of the NC National Guard as a Colonel.
Grubbs’ mother, Renee, serves as Chief Financial Officer for the family’s company, The Adjutant Group, and Chief of Staff of the household.
The Lake Mary community is very involved in youth sports, especially Pop Warner Football, where Col. (Ret.) Grubbs has coached for 17 years and currently serves as League Commissioner.
Col. (Ret.) Grubbs is grateful for all of those around his son who played a role in his development and he’s quick to make sure they do not go unnoticed.
“The volunteer dads and the people around these kids today are so important,” he says. “Noah was just so fortunate to have older brothers who were all athletes, volunteer dads who cared and coached him and put him in a position to be a quarterback.
“Then, God gave him his size.”
Grubbs started playing early, suiting up for the Tiny Mite squad at five years old when the team didn’t have enough players to fill out a roster. Still, Grubbs was one of the bigger kids and played center.
“I've got videos of him just snapping the ball and standing up, looking around like ‘What's going on?’” laughs his father, who served as head coach.
But even then, there were hints of what was to come.
There weren’t many passing plays in that playbook, but once or twice a game, when a pass was called for, Grubbs would be the one tasked with throwing it and he would swap positions with the regular quarterback to do so.
Things would really pick up the following year, when Col (Ret.) Grubbs added former Lake Mary quarterback and UCF receiver Tyson Hinshaw as offensive coordinator.
“He just took Noah under his wing when Noah was six and coached him all the way through Pop Warner for seven years,” Col. (Ret.) Grubbs says. “Tyson is an old-school coach. He expects a lot out of the kids.”
By the time the team got to middle school, the size of Hinshaw’s playbook rivaled the size of the one his brother, Darin, was using as offensive coordinator at UCF.
“Darin would come to our games and go, ‘My college kids don't have this many plays. How do you have them do it?,” Col. (Ret.) Grubbs recalls. “Tyson would just say, ‘I expect this of them, and I train them on it and they get it.’”
They sure did.
The team would end up winning Pop Warner national titles in 2019 and 2020 as Grubbs learned the game at a high level.
“Tyson showed him how to distribute the ball,” Col. (Ret.) Grubbs says. “Even as a kid, he would have him do small reads to a side of the field. So, Noah never knew any different.”
Grubbs had been playing with kids a year older than him since he was five, so when they all entered high school, he looked for a new challenge as an eighth-grader.
He ended up playing his final season of youth ball in Apopka and would again earn the starting job and flourish. That’s when Col. (Ret.) Grubbs began to realize his youngest son may be a little different.
“That was with no dad coaching, no Tyson Hinshaw there,” he says. “He rose to be the starting quarterback in a completely independent environment. That's when I said, ‘You know what? I think he is talented.’
“Everyone else always tells you he's talented. But again, I've got four boys, they were all good. But when Noah went over and won the starting position after three games in a completely different community, I went, ‘OK, he loves this sport, and the coaches get him and he's coachable.’”
Col. (Ret.) Grubbs knew his son was ready to put the work in to make another leap as he entered high school, so he searched for an avenue to get him quarterback-specific training.
Enter Baylin Trujilio.
“Baylin has just taken him to another level,” Col. (Ret.) Grubbs says of the Founder of BTru Quarterback Training and BTru’s Advanced QB Camp.
As Grubbs grew physically and mentally, Trujillo saw the talent and - perhaps more importantly - the opportunities to enhance that talent.
After a single workout, Trujillo called Col. (Ret.) Grubbs to say that if he trusted him with his son, Grubbs would be the top-ranked quarterback in the state of Florida and a national prospect.
“At first, I thought he was trying to upsell me on training, but I was wrong,” Col. (Ret.) Grubbs says.
Three months later, before Grubbs even entered Lake Mary High School, he received his first scholarship offer, ironically from UAB, where Darin Hinshaw was offensive coordinator at the time.
It didn’t take long for Col (Ret.) Grubbs to put his full faith in Trujilio.
“I've given him free reign,” he says. “I love Baylin. He's a Christian. He's a good man. He's a good person with all the kids. He just really promotes every quarterback he trains, he promotes and coaches them, not just on the field, but off the field.”
Col. (Ret.) Grubbs is a firm believer in the ‘It Takes A Village’ philosophy.
“I've learned over trial and error with my older boys, surround them with other coaches, other people, even if it's a dad or a father who’s next door to you, use those guys,” he says.
He points to Trujillo as another person in their circle who has provided that, serving as a conduit of communication between himself and his son when needed.
“That's been a huge blessing,” he says. “Noah and I don't have to butt heads every day with me asking him, ‘What'd you do today? How'd you train today? How was it?’
“I don't have to do all that. I can just call Baylin and Noah can ask Baylin questions about things and not just have it be Noah and dad all the time. It gets annoying to these kids. They always think us dads are annoying, right?”
When Grubbs arrived at Lake Mary, he was placed with more quality men who would take their own roles in shaping him.
“We’ve got great, great coaching at our high school with Scott Perry, who is the head coach, and offensive coordinator Adam Donnelly,” Col. (Ret.) Grubbs says.
A Lake Mary and University of Florida grad, Perry is entering his 20th season at his alma mater and was named Central Florida Coach of the Year this past season.
“Scott is with Noah almost every day in the weight room,” Col. (Ret.) Grubbs says. “Scott is very much a process driven old school coach. He coaches discipline, hard work and dedication.”
Donnelly, who also teaches Calculus, works with Grubbs on schemes and reads on a daily basis and has helped incorporate Grubbs’ abilities into a dynamic offense.
Together, they were able to prepare Grubbs to step into the starting role a few games into his freshman season and help lead the squad to an 8-4 record his first year and 10-2 this past year.
That village Col. (Ret.) Grubbs refers to isn’t limited to just father figure types.
He was blown away by the maturity and selflessness of Logan Cook, who was the starting quarterback before Grubbs took over. A junior when the hot-shot freshman came in, Cook shifted to receiver and immediately became Grubbs’ biggest supporter. In fact, the day after Grubbs became the starter, Col. (Ret.) Grubbs found Cook at their house coaching his son up.
“I stopped that guy in my garage and said, ‘Son, you’re doing man stuff right now that you don’t even realize,’” he says.
Grubbs proves his dedication beyond the required team workouts, consistently working with speed coach Tony Ponton as well as nutritionist/chiropractor Wes Hohman.
“I can’t stress enough how blessed we’ve been as a family and Noah as a student-athlete to have the number of volunteer coaches in our lives and then the teachers at school who take on the additional duty of coaching football,” Col. (Ret.) Grubbs says.
“These individuals continue to make huge contributions to the lives of our young people and we can’t thank them enough.”
As important as all of those people have been in Grubbs’ development, none of it would be possible without Grubbs himself and who he is as a person and a player.
“I’m immensely proud of him as a young man,” his father says. “I get compliments from people almost weekly, from people who say, ‘Hey, I ran into your son at Chick-fil-A.’ Or, ‘I saw your son at this place and went up and said hello. And he was so polite and so respectful.’ I’m so proud of him for the young man he's developed into, and then the quarterback and the leader of a team, what he's learning and being developed by the great coaches around him.
“Again, he's extremely coachable. And then in absence of guidance, he'll make a decision. Very, very proud of what he's done to earn the right to get the attention that he's getting. This is not given.”
