Wheeling Park’s football team has featured its fair share recruitable talent through the years. That’s true of the Chris Daugherty era, as well as when Doc was an assistant on the staffs of both the late Mark Nardone and Ron White before him.
But the buzz surrounding the program is a bit different this year, and a lot of that can be attributed to one young man. One extremely fast young man.
Junior wide receiver Jerrae Hawkins stands only 5-9 and weighs 160 pounds. That’s not casting an imposing shadow.
But it’s Hawkins’ speed and strength that’s caught the eye of many a recruiter coordinator across the country. But how fast is Hawkins?
He’s state champion sprinter fast. He’s nationally-ranked-sprinter fast. He’s “the late Al Davis would take him in the first round based solely off his 40-time” fast.
Back in June, Hawkins blazed to back-to-back 4.3 second flat 40-yard dash times during a prospect camp at West Virginia University.
Yes, the Mountaineers have offered him. So has Pitt, Penn State, Toledo, Virginia Tech, and Old Dominion. The Top 5 Ohio State Buckeyes haven’t yet, but are paying extremely close attention, as is Oregon from the Pac-12.
Hawkins has put in the work during the offseason that by the time his junior season rolled around, he’s already a household name.
“We’ve had kids pretty highly recruited before but the biggest difference is this time, (the attention) has come so early,” Daugherty said. “We’ve never had a sophomore being recruited at that level. As a sophomore, they aren’t allowed to talk to him, so they’ve been talking to me.
“Everyone from Ohio State, WVU, Virginia Tech, has called me, and when you throw that it with changing jobs as the AD, it’s been some crazy times.”
Daugherty recently took over as the school’s athletics director in addition to his head coaching football duties. Safe to say, he’s busy.
But he knows his first priority is the young athletes in his charge on the football team, including Hawkins.
“We want to make sure he gets recruited at the level he deserves to be, so we don’t’ turn any phone calls away and have done everything we can to generate interest,” Daugherty said. “Now, it’s kind of running itself and he doesn’t need a lot of help.”
The Hawkins Effect
There’s plenty of attention being paid to Hawkins, make no mistake. All that added attention is a positive, not only for the program, but for Hawkins’ teammates.
He may be the highest-rated player nationally on the team—a 4-star recruit by both Rivals.com and 247Sports, ranked as the No. 22 wide receiver nationally by the latter—but he’s not the only one with talent.
Others are being noticed too and, Hawkins’ high-profile status certainly isn’t hindering his teammates’ chances.
“When Ohio State comes to your weight room to look at him for an hour, they are noticing some of the other kids too,” Daugherty said. “We are getting a lot of that right now, and it’s helping all of the kids in our program because others are being evaluated.”
Daugherty said the home state Mountaineers are recruiting Hawkins at an extremely high level. But in the process, the Mountaineers’ recruiting staff has taken notice and had conversations with Doc about some of the other members of the Patriots’ roster.
Adding to the Lists
The talk today among recruited athletes in all sports is adding to that “bag” or compiling recruiting offers from as many colleges as possible.
Daugherty, in a sense, can do so himself in a similar fashion. Except he’s not stockpiling offers. He’s adding to the list of Patriots’ athletes under his tenure as head coach that has or will go on to play college ball.
That number stands at more than 50 and it’s only going to increase. It’s a number the coach and his staff are quite proud of as the WPHS program consistently churns out wins and top-notch athletes now.
“At one point a couple years ago, we added up all of the scholarship money our players have received and it was around $1.5 million dollars,” Daugherty said. “When you look at 4-5 years of college and the cost of those, we knew how much our kids were getting. It’s a lot, especially when you consider those aren’t loans that have to be repaid.
“Out of those 50 kids, we’ve had some starters at the college level, and all conference at the Division II and III levels and we take a lot of pride in that. Becoming a starter in college is special.”
Finding the Right Fit
Hawkins is certainly Division I caliber, and big boy D-I at that. He’ll be catching passes at a Power 5 conference school in a few years.
Getting a Division I scholarship is a great honor. Moreso, getting a college scholarship to play football at any level is a great honor. Not everyone is Division I, and that’s okay.
That’s why one of the points Daugherty and his staff try to emphasize with their players is finding the right fit and being realistic about what level that fit is.
Players love to attend ID camps and recruiting camps hosted by Power 5 schools. Some players that attend those schools are catching the eye of major Division I scouts and will receive offers. There are plenty who attend those camps who will never sniff Power 5 football, but still pay the fee to attend.
“So many times kids want to get evaluated by schools they can’t play at, and I know it hurts to hear, but in reality, they need to hear it,” Daugherty said. “They need to get in front of the right coaching staff because, maybe they aren’t Division I, but they can be very good at this level and still have their college paid for.
“All over, you see people wasting time at camps that they won’t be evaluated at. They are just exchanging money.”
Doc isn’t here to cancel people’s dreams. If they want to attend the WVU camp, or the Ohio State camp, or any other big time program, go for it. Have a great experience.
“But also make sure to hit up these seven Division II camps, because that’s where we see you,” he added. “Hopefully we’re wrong, but make sure to get evaluated at the right level.”
The percentage of players not only recruited to but that star enough at a Division I program to be drafted into the NFL is incredibly small.
You know what most Division I and II football players have in common? They aren’t playing in the NFL. But they do get their college educations paid for and, in more often than not for those at the Division II level, they get a lot more playing time than their average Division I counterpart.
“You want to get an education and you want to get on that field,” Daugherty said.
Technology Lending a Hand
A recent LedeNews.com article talked about how the Wheeling Park High School athletics department is making full use of advancements in technology.
That has spilled over into the recruiting of its athletes as well, making the life of the coaching staffs of all sports at WPHS a lot easier.
In the past, athletes would come to their respective coaches and ask for a highlight film to be put together. Depending on the exact year of yesteryear in question, this was quite a time-consuming process.
Schools that didn’t have the staff or the resources sometimes weren’t able to help out as much as they’d like to, leaving athletes to handle it on their own.
Park’s had technology even back during the later years of the Nardone era that made this process a bit easier and friendly on the compiler. But the advent of the Hudl camera system has made Daugherty and his staff’s life infinitely easier.
Daugherty recalled the conversation with WVU about some of his other players after a lengthy discussion about Hawkins. The WPHS coach offered to send individualized film on all the players in question to the Mountaineers’ staff member.
It was a nice gesture, however, it was also unnecessary.
“He told me he has our entire roster on Hudl and is evaluating the players right now,” Daugherty recalled. “We’re talking (on the phone) and he’s breaking down our Hudl film while we’re talking. It’s pretty amazing. Now, we don’t really have to send anything out.”
The process now is Daugherty or another member of his staff reaches out to a team to say there is a player they should take a look at and they can near immediately begin watching and evaluating film because of how the Hudl camera films, catalogs, and breaks down film digitally.
It also helps when your program has sent 50 players on to the collegiate level.
“We’ve been lucky because we’ve had enough kids go on (to college) that coaches will call us and come check out our school and evaluate players even without us doing a whole lot and that’s huge,” Daugherty said. “Hopefully we can keep that going because it’s a whole lot easier than making phone calls and trying to get a kid noticed that way.”
