BY CHRIS FORTUNE
Footwork, speed drills and working out with receivers to improve chemistry — this is what a few seniors on the Eudora High School football team said they work on to grab the attention of scouts and college programs in hopes of playing at the next level.
Preparation for the football season began over the summer with weightlifting led by the coaches and many players do optional work at open fields after this to improve at their position.
“These kids work really hard,” head varsity football coach Sean Hayden said. “They had a great offseason, and they stayed confident through the good and bad.”
During the offseason, Hayden has conversations with players who want to play at the college level to discuss what is reasonable for them as he works to get them in contact with coaches he knows.
“They got to let me know that they're interested and what level they're thinking, and we’ll have a conversation about what level, realistically,” he said. “After each game, I’m usually sending out tape to recruiters and trying to get the kids the best opportunity they can.”
Eudora has three seniors this year hoping to play at the next level: quarterback Ezekiel Reazin, receiver and defensive back Matthew Evans and running back and linebacker Cael Lynch.
Reazin threw to his receivers and went over routes with them this summer. He said it made a difference going into this year because of the improvement of the team’s passing game.
“I definitely made a few mistakes, but I feel like our passing has gotten a lot better,” he said. “We’ve had 200-yard passing games this year, and it’s definitely different from last year's team.”
Reazin knew he wanted to play college football once he got his first start at quarterback his sophomore year.
“It was something that just felt good,” he said. “This year, the offense clicked, and I feel more confident and happier with it, so I feel like this year showed that I was ready for it.”
He said that wherever he goes to college, he’s going to make sure he is comfortable with the school, which has been difficult since he hasn’t been able to see many campuses in person.
“I’m definitely going to try to get some campus visits in, but it’s hard though because a lot of them are doing online campus visits,” he said. “You can’t really get that experience, so it’s weird not being able to go.”
Evans worked on footwork and speedwork over the summer. He found it encouraging that some of the underclassmen joined him in these optional workouts.
“It was all completely on our own,” he said. “We just decided that we wanted to do it because it meant something to us and we wanted to be better.”
He was grateful the team got a chance to play after so much uncertainty over whether there would be a season at all.
“We continued to get on the field and workout, and we just had that hope that eventually something would happen, and we’d get to play,” he said. “We really didn’t see it happening and the fact that it did happen was really great for us and we actually got a chance to prove ourselves”
Evans has communicated with recruiters mostly through Twitter, phone calls and text messaging. He has talked to mostly in-state coaches from Emporia, MidAmerica Nazarene University, and a mix of smaller and bigger schools.
“They haven’t let us do any in-person visits, but I actually have done Zoom calls with coaches and recruiting coordinators so we could meet face to face,” he said.
Evans initially played for Veritas Christian, an 8-man private school out of Lawrence, and found it easy playing there. He transferred to Eudora for his sophomore year and questioned whether he would be good enough to play. He found he was and that he belonged there.
“At that point, it was just to work harder, get better, and make the dreams a reality,” he said.
Lynch spent time in the summer going to fields that were available to work on footwork, routes and one-on-one coverage.
Lynch went to a training camp at Dordt University in Iowa. Recruiters messaged him toward the end of the summer to let him know they’d be watching him during this season. They invited him and other players in the country to a Zoom call and pulled a select few aside to invite them to the camp.
“They are a private religious school that has a smaller campus, but they have a really solid program,” he said. “I tried to get out as much as I could, trying to balance exploring new territory and making myself comfortable.”
Lynch said recruiting for him has been making himself available and making sure it is known he wants to compete at the next level.
“For every coach that has followed me on Twitter, I always send them a message and I say, ‘Hey coach, I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate you following my account,’” he said. “That’s my way of reaching out and letting them know that I’d be interested in playing there.”
Lynch recently reached out to a coach from Ottawa University who followed him on Twitter and that coach responded by saying he was on the sideline when Eudora played Ottawa earlier in the year. He respected the way Lynch ran the ball and planned on sending him a recruiting form.
“Had I not reached out to him, he might have just thought that I had a good game and then that would have been that,” he said.
Lynch isn’t sure where he wants to go to college yet and his decision also hinges on how well he performs during the wrestling season. He would like to stay in state and be around his family, but he is open to the idea of going out of state.
“I like the idea of staying close to my loved ones, but at the same time, it’s something that piques my curiosity to see what it would be like to go somewhere that is not close to home,” he said. “I feel like that would be a really good opportunity for me to see what real life is.”
For now, Lynch is making sure he enjoys every moment of his last year in high school.
"Since I was in middle school, I was told that high school is the best years of your life,” he said. “I feel like I took all the right steps to live in the moment and it still went by fast.”
Reach reporter Chris Fortune at eudoratimes@gmail.com.
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