The first Wednesday in February is National Signing Day, the first day that high school senior football players can sign official letters of intent. On that day, MSU recruited 26 players for next year, including five offensive and nine defensive linemen. In addition, there are four running backs, three wide receivers, three corner backs, a linebacker and a safety.
Head Football Coach Bill Maskill said, “The hardest part about finding athletes are D-line and O-line. You can find skill guys that can step in. You cannot find defensive or offensive linemen at this level.”
Maskill attributed his inability to recruit top-notch players to competitive offers from bigger schools like the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma.
Maskill he said although linemen are at a premium he does not expect any of the incoming linemen to play in the fall but should be playing in two or three years if they stay at MSU.
Maskill said, “We lost an O-lineman to U-Tech. That was a project, but he was a 6’7, 300-pound project that was athletic. They don’t expect him to play next year but they thought they can develop him like we thought we could.”
Two of the seniors are from the Wichita Falls area: linebacker Dakota Schweiger of Iowa Park High School, and wide receiver Davon Allison from Rider High School. Allison stood out his last two years and was named District 5-4A offensive MVP and named to the Associated Press sports editors 4A second team after setting single season records as a senior.
Maskill said, “[Allison] slid through the cracks.”
He can run, he can catch, he’s local and he’s got a chance to play. It’s dependent on what he does between now and August physically and how mentally tough he is to pick up the schemes that MSU is running.
Although this year’s class is smaller than past years’, Maskill said he believes that this is a quality class.
“We would have loved to have taken 40 kids, but we didn’t have enough money to take 40 kids. Next year we’ll have 18 to 20 seniors. We’ll have more money to be able to do that, and I’ll do a better job of adding up the numbers.”