Wake Forest has opened up a pipeline to Florida high school football players over recent years.
Aug 26, 2008
A quick glance at the state-by-state breakdown of players on the Wake Forest football team might surprise you.
It certainly did surprise me.
The Demon Deacons have 27 players from Florida on their roster, a number equal to that of players from North Carolina.
It seems the Sunshine State has become a major recruiting ground for Coach Jim Grobe and his staff, and that trend has only continued with the current class.
Six Floridians are among the 16 oral commitments the Deacons have secured to date, including the latest from Plantation, Fla., cornerback Rishard Anderson.
Anderson, who attends American Heritage High School, chose Wake Forest over offers from Rutgers, Syracuse and Vanderbilt. A second-team All-Broward County pick as a junior, the 6-foot, 171-pounder played cornerback, wide receiver and running back.
Wake’s Grobe said the development of a recruiting base in Florida wasn’t necessarily part of his plan for building his program.
“So many times you go and find a great player, and he might be in a program that might not have a recruitable guy for another 10 years,’’ he said. “But half of the guys who play at The Bolles School (in Jacksonville, Fla.) or Nease High School (in Ponte Vedra, Fla.), every year they’ve got four or five Division I football players. So when you bring one of the guys off their team and he comes to Wake Forest and has a really good experience, you get this word of mouth, parents talking to parents, kids talking to each other thing. It just kind of starts some snowballing.’’
The Deacons have also received a commitment from Alpharetta, Ga., quarterback Brendan Cross.
Cross, a 6-1, 189-pounder who plays at Chattahooche High, is the son of former NFL offensive lineman Randy Cross. The younger Cross passed for 1,400 yards and 15 touchdowns as a junior.
David Harding, a 6-4, 275-pound offensive guard from Boone High in Orlando, Fla., has become the 22nd member of Duke’s recruiting class.
Harding chose the Blue Devils over a long list of offers that included Florida State, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Purdue, South Carolina and West Virginia. Central Florida and South Carolina were on Harding’s final list along with the Blue Devils.
Duke now has four offensive line prospects committed to the Class of 2009.
The recruiting calendar for major-college programs turns next week when the month of September begins.
During the months of September, October and November, coaching staffs have 42 days during which to visit the campuses of the players they are recruiting in order to evaluate them academically and athletically. A coach can only make one visit to campus per recruit.
Sammy Batten can be reached at battens@fayobserver.com or 486-3534.
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