Jeff Nelligan calls it “the combine grind”, showcases and try-outs and premier tourneys where college coaches from all three NCAA divisions congregate, analyze, measure, and decide which kids they’ll follow and recruit. Here is how he, and his sons, survived it.
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Every Dad with a competitive kid is preparing for summer. Yeah, the last lacrosse game is at 00.00 on the scoreboard and spring football is in the 4th quarter. Stretching out to August are new fields and the echo of whistles, the settings for camps and tournaments all over the nation. It’s here you’ll find those remarkable kids who never lose a chance to put it all on the line and be judged. Accompanying them, of course, are their remarkable Dads. Summer for the high school athlete is a time of enormous expectation.
I call it the “combine grind” – these are showcases and try-outs and premier tourneys where college coaches from all three NCAA divisions congregate, analyze, measure, and decide which kids they’ll follow and recruit.
I’m certainly no remarkable Dad, but I’ve been through this drill more than a few times and here’s a timeless example of how one summer unfolded…
Two sons, four athletic camps, and six tournaments stretching from Boston to Virginia Beach and seven cities in between. Forty-six officiated lacrosse games, more than 51 football skill sessions, 23 7-on-7 games, and 2,700 miles in a car with my sons, the most valuable time I’ve spent as a Dad.
For the older son, it’s a drive to be noticed and ultimately coveted by NCAA college coaches, no less in two sports. For the younger kid, it’s a chance to show skill and athleticism and hang with top talent. Indeed, the eldest son did well in these summer crucibles, and had just finished his second NCAA lacrosse season.
The football camps are just plain tough. Sometimes a hundred select young men, sometimes 400 non-select kids — all instantly organized, sorted by primary position, offense or defense, and then given identifying jersey numbers. This is the wonderful mechanics of these camps. There is little discussion or confusion, just a quick following of orders and hustling to get in line.
Next comes the long and detailed regimen of workout drills watched by alert coaches with the Career Beginning and Ending Clipboards. Your kid does closely watched drills with, for example, dozens of outside linebackers. The coaches watch intently and dispassionately for hours, and what they write on the Clipboard means your kid may have a shot at their school, or it’s time to back home to Daddy.
And these coaches aren’t asking for anything complex here. In fact, it’s simple and repetitive, just perfect for your correspondent. Bulky, leather practice bags are laid out and kids high-step through them. The bags are placed at oblique angles at various distances and kids high-step through them. Kids are thrown a ball as they run through the bags. They either catch it or keep high-stepping to the parking lot.
Four guys are placed in a square, a few yards apart from each other, and told to react to hand signals from a coach. Up, back, left, right. Stopwatches are everywhere.
Across three wide open fields these drills go on. Linemen push sleds, QBs and receivers and cornerbacks try to outwit each other. For running backs, it’s running through pads carrying the ball: “Nose to the sky!” “Eyes up!” “Back straight!” Then passing drills with QBs and linebackers: “Sharp routes!” “No cross overs!” “Burst! Burst!” The drills run for hours, yells floating across the fields like a long muted drone.
Every kid is trying their best, giving everything they have. They’re prepared. Just to get here has required thousands of hours of practice, weight rooms, hot fields, cold mornings, pass routes long after dusk, countless collisions and snap counts. What a remarkable set of circumstances has propelled them here. And it’s certainly not Real Life because there is not a single slacker to be seen.
And the parents. Imagine the sheer production of getting Billie from Nashville or Pittsburgh or Seattle or Houston or Miami all the way to Boston or Annapolis or Norfolk.
Having attended these events for years, I measure success by two critical elements: Foot speed and size. And you can’t teach size. The eldest son, Nellie Junior, no behemoth, worked for years on agility – ladders, the parachute, shuttle runs, endless sprints — and became one of the quickest kids on any field on which he plays (Yeah, I’ll brag a bit. What are you going to do? Throw a clipboard at me?) The value of foot speed is inestimable. The coaches are entranced with it.
It takes about three reps of drills on day one, hour one, for someone to see where a kid stacks up. The competition is ferocious. It doesn’t mean a darn thing that you were All League at Big Bad High in the Tri-County Conference. Can you move out fast? How tall are you?
And last, and the coaches have a stock phrase when approached by a kid introducing himself: “Howareyourgrades?” It’s one word. It’s direct and hard, but hey, football is a direct and hard sport.
My middle son, nicknamed “Little Nellie” is 6’1”, 210 pounds, a linebacker who in addition, plays fullback and tight end. To really seal the deal, about three years ago, I encouraged him to learn how to long-snap because as former football great, Richie Petibon, once told me, “Snapping is THE tie-breaker.” I.e. if a kid can do that, and play one, even two more positions, he’s going to make a team over someone else.
So my son and I practiced snapping, and I mean endlessly. We’d have four footballs and he’d shoot them back to me, one after another, as I stood in punt formation. Then then he’d shoot them back to me as I simulated a holder (and I mean simulated, I was awful) and the youngest kid would kick often into the other son’ backside. It was all to get the tempo and rhythm down right. It no doubt looked comical to folks coming across us on a field. We read up on hand placement on the ball, how to use the legs to increase ball speed. Over time, the snaps got faster, held a tighter spiral, and now Little Nellie is a machine.
And yes, as a Dad, if you really think hard about all this, you recognize instantly there’s a defining element of sheer madness. “Yes, I’m on annual leave from a serious job, driving 450 miles to watch my kid jump around bags and catch passes and push sleds all over a field – for eight hours.”
It was 10:15 p.m. at the Princeton Football Camp, and the hotly contested 7-on-7 games had ended. We’d arrived here about 20 hours ago from a lacrosse camp in Providence, RI. After 48 hours here, we’d split for a three-day Under Armour lacrosse tournament in Baltimore.
I was walking Little Nellie back to the dorm. He’s beat. Heck, I’m even beat from sitting in a chair all day and spinning college intrigues in my head.
We’re passing darkened classrooms and buildings and big lonely quads. “My man,” I say, “I know this a grind. But if you’re going to play college ball, this is where you gotta be.” He was carrying his shoulder pads and helmet, his hair was matted to his scalp, his shirt soaked with sweat and his cleats clicked and echoed on the pavement.
“Yeah Dad,” he said and then added, asking and answering a question at the same time, “Where else would I be?”
Photo: Flickr/Fran Escriba