College coaches overlook ‘our guys'

 

Apparently our Southeastern Minnesota football players are not  "good enough'' to play on the Division III or higher levels.

Only two seniors from around here will accept football scholarships today on National Signing Day. Those would be Hayfield safety/punter Evan Bungum (Minnesota State, Mankato) and Cannon Falls linebacker Nate Zibolski (University of Minnesota Duluth).

I'm not a football scout, obviously, but Southeastern Minnesota teams did pretty good in the Prep Bowl last fall. As I recall, Lourdes and Caledonia won their respective championships and Triton was right up there.

Certainly some of those players are good enough to play at the next level, whatever that may be.

Adam Lentz, Alex Kapraun and Sean McGrath to name a few did more than OK for Lourdes this year and I can't believe that they couldn't contribute in college.

Lentz may be small by collegiate standards but all year he slipped away and broke tackles of much bigger linemen, linebackers, cornerbacks and safeties.

Let's hope some of "our'' guys walk-on this fall and prove those college scouts wrong.

                                                                                                              Paul Christian

 

Comments

[Brett Boese]

For what it's worth, we could still have dozens of local guys playing at the Division III level next year. Those schools don't have access to athletic scholarships, but many kids choose to play there because of the high-quality education that typically goes along with the opportunity.

And that decision can be made rather later. I didn't decide to attend Gustavus until around June...and ended up leading the team in touchdown catches that fall as a freshman.

And don't even get me started on the perception of Division III athletics being glorified high school ball...

[Ray Cambridge]

I'm not paying attention to what's going on in Minnesota right now, rather I want to see what's going on with Louisville. I was able to get some Belk Bowl tickets from http://amazonticketsonline.com/Belk-Bowl. We shall see how it works out.