Recruiting: Road Warriors
Two Scouts seniors travel all over the Midwest during college camp season in hopes of impressing coaches and getting offers
There’s a famous hill on the University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus called Bascom Hill.
It’s long, steep and filled with rich history. At the top of the hill rests Bascom Hall, one of the oldest structures on campus. When Lake Forest seniors Finn Goodman and Arjan Jawanda visited recently, the site seemed the perfect spot for a race.
“Whoever touches (Bascom Hall) first wins,” Goodman said.
Relentless competition is embedded into the ethos of the Scouts football program. It should come as no surprise Goodman, a 6-4, 220-pound defensive end and Jawanda, 6-1, 250-pound center, would engage in such behavior 130 miles from West Campus.
When there are dreams to chase down, it’s best to move as fast as possible.
The recruiting calendar in college football never expires. It may slow down for stretches of time, but the sport’s core obligation—talent acquisition—requires college coaches be in a perpetual state of continuous selection.
The player choice era that began with the one-time transfer rule and predictably evolved into unlimited movement has boosted the supply side of the economic model. While filling a roster hole with a ready-made 20-something is tempting for college coaches, old fashioned values haven’t gone out of style.
“We still recruit high school kids and develop them,” Brent Bassham said. Bassham is the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Colgate University, located in upstate New York.
Since the mid-1980’s, Colgate’s conference home has been the Patriot League. The Raiders play in a subdivision of Division 1, the Football Championship Subdivision, the one that has had a postseason playoff system for 45 years. Between 2015-2018, Colgate won three conference titles.
Chicagoland, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri and the Dakotas are Bassham’s recruiting territory. Colgate has a reputation for bringing in high academic, high production yet low maintenance football players. They want to win but not at any cost.
“Our kids and parents see the big picture of how much they can make out of school,” Bassham said. “We’re not into the NIL deals but how much they can make of four years for the next 40 (years).”
Over the years, Scouts players such as defensive end Trent Williams (Class of ‘14) and wide receiver Ryan Cekay (Class of ‘19) have come through Colgate. Current punter Shelby Pruitt, who also attended Lake Forest High School, was a first team All-Patriot League punter in 2023.
Williams and Cekay both graduated and Pruitt is on track to finished this upcoming academic year with a degree in economics. Colgate doesn’t redshirt and players get “four years and eight semesters with us,” Bassham said.
Colgate has found a niche formula and sales pitch bought into by Chicago area athletes: we sell permanence and stability in an era that celebrates changeability and perpetual motion.
“Some are looking at the transfer portal and we are taking high school kids. Everybody’s different. We want the kids who maybe has multiple Mac offers but they are looking for the academic piece,” Bassham said. “You go FBS (Division 1-A) and they can pull your scholarship after one or two years. We get a bunch of kids from the Catholic League and Chicago area who come here and it’s four years to set up your life for 40. That’s what parents want.”
There are plenty of other schools like Colgate with the same philosophy. Good football, great academics and culture. That’s what two current Scouts seniors are in hot pursuit of.
Evolution for a high school football player takes on many forms. It can be of physical form—strength and conditioning—and for the most elite, a state of ceaseless mental propulsion.
Mostly, the search is about identity. Who am I and what do I do well?
Going into his second season as full time starter, Jawanda possesses the self-awareness that only experience can bring.
“I’m not Rylie Mills,” Jawanda said, referring to the former Scout now Notre Dame defensive lineman and likely NFL 2025 draftee. “I look like an outside linebacker. What college coaches like about me is my mobility. I can get out in space and have enough football I.Q. where I know what’s going on.”
A staple of the Scouts’ offensive scheme is the outside zone run, which requires offensive lineman to down block and pull to the outside. It would make sense for Jawanda to seek out colleges that feature a similar scheme.
He’s got plenty of film from his junior year as a promotional tool.
“Use that (film) and market myself as a mobile center,” Jawanda said.
Jawanda first started reaching out to schools after the 2023 season. He went on some visits, but April, May and June of this year were the heaviest months. The University of Chicago, Valparaiso, Lake Forest College, Northwestern, a couple of schools in Wisconsin, including Madison, all in the span of a month.
