Jul 5, 2009
Carson Moss, Leesville Road
RALEIGH — Leesville Road lineman Carson Moss picked up his first offer on Friday, but his recruiting process is different than most.
Moss, a rising senior for the Pride, is gaining interest from Ivy League schools, as well as other prestigious universities like Duke.
"[The Ivy League schools] focus more on the academics," Moss said.
The Ivy League schools use "bands" to group players together based on their academic credentials.
"The make-up of the football team has to match the make-up of the student body," said Moss.
Moss' academic credentials are in check. Going into his senior year at Leesville Road, Moss has a 4.625 grade point average, and he scored a 2050 on his SAT.
"He's a very bright, articulate young man and his recruiting will differ from the norm, particularly as he makes that trip and goes through the process of offers and decisions," Leesville Road head coach David Green said of Moss.
Moss credits football for keeping him on track academically.
“Football actually helps me in the fall," he said. "It helps me because I know I don’t have time to procrastinate, I have to get it done now."
Even though the recruiting process will be different for Moss, he is still attending camps and making visits.
On June 13, Moss went to Durham to the Duke camp and came away impressed.
"[Head coach David] Cutcliffe seemed like a great coach, and it seems like they're going to have a good season this year," Moss said.
"I thought the facilities were nice, the coaches were great, and I enjoyed it," he added.
Moss said he spoke with offensive line coach Matt Luke, but he has spent most of his time with assistant coach Scottie Montgomery, the recruiting coordinator for the area.
“They wanted to make sure academically that I’m sound, and we talked about how Leesville was going to do this year," said Moss.
Luke gave Moss a lot of feedback on football and his fundamentals.
Moss has also taken visits to Yale, Brown and Harvard this summer, and plans visits to Princeton and Cornell this month.
The lineman found out he received his first offer from Brown while doing an interview with HighSchoolOT.com.
"[Brown's] offensive line coach and his wife actually had a baby the night before the camp, so he wasn't there," Moss said. "It was a little more balanced between the offensive and defensive line."
More offers should be coming for Moss in the future. He said he thinks the schools want to see senior film and make sure he has improved from his junior season.
“All three of the schools showed a lot of interest," said Moss. "At Harvard and Yale there were a lot of Division II and III schools there, and I got a lot of interest from them.”
Moss said he hopes to major in engineering, but he is also considering psychology because he says most Ivy League schools don't have engineering programs.
The upcoming season will be important for Moss on the recruiting front. The Pride will begin their season on Aug. 21 at home against Panther Creek.
"We're hoping to have a really good year," Moss said.
As a sophomore, Moss started on the 2007 Leesville Road team that advanced to the N.C. High School Athletic Association's 4-AA state semifinals.
Does Moss think this team has the chance to repeat the success?
"I have a lot of faith in our team this year, the coaches seem to have a lot of faith in us," Moss said. "We've really come together as a team."
This blog post is closed for comments.
