Lorain County is entering the proactive world of college football recruiting.
The county’s first college combine for local scholastic players will be held June 6 at Oberlin High School.
Oberlin head coach Dave McFarland and assistant coach Lester Allen led the effort to create the combine after getting positive feedback at a county coaches meeting.
“Hopefully, it’s just a positive thing for the kids in the county,” McFarland said.
“What I decided was, because I have a lot of good, healthy contacts, I will personally send the results to all the Ohio schools. Hopefully, it’s going to be an annual thing. Maybe in the future we can tie it into the All-Star game.”
The county combine will feature many of the events found in national or regional college combines or the annual NFL Combine.
Players will run the 40-yard dash, make vertical and long jumps and complete pro agility drills.
They’ll also have height, weight and wing span measured.
The players can bring video footage of themselves to the combine to give to Scouting Ohio.com creator Mark Porter, who will condense the footage into a highlight reel to place on his Web site for Division I coaches across the nation.
“There are always these big Rivals.com and Scout.com combines in Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati,” said Porter, who also writes for Ohio High School and Bucknuts magazines. “We’re going to try and start up these grassroots-type combines. We’re going to go to the smaller towns and see if we can find any prospects hiding underneath a rock.
“We’re just going to come and try to get the exposure for the kids.”
The Lorain County combine was the brainchild of Allen, who had met Porter at several combines across the state.
“He’s well respected at just about every place I went — all the colleges know him,” Allen said. “His forte would be to get college information to players and get player information to colleges. He said he’s never been able to get as many kids out of Lorain County that he’d like to on his site. I thought that was a shame.”
So Allen suggested a local combine to McFarland, who took the idea to his peers.
“I went to the county coaches and they all swear by (Porter),” McFarland said. “They were excited … they think it’s a good thing for the kids.”
The kids seem pretty excited, too.
“It’s very exciting, because I definitely want to play football at the next level,” said Clearview standout running back and linebacker Anthony Hitchens, an All-Ohio first-teamer last season. “I can’t wait to see what that experience is like, and I think it’s going to be a good competition between all the seniors.”
The combine will be important for athletes like Hitchens who are entering their senior seasons, but it will also be open to players from grades 6-11.
While the high school athletes will be using the event as a way of getting their names, faces and stats out to colleges, McFarland said the coaches are opening up the combine to the junior high athletes to give them a chance to experience it and be ready when it’s their turn to take it seriously.
“We want the kids to understand what a pro shuttle is, what a broad jump is … what a combine’s like,” McFarland said. “It’s local, it’s easy to get to, it’s inexpensive and it’s kind of neat that they get to put their names on that Web site. But if they do it during their eighth-grade, ninth-grade and 10th-grade years, they’re not going to be really nervous at the combine going into their junior seasons.”
The combine should have a professional feel to it. It will be open to kids from all areas — McFarland expects kids from Huron, Medina and Cuyahoga counties to attend — and Premier Toyota donated T-shirts for the first 100 sign-ups. Most of the county’s coaches are expected to attend and help run the event.
“Many coaches have said that they’ll work it,” McFarland said. “They’ve been really receptive to the idea. If each of them bring 10-20 kids from their team, we could have a lot of kids. We’re expecting a pretty big turnout.”
Which is good news for Porter, who will be driving from Berlin (west of Youngstown) to attend the combine. While collecting the videos will be his main priority, he also enjoys seeing the most popular part of any football combine — the 40-yard dash.
“If a kid runs a great 40 time, he’ll put himself on the map,” Porter said. “Speed is something you really can’t fake.”
Porter designed his recruiting site about four years ago to promote some of the players on the high school football team he coached.
“It’s just caught fire,” he said. “I can’t control how fast it grows — it’s really out of control.”
So Porter sat down with college coaches around the country and got feedback on what they’d like to see in a recruiting site, then tailored Scouting
Ohio.com to their suggestions. The biggest improvement has been the introduction of the highlight reel.
“We used to have to make copies of tapes and mail them out, and it was usually just game film,” Porter said. “It took the coach 45 minutes to an hour to watch the film, and they had to try and find the kid and sometimes they couldn’t. Now, with a click of the mouse, they can watch 20 or 30 of that kid’s best plays.”
Plays that have gotten many Ohio players a lot of national looks, and many Division I offers.
Avon Lake’s Christian Pace and Dan Schneider are both on the site, as is North Olmsted’s Matthew Rotheram. All three have at least 15 Division I schools listed that they claim have tendered scholarship offers.
“That’s kind of why we thought this would be a good idea,” McFarland said. “Our focus is on Lorain County kids and getting them scholarships so they can play college football.”
Contact Shaun Bennett at 329-7137 or sbennett@chroniclet.com.

Lorain County college combine

WHAT: Lorain County college combine for scholastic football players
WHEN: Saturday, June 6 (rainout date is June 7); 10 a.m. (grades 6-8,)
and 11 a.m. (high school)
WHERE: Oberlin High School
COST: $15 preregister; $20 walk-up
INFO: Call (440) 935-4568 for more details. Free T-shirts for the first 100 sign-ups.

In order to comment, you must agree to our user agreement and discussion guidelines.
You must be registered and logged in to post a comment. If you aren't already registered, click here.
If you are registered, click here to log in.
Need help? Email Us.