DeKalb Schools Football: Record Numbers at Recruiting Forum

The 2011 DeKalb Schools Football Video Recruiting Forum, held Dec. 7 at the East DeKalb Campus Conference Room, hit an all-time high of 106 college coaches in attendance.

The 2010 Forum had set the bar with 81 coaches attending. The forum is set up to give DeKalb’s football players more exposure as their coaches can show video highlights of their college prospects to a multitude of college coaches at one site.

The forum has continued its growth from 2002 by reaching out to colleges all across the Southeast, Midwest, East and Northern sections of the country. The opportunity for colleges with smaller budgets to limit travel and overnight stay while seeing multiple coaches and viewing player highlights at one site allows coaches to evaluate and get contact information for players that may get overlooked by recruiting sites.

The DeKalb Recruiting Forum has played a key role in the lives of 655 DeKalb athletes over the past six years who were able to sign scholarships to further their educations and football careers on the next level. The past two signing periods have seen over 130 (high of 139 in 2010) athletes sign scholarships.

The 2011 Forum also had a high of 64 colleges represented following a high of 48 in 2010. Colleges from as far away as Delaware, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Indiana, Iowa and Illinois made the trek to Stone Mountain.

Seventeen different states were represented during the day with Georgia being the most represented state with 13 colleges including new programs such as Reinhardt and Mercer visiting to start adding the building blocks for their teams in preparation for the 2013 season.

North Carolina followed Georgia with 10 colleges followed by Alabama (7), Tennessee (6), South Carolina (4) and Kentucky (4). Kansas and Virginia both had three colleges visiting during the day while Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Pennsylvania had two representatives each. Florida, Delaware, Iowa, Indiana and Illinois were also visitors.

Mark Brock is the Statistician and Information Officer for DeKalb County Schools Athletics