{"id":46606,"date":"2025-05-13T11:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T11:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/46606\/"},"modified":"2025-05-13T11:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T11:20:10","slug":"high-schools-respond-to-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/46606\/","title":{"rendered":"High schools respond to changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago\u2019s western suburbs played host to a sort of \u201chigh school crawl\u201d for college football coaches Wednesday, with talent evaluators shuttling from one DuKane Conference football field to the next in search of recruits.<\/p>\n

Conference coaches, led by St. Charles North\u2019s Robert Pomazak, started the eight-school event \u2014 called \u201cDuKane Day\u201d \u2014 a few years ago in an effort to get more eyes on their players amid an increasingly challenging high school recruiting scene.<\/p>\n

Coaches from more than 60 colleges at all levels attended to see players work out, chat with them and obtain their information from high school coaches. Pomazak said the day, which was modeled after a similar showcase in Indianapolis, is \u201ca one-stop shop within our conference for them to see upward of 200 to 300 kids, which the coaches find very advantageous because the travel is pretty rigorous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other high schools and conferences around the Chicago area are fielding similar events \u2014 or hoping to \u2014 as they look for new ways to promote their recruits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis allows us to promote our conference, which is important, but also promote every player within our program, not just the blue-chip athlete,\u201d Pomazak said. \u201cBecause the majority of kids who go to college to play football are not Division I scholarship athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NCAA transfer portal and this year\u2019s uncertainty about Division I roster limits<\/a> have changed the recruiting game for high school athletes \u2014 and the coaches who try to set them on the best college path.<\/p>\n

The Football Bowl Subdivision saw 2,902 players transfer to new schools last year through July 2024, and 1,395 Football Championship Subdivision players transferred in that time, according to NCAA records<\/a>. The biggest programs\u2019 recruiting attention \u2014 and offers of roster spots \u2014 often is swayed toward transfers now.<\/p>\n

Anecdotally, area high school coaches and their athletes are feeling that shift in terms of the volume of coaches calling \u2014 and the level of the programs interested.<\/p>\n

Naperville North coach Sean Drendel said two years ago he had 75 colleges visit the school as of May 1. Last year that number was 37. This year it was six.<\/p>\n

Instances of regional recruiters checking into high schools each year have decreased, Drendel said, as some programs focus on the portal or shift to positional recruiting.<\/p>\n

\"St.St. Charles North player Aiden McClure introduces himself to a college coach during the team\u2019s showcase day on May 7, 2025, in St. Charles. (John J. Kim\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Glenbard South coach Ryan Crissey said his text conversations with other high school coaches about the number of college recruiters coming by their schools have changed.<\/p>\n

It was once: \u201cThis week was kind of crazy. We had 13, 14 schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s: \u201cWe had two. We had four.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at things from a Division I standpoint, whether it\u2019s the FBS or the FCS, the high school kids for the most part seem to be the afterthought,\u201d Crissey said. \u201cBut I understand why. I mean, if I\u2019m the head coach \u2014 it doesn\u2019t matter if I\u2019m at Illinois State or if I\u2019m at Illinois \u2014 if I can get a 20-year-old who\u2019s played two years in college football compared to an 18-year-old who hasn\u2019t, I\u2019m probably going to take the chance at the transfer kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"St.St. Charles North football coach Rob Pomazak leads a running drill during the team\u2019s showcase day May 7, 2025, in St. Charles. (John J. Kim\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

In the new climate, high school coaches try to find multiple avenues to get their players noticed. That can include utilizing personal connections, reaching out to recruiting services and media analysts \u2014 and showcases such as DuKane Day. It\u2019s \u201ca full-time job unto itself,\u201d Pomazak said of helping his players get recruited.<\/p>\n

A week before Pomazak\u2019s event, Crissey and Drendel hosted their own version, called \u201cWestern Suburbs College Football Evaluation Day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair had conversations for a couple of years about how to help their athletes get recruited. They wanted to help players who couldn\u2019t afford the prohibitive costs of multiple third-party showcases or college camps, where it\u2019s often hard for non-elite players to stand out anyway. They saw the number of classes some athletes had to miss to meet with colleges. And they wanted to collaborate with other coaches to bring in more college recruiters to see their players.<\/p>\n

So last year they started their showcase, a two-day event with 13 high schools and more than 200 players. They spoke with college coaches to tailor the schedule and put the players through agility workouts, positional drills and unpadded competition periods.<\/p>\n

Sixty-seven coaches from multiple college levels attended this year\u2019s event, though attendance by FBS programs was limited, Crissey said, based on each school\u2019s interpretation of rules by its compliance officer. The DuKane schools hold their event on each school\u2019s individual field to ensure FBS programs can attend without being wary of NCAA violations.<\/p>\n

Crissey and Drendel said they\u2019re working on a proposal to help their event be open to more FBS schools. But Drendel said their event is especially useful for smaller schools anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big schools, they have an endless budget, so it doesn\u2019t matter to them,\u201d Drendel said. \u201cBut if you\u2019re at Western Illinois or Eastern Illinois, your budget is not as big, so you need to see as many kids in a short amount of time as you can.<\/p>\n

\u201cGenerally you can only hit so many schools a day. So if we can put six to eight of them in an area for a two-hour period, they can kill a lot of birds with a lot of stones. And we can go back to our parents and say, \u2018We had them evaluated.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The broad range of college programs at the events is important at a time when multiple high school coaches said they\u2019ve had to adjust their athletes\u2019 expectations for the level of football they can play to start their college careers.<\/p>\n

Jacobs coach Brian Zimmerman, who hopes the Fox Valley Conference can start its own showcase next year, said he has seen some \u201cmind-boggling\u201d recruiting droughts for players he thought deserved better.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a couple of kids this year that in my opinion would have been at least Division II or FCS kids that I couldn\u2019t get a sniff from coaches,\u201d Zimmerman said. \u201cIf you\u2019re a tweener kid who might not be a three-, four-, five-star (recruit), you might have to look to start at a lower level.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CollegeCollege coaches watch St. Charles North players run sprints during the team\u2019s showcase day May 7, 2025, in St. Charles. (John J. Kim\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

Zimmerman and other coaches are advising players that the path to playing football in college might look different now. One of Zimmerman\u2019s former players, tight end Nick True, is transferring from Illinois to a smaller school because he wants more playing time. He valued his time as a walk-on at Illinois but said if he were in high school now, he might have made a different decision \u201cif I knew about how crazy this portal thing is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lower-level programs have embraced selling the new path of the high school player, playing up the developmental aspect that might not be as likely anymore at FBS programs if young players can\u2019t get on the field, Crissey and Drendel said.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019re offering another promise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are plenty of colleges, all divisions except for FBS, that will come in and tell our higher-level kids, \u2018Come to us for two years, and we will help you transfer,\u2019\u201d Crissey said. \u201cNever in my life would we have heard that three, four years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Pomazak said, \u201cthe ecosystem of recruiting has changed 180 degrees.\u201d And high school showcases are one way coaches can help their players adapt to the changing times in college sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chicago\u2019s western suburbs played host to a sort of \u201chigh school crawl\u201d for college football coaches Wednesday, with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[16074,7,16078,16075,16077,49,16076,4156],"class_list":{"0":"post-46606","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-college-football-recruiting","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-glenbard-south","11":"tag-high-school-football-recruits","12":"tag-naperville-north","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-st-charles-north","15":"tag-transfer-portal"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114500260890357691","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}