The Wisconsin trip stands out the most to Jawanda as he was accompanied by Goodman, a teammate dating back to their days at St. Mary’s Middle School.
“We’ve been inseparable for four years now, Finn and I,” Jawanda said. “In the weight room, I’ll set up on the rack next to him just to be five pounds heavier. We build on each other and make each other better.”
Think of a new parent living two doors down from another. Or getting a new job and sitting next to another new trainee the first day. Having a peer go through the same process—one that is non-linear and filled with emotional highs and lows—can only be labeled a positive.
Goodman has a similar recruiting profile—high academic, two-year starter (after this season), high character and motor, low maintenance.
The defensive end had an equally busy spring, participating at Northwestern, Wisconsin and Purdue camps. Each had their own emphasis.
“Wisconsin and Purdue were very similar. We were not waiting around and were getting work done. They flowed well with good pace, where the coaches wanted to help you get better,” Goodman said.
Each camp ended with 1-on-1’s where Goodman would go against an offensive tackle or guard. “I wish there was more time and emphasis on that,” he said.
Goodman did come out of the camp season with an offer from Lake Forest College. Purdue has expressed interest with a possible game day visit in the works for sometime this fall.
With Scouts practices underway in July and college coaches preparing for their seasons, the pace of recruiting will slow somewhat.
But it most certainly will not stop.
Early on in his high school career, Goodman saw his older brother, Brady, posting highlight film on TwitterX.
Brady Goodman also played defensive end for the Scouts from 2021-22.
“I was like, ‘how do I do that?’” Finn Goodman said.
He created a TwitterX profile and began posting his under level highlights. Goodman said he received a lot of spam in his direct message box at the beginning but started to gain followers that were college coaches. After his junior season of 2023, with a full season’s worth of highlights, things “blew up.”
Now he makes a point of posting after every visit. When he meets coaches at a camp, there’s a familiarity that wouldn’t have been there if he had no social media presence.
“Getting your name out there early shows you want to play and that you are serious. If you didn’t post, they wouldn’t know who you are,” Goodman said.
Jawanda takes the same approach as Goodman when it comes to TwitterX, how social media is a technology piece to be leveraged by both recruits and recruiters.
“With a Twitter post, you can send whenever you want and post when you want. Most coaches have DM’s open,” Jawanda said. “If they DM you, that can lead to a phone call and camp invite. You’re just marketing yourself as a player and person.”
It’s not just Goodman and Jawanda platforming their college search process.
Seniors Alex Terlap (OL) Matthew Somoza (DL) and Tim Dan (LB) have also posted updates along with juniors Jimmy Scheidler (LB) and Aedan Cassidy (WR/DB). Underclassman Jack Burger (soph WR/LB) and George Holland (soph OLB/DE) have created profiles and are posting.
While there’s a fine line between indulgence and boosterism when it comes to social media, college coaches like Bassham say he rarely recruits athletes that don’t have some online presence.
“It helps us identify prospects and we can track them for what offers they have,” he said. “It’s easy access to film and pictures and videos of them working out and doing drills.”
Bassham advises high school players list as much information as possible on their profiles. That includes their high school, high school coach’s name, email address, grade point average, test scores and even cell phone number as it all “helps speed up everything.”
If college football is the ultimate destination, persistence and speed wins the race.
That June day in Madison, Goodman bested Jawanda in the Race at Bascom.
“I won,” Goodman said.
Goodman’s dad, Andy, a University of Wisconsin graduate, offered a prize of $3.
Finn Goodman deferred, preferring a sweeter award.
“We ate triple scoop ice creams on the lake front pier,” he said. “Those are the things you remember the most. The little memories.”
For Jawanda, who wants to go into sports medicine, going through a once-in-a-lifetime with a best friend makes the experience that much more special.
“Finn and I have the same goals and values. It’s a shared dream with him,” Jawanda said. “You can only get better as the people around you. Football is a game to be played and shared with family.”
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