The times they are a changin’ when it comes to college football recruiting – once again.
We have talked about this before when discussing the summer recruiting calendar and it’s effect on early commits. June/July had become the hot months for snatching up recruits before the high school & college seasons begin. Now it’s even earlier.
Local standout Sam Hagen gave word to Bubba Schweigert yesterday that he wanted to further his college career at UND and be a Fighting Hawk. Hagen is the first commitment to the Class of 2021 and by far the earliest commit of the D1 era.
There are some prospects that have already shown what they can do the previous summer and on their junior tape. This makes the summer before their senior season not as important to recruiters, allowing the athlete to receive a committable scholarship offer in the spring.
Last year’s first commitment came on June 4th from Mandan tight end Elijah Klein.
Hagen is a big kid at 6’6″-275 and is projected as a tackle in college. It’s apparent from video and pictures that he has some room to grow as he appears fairly lean for his size. Getting to 300 pounds shouldn’t be much of an issue.
Offensive line is a major emphasis once again this class as OL coach Joe Pawlak continues to overhaul his group. UND is set to lose four seniors after the 2020 season and this OL class combined with the 2020 OL class are going to be big part of Hawks offense very soon.
Hagen’s athleticism and lateral movement stick out immediately when watching his highlights (via GF Herald). He impressed most as a defensive end – very disruptive and showed quick change of direction ability. He will be raw coming in but his ceiling is very high based on everything we have seen and heard about him. Hagen performed very well last summer at UND’s camp as I noticed him in several of the individual drills.
Football isn’t his only sport – Hagen is also a baseball (first base) and basketball standout. I love to see the combination of those three sports – encompassing all four seasons and they provide the athlete with a varying skill sets, range of motion movements, and they all use muscles differently.
Also, how can you ignore the feature photo we used for this post – the one that has him holding his deer rifle while sitting in a golf cart? Have somebody else working the tree rows while you patrol the gravel roads in your Club Car waiting for something to break out. Perfect. 🙂
