Recruiting | Field 2 Field

College football recruiting is quite a process, both for players and coaching staffs. A Spring Grove, Minnesota, high school standout had played his first year of college ball for the University of Minnesota-Crookston and very unexpectedly found himself going through the process a second time. Here’s what it looked like when the news first broke late last year.

Spring Grove native Alex Folz enjoyed a successful first season of college football at the University of Minnesota-Crookston in 2019. After getting significant playing time as a freshman for the NCAA Division 2 level Golden Eagles, Folz was into offseason workouts and studies when he got the news that no college athlete expects. He wouldn’t be playing football for Crookston again.

The school had decided to ax its football program due to “budget concerns.” Folz was left without a team to play for, decided to open himself up to the college football recruiting process once again, and found a new team to play for. This time around, it’s going to be a much-bigger road trip from Spring Grove to his new home. The Spring Grove high school standout is now a member of the Eastern New Mexico State University Greyhounds football team. Why decide to join the team in Portales, New Mexico?

“The first few days of looking for colleges generated some interest from NAIA schools, NCAA Division 3 schools, but nothing that big,” Folz recalled. “I had a couple of offers from NCAA Division 2 schools in southern states like West Virginia. I sent some film out to Eastern New Mexico and by the fourth day of my college football recruiting process, the head coach (Kelley Lee) sent me an email saying he loved my film and thought I’d be a good fit there.

Spring Grove native Alex Folz, shown here as a freshman playing for the University of Minnesota-Crookston, found himself going through college football recruiting for a second time after Crookston decided to cut it’s football program after the 2019 season. (Contributed photo)

“Coach said they might even have opportunities for me to do more things than just offense, which I loved doing at Spring Grove and did at Crookston,” he added. “The recruiting coordinator called to talk to me, and they eventually gave me a pretty nice scholarship.”

He began to look into the team and program, including their facilities and liked what he saw. Folz said the multiple coaches he talked to “seemed nice.” Appropriately enough for the social media age, Folz followed several of the Greyhounds’ players on Twitter, who all seemed to enjoy what they were doing down in New Mexico.

“I thought to myself ‘is this what I really want?’,” he recalled with a laugh. “Minnesota is great, and I have family here, but it’s got to be nice to live in warmer weather and get out to explore the U.S. a little bit.”

Folz admits that the whole “re-recruiting” process ended a little quicker than he thought it would.

The highly decorated high school player had a successful first year with the Crookston program, more so on a personal level than in terms of team success (0-11). He felt the team had something building as a member of a large recruiting class for the Northern Sun Conference school. The team was doing offseason conditioning work when they got notified of an “emergency team meeting” out of the blue.

“I’d just finished class and was sitting with one of my roommates when he got a phone call saying a friend had heard the football team was getting cut,” Folz said. “The friend on the phone knew someone at St. Cloud State that had a meeting at the same time and their program also got cut. We initially thought it was just rumors and nothing like that would happen.”

However, after scrolling through social media reports and other online articles, Folz and his teammates slowly started to think there might well be bad news coming. A lot of his teammates had no idea what they were going to do if it was true because this was the only place they could play while going to school.

“Our coaches came into the meeting room and sat at the back, which is not something they normally do,” he recalled. “The Chancellor (Mary Holz-Clause) stepped up to the microphone and told us she was sorry we had to find out the way we did because they wanted to news to come straight from the administration. She also said, ‘as of today, we’re cutting the football program.’

“You could see it in the faces of every guy in the room,” Folz added. “The look in their eyes said, ‘are you kidding me?’”

What Folz didn’t appreciate was the fact that Holz-Clause told the team they’ve been trying to cut the football team for the previous 18 months. “That’s what got me,” he said emphatically. “Our coaches found out just ten minutes before she told us (on Dec. 10). Why couldn’t they have told us as soon as the season ended (Nov. 16)?”

That meant more than 60 players had to find new colleges by spring. That’s when coaches typically want their new players enrolled so they can get to know the team and practice in the spring. That left them less than a month to find a new home.

And, the school wasn’t prepared to offer a lot of extra help to the students. Folz said athletes who had questions could ask and they’d try to assist them. However, the former Golden Eagle football players were on their own in the college football recruiting process.

From a personal perspective, Folz was disappointed because he had a successful freshman season.

Spring Grove, Minnesota, native Alex Folz is shown here carrying the ball for the University of Minnesota-Crookston football team. Crookston decided to cut its program after the 2019 season, forcing Folz to undergo college football recruiting a second time. (Contributed photo)

“I started the season playing on all four of the special teams’ units,” he said. “I was also a running back. As the season went on, I took over the punting job, returned kicks, and was on the punt return and kickoff teams. Halfway through the season, I moved from running back to slot receiver just because their numbers were low at the position.”

The former high school quarterback also took snaps as the backup quarterback in practice, just in case of an emergency.

The biggest adjustment to college sports came in the classroom. He said Friday and Saturday were his busiest days for football. “That meant you couldn’t be as much of a typical college kid the rest of the week,” he said. “You really have to take your time to study and get your homework done. When all that’s done, you still have to pay attention to the game of football. It’s a big time-balancing exercise.”

Folz is heading out for New Mexico on Jan. 8, will move into his apartment, and then have a couple of days to adjust to the new surroundings. School starts on Jan. 13. Folz is leaving familiar surroundings and heading almost 1,150 miles from home. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when he thinks about the distance?

“I’m really excited,” he said after some thought. “I’ve always wanted to get out and see the country. The only thing I’m nervous about is meeting new teammates. We had a close brotherhood at Crookston. I felt as though I could have gone to any of the players or coaches with anything. I’m hoping all those guys down there will be the same way and I’m sure they will.

