Camp season is in full swing at West Virginia, which means opportunities are for the taking.
Camp settings give college coaches a golden opportunity to run prospects through their own drills and push them in order to find out how they fit into what they want to do.
The evaluation period is critical for in-person scouting of potential targets, but the camp setting is a different animal when it comes to identifying key traits.
It’s a critical factor in evaluations and gives coaches a great chance to see not only how a player performs but how he responds to their coaching in drills built around what the Mountaineers want on the field.
That will certainly be the case in Morgantown as the Mountaineers have already hosted one one-day elite event and are still set to have three more on top of a specialist camp and a pair of 7-on-7 and big man events.
There have been plenty of success stories to emerge from these camps over the years, with most recently running back Jahiem White earning a scholarship offer after a strong performance and eventually committing to the Mountaineers. Others that fall under that category include Wendell Smallwood, Daikiel Shorts and several others just since I’ve been covering the summer camp circuit at West Virginia.
With Rich Rodriguez now overtop the program, the camp setting is certainly different as the first event of the summer was impressive in how it operated and the structure of the event.
There were individual drills, competition including both one-on-ones and 7-on-7 and then closing with some fun competition drills against each other such as holding a plank position for the longest, fastest big man and who could throw a football the furthest.
Rodriguez had his fingers on everything during the event and was very active.
There was a lot of teaching at every position and true to his word, Rodriguez would immediately call out mistakes and stop drills in order to make sure the players were doing things right. It was not only educational for the players but entertaining as well as they often pitted offense against defense in competition settings.
Now, given the rise of summer official visits for seniors, the number of upperclassmen making their way to campus has somewhat decreased over the years, but the opportunity still remains. And one of the best ways to get the attention of college coaching staffs is to perform at a high level with them eyeballing it.
The Mountaineers remaining elite camps are scheduled for June 6, June 18, and June 20, while the specialist event is set for June 18 and the 7-on-7 and big man camps will be June 11 and June 13.
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