METRO VANCOUVER — As a college wide receiver at Montana State, playing with a quarterback named Travis Lulay, Branton Sherman says he would get five phone calls a day from his younger brother, Richard, then still in high school in Compton, Calif., but later destined for play for Stanford University and the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks.

Richard would pump his older brother about plays, players, formations and training routines. Branton would ask his younger sibling how to solve math problems.

“I’d get home from my training day in college, and I’d be tired,” explained Branton, who is now the business manager for Richard, a 25-year-old Pro Bowl cornerback with the Seahawks. “Richard would call me every single day. Five times a day. He’d ask me about plays, ‘how’s it going, what’s it like, how big are guys, how fast are guys?’ He really knew where he was going. I’d ask him to help me with my schoolwork. My brother is a very intelligent person. He wanted to make a statement when he came out of high school. He wanted to go to a place known for its academics as well as its athletics.”

Students at Cambridge elementary school in Surrey got a show-and-tell to remember Tuesday when the Stanford-educated cornerback for the Seahawks showed up at their assembly as part of NFL Canada’s Take An NFL Player to School Program. Cambridge student Matthew Baxter won the contest and got to spend much of the morning with Sherman, who arrived at his home for breakfast and drove with Matthew to school in a limo. Every kid in the school — 800 in total — got Sherman’s player card and an NFL Play 60 T-shirt, promoting at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day. The school was the beneficiary of NFL footballs and equipment left behind for use in phys-ed classes, plus a $5,000 technology grant from Samsung Canada for tablets, PCs and computer monitors.

Mostly, though, it was a chance for the kids at Cambridge school to come face-to-face with a player who is more absolute proof of the sheer mystery involved in NFL scouting.

The 6-foot-3 Sherman, a receiver-turned-cornerback, wasn’t taken until the fifth round of the 2011 draft (154th overall) and was regarded as a player who might develop into a quality backup. His partner at the Seahawks’ other starting cornerback position, Brandon Browner, a former Calgary Stampeder, went undrafted in 2005 from Oregon State.

Now they’re regarded as perhaps the best cornerback tandem in the league for a Super Bowl contender that picked up more championship pieces in the off-season in a trade with Minnesota for flashy receiver Percy Harvin and the free-agent signing of defensive end Cliff Avril.

The kids at Cambridge elementary didn’t want to talk about Seahawk personnel moves, however. They wanted to ask Sherman more important questions, such as: What is his favourite animal? “A turkey is a heck of an animal,” Sherman responded. “But I’m going with a lion, because turkeys get eaten all the time.”