With his senior season opening this weekend, Donovan Smith is busy performing the balancing act between his immediate and long-term futures. On the field, his Owings Mills (Md.) squad will travel to Boonsboro on Friday night, while on the recruiting front, he's getting closer to setting up official visits.

"I'm looking into the schedules to see what games I want to get to and planning officials," he said. "I don't have any set dates, but I definitely want to get out to UCLA and Michigan State or Illinois for them. I'm still definitely going to get up to Penn State for the Michigan game, I can't miss that one."

Smith has been in regular contact with Penn State assistant coach Larry Johnson, Sr., and talked with the veteran defensive line coach again on Sunday.

"Things have been the same, we've had back and forth e-mails and I actually called him up today," he said. "I spoke with him to let him know that the season is getting ready to start and the first game was coming up on Friday. He said that they actually have their first game against Youngstown on Saturday. I was letting him know that, depending on my uncle, I might be able to get up there for that game."

The 6-foot-5, 285-pound Smith said that his visit schedule will be spontaneous for the fall, but he also has plans to attend a Maryland game in the near future.

Two weeks ago he cut his list down to 12 schools - Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan State, North Carolina, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Rutgers, Syracuse, UCLA, Virginia and Virginia Tech - and things still look the same from that perspective.

"I still have 12 schools and more schools are still showing interest - Miami, Auburn, Tennessee and Wisconsin is coming in contact now," he said. "I'm still open, but that list is still there. There's no leaders, like I said I'm still wide open."

Owings Mills is coming off of a 3-6 campaign in 2009, but Smith and the Golden Eagles have higher hopes for his senior year.

"We got started about a week ago, started two-a-days and stuff and now we're getting back to our one-day practices and stuff," he said. "Things look great, we are getting all the kinks out and stuff. We're getting ready for our first game which is this Friday. We play Boonsboro, which is right there close to West Virginia. I'm going to be playing both sides of the ball always, that's really it."