Friday, February 26, 2010
Pursuit of long-snappers includes non-monetary incentives
Skilled player accepts Hokies’ invite
Doug Doughty
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Many Division I signees would have been envious of the recruiting attention paid to Graham High School center Alex Marrs, headed to North Carolina as a walk-on.
Doug Marrs, who is the Graham head coach as well as Alex’s father, said that he took a call just in the past week from a Maryland coach inquiring about Alex’s availability.
The younger Marrs also had been recruited by Virginia Tech, Virginia, North Carolina State, West Virginia and Marshall.
Listed at 6 foot 3 and 240 pounds, Marrs doesn’t project as an every-down offensive player at the Division I-A level, but he has one very marketable skill.
He’s a long-snapper.
It runs in the family.
Marrs’ cousin, T.J., also snapped for Graham and is currently at the University of Tennessee as a recruited walk-on.
The walk-on route is a preferred path for the Marrs family. Another of Alex Marrs’ cousins, David, has accepted an invitation to join UVa’s football team as a non-scholarship player.
David Marrs (6 foot 1, 190 pounds) started at quarterback in Graham’s triple-option attack, started at safety and punted for a 40-yard average.
“We sent film out to everybody,” Doug Marrs said. “In the midst of the change [at Virginia], I called coach [Anthony] Poindexter and I told him, ‘Hey, we’ve got a kid who’s a pretty good athlete and we’re looking for a place for him to go.’
“He said to send film and he’d look. Then, coach [Scott] Wachenheim called and said, ‘Golly, we really like this kid.’ He told me that he’d been at Rice University, where they ran the triple-option, and told me that “he’s really a tough kid; I can’t believe nobody has jumped on him.’
“ Graham sent along a copy of Marrs’ transcript and, before anybody knew it, Marrs was headed to UVa.
He joins a group of invited UVa walk-ons that includes 6-6, 260-pound offensive lineman Nick Koutris from Oakton High School in Vienna; first-team All-Richmond Metro offensive lineman Greg Gallop (6-1, 300) from Thomas Dale, and all-state Virginia Independent Schools punter Alex Voleznik, who was also a place-kicker at St. Christopher’s.
THE ALEX MARRS story is more complicated than his cousin’s. His final decision came down to North Carolina and Virginia Tech and the Tar Heels simply made him a better offer, but not a monetary offer.
“The thing that North Carolina could do for him that Virginia Tech couldn’t was, Tech wasn’t prepared to offer him in the 105 and the University of North Carolina was,” Doug Marrs said. “He reports June 15.”
The 105 refers to the number of players, including no more than 85 scholarship players, that I-A teams can have on site for the start of preseason practice.
“According to coach [Allen] Mogridge, who was his recruiting coach, their deep snapper [Mark House] will be a senior,” Doug Marrs said. “The job is Alex’s to have in January if he does the job right.”
Alex Marrs wasn’t prepared to look at North Carolina when he stopped at North Carolina State and auditioned for Wolfpack assistant Jerry Petercuskie last summer on the way to a Marrs family beach vacation.
Doug Marrs had planned to play golf that day with a friend in the Triangle area, but his friend’s secretary’s husband was killed in a plane crash and the golf round was canceled. That left some open time for Doug and son to stop by the North Carolina practice field, where, totally unannounced, Alex got off some snaps and made believers out of the Tar Heels.
Virginia, which loses snapper Danny Aiken after this season, inquired about Alex Marrs and probably have offered a spot in its 105.
“I talked to Ron Prince,” said Doug Marrs, speaking of the Cavaliers’ special-teams coordinator under former coach Al Groh, “but, they lost out in the [coaching] shuffle, so to speak.”
KEEPING UP WITH Tech’s numbers is practically a full-time job for director of football operations and staff “capologist” John Ballein, so it’s no surprise that the Hokies couldn’t commit to a spot in the 105 at this point.
One of the players who has committed to Tech as an invited walk-on is Blaine Mason, a 5-foot-11, 185-pounder who made first-team All-Cedar Run District at running back and defensive back under former Hokies’ quarterback Mark Cox at Battlefield High School in Prince William County.
“Blaine has got the quickness and the build to play for Tech,” said Cox, who put Mason’s speed in the 4.5-second range for 40 yards. “It may take a little bit of time because it’s a completely difference game. He’ll get his feet wet, I think, with some special teams.”
Cox said that Mason may have had some Division I-AA opportunities “but, once Virginia Tech got involved, he tuned everybody else out. These kids look at the history of the walk-on situations and some places are good and some places aren’t so good. Tech treats their kids good.”
Another senior on Battlefield’s 12-1 state semifinalist was 6-7, 225-pound quarterback Bo Revell, rated one of the state’s top 25 prospects as a junior. Revell, whose father was on the football team at Virginia, is headed to William and Mary as a walk-on.
Cox said that Battlefield didn’t throw much more than 15 times per game but didn’t that was a factor in Revell not getting more I-A interest.
Cox said he believes Revell was under-recruited and attributes that to the fact that “not too many people are looking for conventional quarterbacks any more. It’s not the popular thing right now.”
Cox has a soft spot in his heart for conventional quarterbacks, having been one himself.
“Everybody’s looking for Michael Vicks now,” Cox said. “Tight-end offenses are getting extinct, too. Half the people aren’t interested because he’s not a spread quarterback; in the past, a big quarterback might get a look at a tight end, but, at a lot of places, that’s not a possibility either. So, it’s tough.”