“We all just want to play football,” he said with a laugh.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Clemson beat the socks off Alabama to capture the NCAA football crown. As over a foot of snow sits on the ground in Minnesota (with more on the way this week), it may be surprising to realize that spring football isn’t that far away, at all. Ryan Burns of Gopher Illustrated talked all things Gopher football on a recent episode of Minnesota Sports Weekly.

“We’re only a few weeks away now,” Burns said, “and considering the kind of February we’ve had, with all the snow and the Polar Vortex, it’s going to be a sight for sore eyes. Warmer temps are around the corner, the doldrums of winter are getting behind us, which is a good thing for Minnesota residents and for Gopher football.”Recruiting has basically wrapped up (for now). Burns said Gopher coaches spent roughly three weeks in January pounding the pavement on the recruiting trail. That second national signing day cut down on the number of recruits Gopher football signed this time around during the traditional signing day, which is the first Wednesday of February.

“Minnesota only signed one more scholarship player,” Burns said. “They’d signed 21 scholarship players during the early signing day in December. It’s the second year that college football had two signing days. I’d say roughly 70 percent of all college football recruits have signed during December.

Gopher football — Ryan Burns of Gopher Illustrated. (Photo from twitter.com)

“The Minnesota coaching staff should be back in the office this week and looking at more recruiting tape,” he added. “Just a couple weeks later, the staff will get started on their spring football season.”

How much time do these coaches spend on the road trying to build the future of the program? It’s astronomical. After the Gophers beat Wisconsin at the end of the regular season, head coach P.J. Fleck was out on the road 19 of the next 23 days recruiting, all the way up to the early National Signing Day. As Burns said, “There’s no rest for the weary.” Right after that signing day, the Gophers were off to Detroit and their Dec. 26 appearance in the Quick Lane Bowl.

“They (coaches) got a couple weeks off after the bowl and they were back out on the recruiting trail through late January and early February,” he said. “They get another week off and then it’s back to work figuring out who they want to recruit for the 2020 class, which is all juniors as we speak today. It’s spring football until April 15^th, after which they’ll be back on the road till the end of May.

“Once that wraps up, their home with their families for 6-7 weeks,” Burns said. “Coaching is demanding. I know several Gopher coaches that consistently work 12-14-hour days and it’s tough being away from your family that much. When you’re out for a six-week stretch of recruiting, you’re home maybe one day every week. You better have an understanding better-half who’s willing to put up with the lifestyle.”

Looking at recruiting specifics, Burns said they had a few holes in the roster to fill. “They were trying to add more talent into a young team. The Gophers might have been the youngest team in the country last year. You always want to continue to add talent, especially at the quarterback position.

“It’s the position at which the Gophers have the biggest question marks on how the program takes the next step forward,” he added. “I’d argue they have as good of a stable of running backs that they’ve had in a long time, they have as good a wide receiver group they’ve had in a long time, and the Minnesota offensive line really flipped a switch in the last month of the season. The O line was a big reason the team took a big step forward late in the year.”

Minnesota signed two quarterbacks in the offseason. One was from out-of-state and was the highest-rated QB to sign with the Gophers in decades. His name is Jacob Clark and he’s from Rockwall, Texas. They also signed Cole Kramer, a quarterback from Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Burns said Fleck did “a good job” of filling his two biggest needs at quarterback and along the defensive line.

One of the most amazing things about recruiting under P.J. Fleck is how the Gopher program is getting recruits who are being chased by school in the Power 5 conferences. A good example is defensive lineman Rashad Cheney of Atlanta, Georgia. The 6-foot-2, 270-pound defensive tackle, a four-star recruit, had previously committed to play for both Georgia and Alabama in the SEC. However, he signed a letter of intent late last year to play football for the University of Minnesota.

“Any time that you’re able to get a kid who had committed to Alabama all the way up to Halloween of last year before deciding to look around,” Burns said, “I think Alabama’s defensive line is absolutely something you should try to emulate. Think about it, they annually send two or three guys off their defensive line to the NFL every year.

“Winning in the trenches every year is a big point of emphasis for defensive coordinator Joe Rossi,” he added. “I think they addressed that well.”

Here are lots of Gopher football highlights from last season

The Gopher football team took many Minnesota football fans by surprise, finishing 7-6 overall, getting three wins in the Big Ten Conference, and winning five of their seven home games. The goal of spring football is to make sure the program takes steps to keep things moving forward.

“The coaches want to make sure they can build on some things,” Burns said. “They want to make sure the players who had difficulties last year with certain aspects of their positions can get those things corrected by understanding the cause and correcting their technique. As much as they want to get the kids physically ready to go, it’s more about the mental aspect as Minnesota will continue to install new things both on offense and defense.”

He added, “Going into year three, they want to take things up a notch.”

The big headliner for Gopher football fans to watch in spring football is definitely at the quarterback position.

“You had Mankato native Zach Annexstad win the job out of Gopher football fall camp and then gets injured during the season,” Burns said. “Tanner Morgan then comes in to finish the season. Tanner started seven games and Zach started six. Neither one of them really did enough to pull away from one another.

“You also have the two freshmen quarterbacks coming in, both of whom graduated high school early,” he added. “They’re already enrolled on campus and will be there for workouts, as well as spring ball, trying to compete for that starting quarterback job. Fleck has said the quarterback job is wide open, but I say that Annexstad likely has the inside track. However, they’re all underclassmen, all 18-20 years old, and they’ll all grow and develop at a different pace, so we’ll see what happens.”

Tag: Recruiting

Minnesota Gophers prepare for spring football