We get a lot of frantic phone calls at KPGFootball. We used to hardly ever get called but in the face of these uncertain times, the phone is ringing off the hook.
Most of the inquiries mirror. What are we going to do if there aren’t any combine and/or camps this summer? What are we going to do if there isn’t a Fall football season?
Let’s tackle these issues singularly. The calendar tells us they are, at least at present, on completely different risk arcs.
What if there aren’t any combines/camps this offseason?
As for camp/combine season, it appears the die has been cast in that regard, to an extent. We talk regularly to the Appalachia Prep Combine and they believe they will have their combine at the end of May. I hope your son is signed up for the combine as it may be his only combine opportunity.
There is still some remote chance other combines, set later in the summer, like right up close to when the season would have (otherwise) started, may still go. Those chances dwindle with every breaking news story. An example of this is Notre Dame. Notre Dame has a combine set for July 6-7, 2020. Coach Kelly indicates he will make some sort of announcement regarding its going off in the next three weeks. Fingers crossed.
There are a ton of kids who find their chances to shine at the camp-combine series level. For these kids their chances of getting recruited diminish somewhat if they don’t get these opportunities.
KPGFootball recommends you start videoing combine tasks. Find 40-yards somewhere and video your athlete running a 40 on your hand-held stop-watch. If the run is videoed the college coach watching it can alway whip out his timer and time the forty himself. Besides that, any salty coach knows what a 4.5 looks like. We know that sounds strange; but believe us, there are reliable ways to asses it besides the laser or stop-watch.
Do the same for the 5-10-5 (Pro-agility shuttle), the L-Cone, bench-press, squat, and power-clean if you have access to a home gym or weights somewhere. Let’s say your son lifts more weight than you have on hand. Then video him repping at 185 or at 225 on his bench press, video him squatting sets of 20 at half his maximum squat lift. There are ways, you have to be creative.
How do we get all this video to the coaches? Well you can either look up the email addresses of the coaches on their University website or you can join an online recruiting service, put together a profile page, download the video onto there, and use the service’s links to get it to the schools your son is interested in attending. We have put the logo of such a service which exists to the upper left of this paragraph. There are others. Choose one.
Now, if you can’t get to a combine or camp owing to the national state of emergency, your play this Fall becomes even more critical than normal. There was a day when all high school recruiting was done from Friday-night film. There are still coaches around who remember those days and even some who still believe on-field performance is more important than looking athletic running around a field in shorts and a shirt not getting hit.
The element of getting hit always changes the equation, doesn’t it? We have seen plenty of “pretty show ponies” disappear when the pads get donned. The guys who disappear when the pads go on are often called “shorts and shirts” All-Americans. This year, going between the chalk lines and obviously taking over games may be the only remaining alternative. We would suggest you get yourself prepared to do that.
The great Hershel Walker grew up too poor for weights and weight rooms. He didn’t let that stop him. He did 1,000 push-ups and 1,000 sit-ups every day and ran up and down a hill right outside his child-hood home. If you want it badly enough, this pandemic won’t stop you. Wouldn’t have stopped Hershel Walker.
What if there isn’t a season?
First of all, if we don’t have this present pandemic under enough control to all return to work by August, the least of our worries may be whether there is a high school football season. Just yesterday, President Trump announced he intended for the NFL season to start on time. If the NFL suits up and packs stadiums, you would think the KHSAA would recognize that as a national “All-Clear” sign and do likewise, but who knows.
Having a conduit through whom, or by which, one can both contact and have meaningful discussion with college football coaches will become quintessential if there isn’t a season. There are recruiting services like NCSA, Rivals.com, Football University, and 247Sports.com which are that conduit and facilitate that very thing.
There are other services like Kentucky Prep Gridiron, the Appalachia Prep Combine, Elite-3 Foundation, and National Playmaker’s Academy which do the same but on a slightly more regional scale. There are also trainers like Corey Taylor’s Sports Performance (pictured to the left), B & B Precision Training, and Aspirations Fitness Institute (Chris Vaughn) who greatly aid in the promotion of kids to next-level opportunities.
Without a season, these services will be all you have. They will be hyper-critical. You might avoid the rush, triage this situation, and go ahead and get enrolled right now. You do that and we will keep pumping out features meant to provide coaches everything about your son’s football playing prowess that school needs to pull the trigger and offer.
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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