Before July 2015, the most organized version of football that Suffolk’s Holden Shank had ever played was with his cousins in the yard.

By the end of the year and beginning of 2016, the sixth-grade honor roll student at Southampton Academy was one of a select group of boys playing in the 10th Annual Offense-Defense All-American Bowl in Daytona Beach, Fla.

“I’ve liked it for a long time, but I’ve never played it until I went to the July camp,” Shank said of football.

His journey on the gridiron was jump-started when he attended an Offense-Defense Summer Camp at North Carolina State University in July 2015. It lasted for five days, running eight hours each day during the hottest week of the month.

“They started out with conditioning,” Shank said. “We just started running and doing fundamental drills with footwork.”

Holden Shank’s father, Jimmy Shank, said current and retired college-level coaches were helping run the camp. They were evaluating the talent of the boys at the camp, grading their playing skills.

In addition to participating in drills, Holden Shank played in a scrimmage and then in the camp’s Super Bowl as an offensive/defensive tackle.

Campers could earn a trip to Florida to participate in the Offense-Defense All-American Bowl in one of two ways — be named an MVP by the coach and trainers at the conclusion of the camp or receive a performance award for high-quality play during the Super Bowl.

Shank clinched a spot on a Youth Bowl Division (grades 1-8) roster when he received a performance award for his Super Bowl play.

“When I went to the camp and they told that I was offered to come to the (Offense-Defense All-American) Bowl, I was shocked,” he said.

The bowl games for his age division were played on Dec. 31 and Jan. 2.

Prior to those contests, Holden Shank gained important experience on the field in the fall of 2015 when he was a member of Southampton Academy’s junior varsity team, playing left guard and defensive tackle.

“I was one of the only sixth-graders that they let play on JV,” he said.

The team went 4-3 and ranked second in its conference.

He arrived in Florida on Dec. 28 and had what he described as two and a half practice sessions with his team, the Crushers, before its first bowl game. The team included 18 players from all over the country.

Coached by Les Hewitt, the Crushers won 12-0 in their first game, which was live-streamed on ESPN. Then, they won their second game 32-0.

Shank played offensive and defensive tackle for the entirety of both games.

He said it did wear him out, but because he played for his school, “I’ve been running, and I’ve been training a lot, so when I went to Florida, it didn’t really bother me.”

Reflecting on his son’s quick journey from having no organized experience to playing in a prestigious bowl game in Florida, Jimmy Shank said, “It was shocking. It was really interesting, and it happened mighty quick, and we were just very proud of him.”

Explaining why he was able to be so successful so fast, Holden Shank said, “I’ve had a lot of help from my grandpa and my dad and my mom and my size.”

Holden Shank stands 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighs 185 pounds. Even before the July 2015 camp, he was getting pointers from his grandfather, Ralph Pierce, who was a standout at John F. Kennedy High School during his playing days.

Noting that grace will get you through life, Holden Shank said football is just something you do, but he has learned a lot from it, including the importance of hard work.

And he was a quick study.