Record-number of recruits to visit on Saturday
By C.J. Moore
Originally published 08:50 p.m., October 24, 2008
Updated 08:50 p.m., October 24, 2008
Every week day after practice is over and the Emporia State football coaches have finished watching film and game planning, tight ends coach/recruiting coordinator Sean Clowers gets on his phone and spends several hours making phone calls to recruits, trying to build relationships.
This weekend Clowers work starts to come to fruition. The Hornets will have 60 to 70 high school seniors on campus Saturday for the Homecoming game against Truman State. It will be the most recruits the Hornets have had on campus in the Garin Higgins era.
Emporia State has recruits visiting from Missouri, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas and Colorado in addition to players from Kansas, who will make up nearly half of those visiting. The Hornets will graduate 15 seniors this year and Clowers said they will try to sign between 20 to 30 players for next year.
“We signed over 60 kids the last two years so most of our team is going to be back as either redshirt sophomores or redshirt freshman and that freshman class that comes up is the most important class is the class we’re about to sign as far as depth, filling holes from seniors that are graduating,” Clowers said.
Clowers said the Hornets are currently recruiting approximately 500 players, but many of the recruits could not make the visit this weekend because of schedule conflicts. Many high school seniors are taking the ACT this weekend, which kept many players at home; however, several recruits changed their testing location to Emporia State so they could make the trip.
The players will arrive Saturday morning and check in with Clowers, providing game film, transcripts and test scores to the coach. Many of the recruits visited this summer, but they will get the chance to tour campus and interact with the current ESU players after the game in the locker room.
Clowers, who coached with Higgins at Northeastern State University, was hired this past offseason and Higgins said he put him in the recruiting coordinator position because of his attention to detail and work ethic.
“I think he’s just taken a lot of pride in that position,” Higgins said. “He understands the importance of that position. Recruiting is the lifeblood of any football program. It’s not all about the schemes that you’re doing X’s and O’s wise, it’s about the guys out there performing those schemes.”
Clowers has brought several new ideas to the team’s recruiting strategies. He will try out one of those new tactics on Saturday for the first time, showing recruits a 6-minute video the football team made about the program.
“My philosophy is right now we have a lot of young players, and I think high school seniors right now a lot of times they look down the road like where they’re going to be as a senior in college,” Clower said. “We have so many young kids playing and our recruiting philosophy and our playing philosophy is we’re playing the best players.
“The whole theme of the film is the guys they’re about to watch on Saturday were sitting in those chairs last year. ... We emphasize the youth of the program and those guys being part of something special.”
Local players to visit
Northern Heights will have several players in attendance on Saturday, including quarterback Kenneth Bronson, center Matt Railsback and kicker Stephen Nuessen.
NHHS co-head coach Tad Hatfield was the Hornets starting quarterback from 2002 to 2004 and has encouraged his players to give Emporia State a look.
Bronson is the Flint Hills leading passer this season, throwing for 1,975 yards and 22 touchdowns out of the Wildcats’ spread offense.
“I’m looking for a spread offense,” Bronson said. “I don’t want a college that’s going to sit there and run it down somebody’s throat.”
Emporia State’s spread is appealing to Bronson, who has also received interest from Coffeyville Community College, Benedictine and Kansas Wesleyan. Railsback also likes the spread and working out of the shotgun. The 6-4, 275-pound center moved to center for the Wildcats because of his ability to snap the ball in the shotgun.
“I never really thought I was good enough to play until this year coach said I could probably go play somewhere and I kind of got interested,” Railsback said.
Railsback is also receiving interest from Coffeyville, but he is also considering not playing football and joining a livestock judging team in college instead.