Northwest catches fire on recruiting trail as teammates pile up scholarship offers

In one week, 35 Division-I football coaches came to Wichita to see two players.

Northwest juniors Marcus Hicks and Breece Hall have caught fire on the recruiting trail. They are up to more than 25 scholarship offers from universities such as Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio State and Florida.

Coach Steve Martin said their labor will be rewarded with a free college education, and the players said each time an offer is made, the feeling is surreal.

Hall said when he received his first scholarship offer from Iowa State, he was speechless for a few seconds. He didn’t know how to respond in a way that would express his gratitude. Hicks said he was the same way with his first offer from Oklahoma State.

“It doesn’t get old at all,” Hicks said. “I don’t think it’s gonna get old any time soon. It’s just a blessing, just having all these schools want you to play for them for free. It’s just so crazy to think about.”

Hicks is a four-star defensive end for the Grizzlies, and has accrued 18 offers. His schedule has been packed lately.

Jan. 10, he received an offer from Oregon. A week later, Baylor. The day after, Michigan. He attended Oklahoma’s Junior Day event Jan. 21. Louisville and Washington offered him a scholarship the next day, and North Carolina State followed suit Thursday.

Hicks is also a heavyweight wrestler at Northwest and competed at the Andover Invitational Tournament last weekend. He won his weight class.

Organization and time management are the keys, Hicks and Hall agreed. The amount of research can be overwhelming.

“You gotta look at the season they had, who they have coming back, the coaching staff,” Hall said. “To me, I think the relationships you build with them matter because you don’t want to come over barely knowing your coaches.”

With dozens of coaches filing through the doors at Northwest, Grizzlies coach Steve Martin said he tries to act as the gateway between the coaches and the athletes.

He directs the coaches to practices, places they can talk and to the weight room to see the guys work out.

“You always wanna help you kids move on, and I feel like we’re doing that, but it’s also helping some of our other guys get some attention that would probably never get any,” Martin said. “We’ve had a couple coaches where they walk in and they see our kids working out, and they start saying ‘Who’s that kid?’ ”

Sometimes the coaches don’t have time to notice others though. Martin said an Auburn assistant flew into Wichita recently, rented a car and drove to Northwest. After about 15 minutes of talking, the coach was back on the road toward to the airport for another visit across the country.

With coaches coming from across the U.S., Wichita’s geography in the center of the country might indicate an advantage in recruiting.

But Martin said because of Wichita’s size compared to some of the nation’s recruiting hotbeds, local players are at a disadvantage.

“If you’re a parent or a coach and you’re not sending stuff out there, kids aren’t gonna be found,” Martin said. “A guy used to always tell me, ‘Don’t worry about recruiting because film takes care of itself,’ and that is completely false.”

Martin said he and his coaching staff used to try to send film to college coaches once a week. Now it’s more like 30-50 pieces of promotional content a day, he said.

Northwest’s self-promotion has been largely successful. Much like East’s Arthur and Bryce Brown pulled the nation’s attention to Wichita a decade ago, Hicks’ and Hall’s talent and marketing is yanking eyes to the City League.

Hicks said he has gone to dozens of university camps, junior days and workouts. He and his father have driven as far as Virginia to be seen.

There are events near Wichita, but coaches have to attend for players to get noticed.

Hall’s recruitment has ignited recently. The junior running back has received eight offers since Nov. 21, with six coming since Jan. 17. He said he wasn’t used to all the attention when the offers started rolling in.

Living in Wichita and playing in the City League, out-of-state offers in the Power Five conferences are not automatic.

Former East defensive end Xavier Kelly is the most recent, committing to Clemson in 2016.

Hall said the exposure is a blessing, but the overwhelming nature of recruiting can be a curse.

Players are expected to maintain relationships, research, self-promote, keep good grades and, for Hicks and Hall, compete in their second sports.

Hall said playing a second sport has been a bonus for him in recruiting with coaches often showing up to basketball practices and games.

Hicks said he has wrestled since fourth grade. He has seen an improvement with his hands getting off blocks and explosion jumping off the line.

“Coaches always say they love multi-sport athletes,” Hicks said. “It can only help.”

With so many schools flooding into the area and delivering offers, Hicks and Hall said they have not started to narrow down their options and don’t have a timetable for their commitments.

The possibility of the teammates continuing on to the same university remains an option. They hold offers from Kansas, Kansas State, Louisville and Iowa, and they know how special that opportunity would be.

“Thinking about playing at the same school, being roommates and just going through the next four years of our life, I think about that sometimes,” Hall said.

Even if the combo doesn’t go to the same university after they leave Wichita, Northwest is better because they were there, Martin said.

“We’ve had our share of Division I players at Northwest,” he said. “But not at this magnitude. It’s very rare in Wichita for us. We get a national recruit maybe one out of four years, and to have two national recruits in the same building is pretty special.

“It’s been great for Marcus. It’s been great for Breece. But it’s really been great for our program and Wichita.”

This story was originally published February 1, 2018 at 2:20 PM with the headline "Northwest catches fire on recruiting trail as teammates pile up scholarship offers."