http://www.richmond.com/sports/high-school/football/2016-a-list/
For the second straight year, a large of high school football recruits in greater Richmond are leaving the state of Virginia. They're headed to Duke and Vanderbilt and Notre Dame. Not one is committed to Virginia Tech, and just one will
This is always interesting when reporters look back at who was considered the top players at the time, and what they have done since committing. Hate to say it but not a lot of good things on here for VT. Would like to see more Richmond kids end up in Blacksburg AND contribute on the field.
http://www.richmond.com/sports/high-school/football/article_c30edbcc-2c5...
Full article on Richmond kids leaving the state.
Not since Benedictine's Raymon Minor in the spring of 2014 has a scholarship recruit from Richmond committed to Virginia Tech.
Before 2015, the Hokies got at least one scholarship recruit from the 804 area code each season for at least a decade.
And for the third consecutive year, with Wednesday being national signing day, Virginia will get just one. This year, it's wide receiver Cole Blackman of Atlee.
This really jumped out at me.
There's another simple reason why so many A-Listers are going out of state. Several of them weren't offered scholarships by Virginia or Virginia Tech. Of the 12 recruits, only the top two, Benedictine's Scott Bracey and L.C. Bird's Jalen Elliott, got offers from both Virginia and Virginia Tech.
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There's another simple reason why so many A-Listers are going out of state. Several of them weren't offered scholarships by Virginia or Virginia Tech. Of the 12 recruits, only the top two, Benedictine's Scott Bracey and L.C. Bird's Jalen Elliott, got offers from both Virginia and Virginia Tech.
I would like to know why these A-Listers weren't offered. Did Tech/UVa know something about these kids that no one else did... or did they just take it for granted that these kids were going elsewhere and not bother to offer? Or perhaps just not positions of need? Interesting article, but some more info from the recruiting side would have been nice to lend perspective.
They may be A-listers according to this article, but that really isn't the case.
9-12 aren't even in the top 50 players in VA. Looking at the 12, they committed to Duke, NC State, UVA, Vanderbilt (x2), Wake (x2), Nevada, and JMU (x2).
The top 5 are players that I think could really contribute here or elsewhere.
Yea outside of the top 3 or so, this is a non story. Those aren't sought out recruits
I think/really hope this will all change a lot in the next couple of years
According to TSL (seen on twitter) 0 of the Top 10 players in the state are headed to Tech. 3 of those guys are going to UNC, 2 to FSU, and 2 to Duke. Of the Top 25 in the Commonwealth, only 6 will be attending Tech.
Our recruiting this year was awful. Let's just hope or coaches haven't already dug themselves a big hole to get out of before their first game was even played. Nationally, this class is likely to finish somewhere in the mid 40s. Easily one of the worst recruiting years Tech has had since the title run.
Yeah this year's class wasn't heavy on big names or highly sought after recruits, but I think that was sort of expected what with the swoon in our performance over the last few years and the coaching changes was going to make a mess out of this class anyway.
The top 45 players according to Rivals have most of the top ten going to traditional football powers - OSU, FSU, ND. I'm not too worried about that. If someone decided to go to the top academic reputations in the country - Stanford and the like - I'm not too worried about that, either. If you get a full scholarship offer to Stanford, then what you are doing son pack your damn bags and go west.
It's the UNC pulls that bother me, and there are three. But they won 11 games this year and were trending upwards, so this is something we'll be able to deal with in the future.
Oversimplification for sure, but I believe consistently winning (and winning big games, looking at you, Tennessee and ND) goes a long way towards winning big on the recruiting trail. Sure, there are other factors that probably hold more weight in a recruit's decision, but winning is a plus.
Re: the last quote. It has probably been discussed ad nauseum in other threads, but I'd be curious to see the offers to/commits from in-state recruits for previous years.
I believe (while I'm too lazy to do the research) that this is national trend - more kids are going to college further from home due to improvements in technology/communication (both at the person-to-person level, and at a media/broadcasting level).
The notion that VA kids are ours (or UVA's) to lose is ludicrous. Recruiting a kid from VA requires our staff to build relationships with coaches and kids, just as what would be required to recruit a kid from NC, or Florida, or Indiana, etc. The only difference is that, the further coaches recruit from Blacksburg, the higher the cost (both in dollars and time).
Yep, and we're doing better than ever out of state. We need to do better in-state, no doubt, because of the simple economics of the situation. Recruiting a kid costs money, it costs more money the further away a kid lives.
But in-state improvement isn't the only salve to soothe our recruiting wounds. Need better and better scouting, need to reach out into a broader geographic area, need better player development, need better social media, need more staff. If you scout better, develop better, communicate better with more staff, in-state recruiting will improve.
The fact of the matter is, until our offense gets rolling and we get back to winning consistently, we aren't an attractive option to many big recruits, in state or out. The last four years we didn't have the glory of a championship run to offer, we had a terribly inconsistent and unproductive offense, and our defense while enticing to play for Bud plays more scrutinized than most teams because we rely on them so much that when they do make mistakes we crucify them on message boards and such (see promising young corner Greg Stroman, who I saw people on here trash him like a scrub after he got out muscled a few times against ECU). They may not notice the third one as much, but you're crazy if you don't think the first two have had a distinct role in our decline in recruiting.