WARWICK — If he has heard the question once, he has heard it 100 times since the University of Connecticut offered him a baseball scholarship this summer.

“Why are you playing football?” they ask Tom Verdi.

“I hear it all the time, from kids at school to just people around,” said Verdi, the Hendricken senior All-State baseball shortstop, who also is the quarterback of the Hendricken football team.

Nobody is questioning Verdi’s football talent. It’s all about risk management.

Some people can’t understand why a teenager who has no intention of ever playing football after high school will risk an injury on the football field that could jeopardize his baseball career and even his ticket to a free college education.

“My coach [at UConn] told me what would happen if I couldn’t play baseball, that I would lose my scholarship” said Verdi. “He said, ‘I’m not going to say don’t play football,’ but he warned me what would happen if I got hurt. Everybody told me that. Everybody says why risk it, you have all this to look forward to.”

So why?

“Because I have played with these seniors for four years now, since my freshman year,” Verdi said about his senior teammates on the Hendricken football team.

“We have been through thick and thin together. We have become like a family over the years. I felt like I would let them down if I didn’t play. I’m a part of this team and I owe it to them.”

The irony is Verdi isn’t a teenage football lifer. He didn’t grow up splitting his time between Pop Warner and Little League.

“I never played football before I came to Hendricken,” said Verdi. “In fact, I didn’t even go to the first two practices my freshman year. But my friend Mike Flanagan was one of the running backs on the freshman team, and he came to my house and said ‘You have to play, we need a quarterback.’ We’ve been friends forever, so I started playing football.”

And so the education of a football player began. Not surprisingly, there were some frustrated moments for a football novice trying to become the quarterback of a freshman team in one of Rhode Island’s top high school football programs.

“It was a little frustrating at first. It probably was the most frustrating month and a half I have ever had, more than any school work I had to do,” Verdi offered about his introduction to a football playbook. “I didn’t know what a two-hole was, what a four-hole was, I didn’t know anything. It was so tough that first month and a half, but then one day it just clicked.”

The love affair with football had begun.

“I love it and I feel like I would regret it if I didn’t play,” Verdi said about his decision to play this football this fall.

Baseball is in his genes.

“My dad didn’t play baseball, but my grandfather played for La Salle and URI and played semi-pro ball. He had me out there all the time when I was a little kid,” said Verdi.

His grandfather is Tony Verdi, an All-State shortstop at La Salle in the early 1950s who went on to be a star at URI and in the old Tim O’Neil Rhode Island baseball league.

In Little League, Tom was a pitcher, “like every other baseball player,” said Verdi with a laugh. But by the time he started playing AAU baseball when he was 13 he had become a fulltime outfielder, and when he came to Hendricken they turned him into a shortstop.

It’s not hard to see why the Hawks coaching staff felt shortstop was where he could have the biggest impact. He’s tall and lean, 6-foot-2 and 165 to 170 pounds with good range and a great arm. But maybe more important are his “soft hands.” It’s the sports terminology for the type of hand coordination that enables some baseball players to pick up ground balls that ordinary players can’t, and hockey players to have a special scoring touch around the cage.

“My hands; my defense definitely is my strength in baseball,” said Verdi.

But he also managed to hit just under .400 during the high school baseball season last spring, helping Hendricken defend its Division I state baseball title. This past summer he played for the Extra Innings College Prep team, which plays a regular schedule against other elite East Coast amateur teams at their home field at URI, and also traveled to amateur tournaments all along the East Coast.

“From that team is where I got looked at,” said Verdi about the attention he received from college coaches. “I played well this summer.”

His potential and his summertime performance earned him several college scholarship offers and by late August he had decided to accept the UConn offer.

“I’m excited. I have a lot of developing to do. Coach [Jim] Penders, [UConn head baseball coach], has said ‘you have great hands, but you have to work on your offense. I have a lot of work to do and I will do it.”

So why not spend time this fall developing his baseball skills rather than playing a sport that’s not in his future?

“Because football is unlike anything else,” said Verdi. “Through all the double sessions and all the late practices when we’re on the practice field … we have grown so close together. Last year was a tough season. We had a lot of downs, but all year long we fought and it got us closer. Football is unlike any other sport. It’s 11 guys, but if those 11 guys don’t come together as one unit, it’s not going to work out.”

He didn’t come back because he relished being in the spotlight. There was no guarantee that this year’s Hendricken football team would ever be playing in a big game late in the season.

Two years ago the Hawks made it to the Division I Super Bowl and Verdi saw playoff duty when senior quarterback Andrew Ferreira was injured just before the playoffs. But several key members of that 2007 Super Bowl team graduated, and last season a young Hendricken team, with Verdi as the starting quarterback, won only three of its eight Division I games.

This season Verdi would have a full year of quarterbacking experience under his belt and his longtime friend, Flanagan, was going to be one of the top running backs in the state, but there still were a lot of questions about the Hawks being a playoff contender.

It didn’t help when Hendricken opened the season with a non-league loss to Division II South Kingstown, followed by an overtime loss to Portsmouth in their first Division I game. Then three weeks ago they dropped a 28-22 decision to defending state champion La Salle.

Nobody would have faulted Verdi if had started questioning his decision to stay with his football family, but he never did.

“I never questioned it,” said Verdi about his decision to play. “I always thought –– if I didn’t do it, where would I be? I questioned that more than whether I should have played.”

Then came Sunday night, when Hendricken posted a shocking 14-0 shutout of previously undefeated Barrington. Verdi’s two touchdown passes, one to Flanagan and the other to Rob Manning produced the Hawks two touchdowns.

“It was such a relief,” Verdi said about the team finally getting the big victory that had eluded it for the past two years. “We know we can do it, we just have to come together as a team. Sunday we came together and played really well.”

The victory improved Hendricken’s league record to 3-2 and put the Hawks in the thick of the race for one of the four Division I playoff berths. They’re now in fourth place, one game behind East Providence and Hendricken, the two teams tied for second behind league-leading La Salle.

He knows there are no guarantees that from here on it will be all cheers and experiencing the thrill of victory. Hendricken still has three regular-season league games remaining, including one with second-place East Providence.

Of course he wants to lead Hendricken to another Super Bowl berth and he thinks the Hawks have the talent to do it.

“We have a team that potentially can be a state championship team,” said Verdi.

But in a sense, the football victories have become almost the icing on the cake of his high school athletic experience.

“I definitely made the right choice, I wouldn’t second-guess it ever,” said Verdi. “I love football; I love my coaches and I love my teammates. It has been a great experience.”

Even if he still keeps hearing, “Why are you playing football?”

jgillool@projo.com