I want this kid horribly. He looks fantastic. Not even sure where you play him he's so good at so many things.
RB.
There aren't many good RBs on the WC next year we are likely to get. There are a lot of great WRs and Ss, so I would put him at RB.
I'd actually consider recruiting him as an athlete and letting the class start to figure out where he ends up.
I have a hard time believing that he's gotten great coaching at Garfield ... so he's got a great potential to be molded into an elite player at any position he ends up at.
Sometimes these boreds are so white. Seattle public schools biggest problem isn't coaching. It's small turnouts.
The little league football in the CD and Rainier Valley is still top notch, with heavily involved parents and coaches. You can see future bad-ass players at 10-12 years old. Many or most top performers get plucked by Coker's Man-on-Man mill O'Dea, or Eastside Catholic, Kennedy, Blanchet, AB Murphy, etc. Others will enroll at Bellevue, Newport, Quah, Edmonds-Woodway, or Meadowdale.
Garfield had Mark Stewart for a year, after owning WESCO at Meadowdale for a decade. He moved on, but the current coach is not bad. The hardest thing for Garfield, Franklin, and other Metro Schools is winning games outside of Metro with 25 to 30 players on their sideline, compared to 70 or 80 across the field. Watch an O'Dea practice sometime and you'll see where the in-City talent goes, even though a bunch of them right short buses.
Coaching, funding, turn out.. The schools plucking those kids have better coaching. It's naive to think otherwise.
Lincoln in Tacoma was very similar to the Seattle schools. Once they got a good coach, kids went to Lincoln instead of Lakes, Curtis, Wilson, Bellarmine, etc. That combined with good coaching made them a good program. It's not rocket science.
Tacoma has only Bellarmine, Roady. And what kid is going to Franklin if he gets a free ride at Kennedy, Blanchet, O'Dea or Prep.
And if you're right, why couldn't Stewart win at Garfield after going 13-1 a couple times elsewhere? Answer: 85 players vs 25. There's only so many to go around. Metro is a Basketball league.
I'm sure it's difficult, but you cultivate relationships with the youth programs and recruit. Go to junior highs and get involved with the kids. Give them some pointers, take an interest in their life, meet the parents.
The GTA has Bellarmine, Lakes, Curtis, Mt Tahoma, Wilson, etc. All schools with some good players. Lincoln took players away that would have went to those schools. They also made kids practice, started off season training, and cared about the fucking kids.
No reason why Garfield can't do the same to the Seattle Public Schools. You sell the program, actively get kids to turn out. Despite the difficulties, it's the same as anywhere else. You make the program something that is cool and beneficial to be involved with.
There is a reason only 25-30 kids turn out.
The coaching is dreck and I doubt they put anywhere near the effort the coaches at the premier high schools do.