I mentioned on the blog earlier that we had our photo shoot for the cover of our football preview magazine today.
UNT was nice enough to let us come by and let us take the shot inside Apogee Stadium.
We are going to have all three of the local high school coaches on the cover along with Dan McCarney this year.
So I am trying to lead John Walsh, Joey Florence and Kevin Atkinson into the tunnels underneath Apogee where I never been to a locker room that I have never seen without letting on I have no idea where I’m going.
We go through the double doors and there is the entire UNT coaching staff (that is completely within the rules, by the way) there to greet the local high school coaches who most of the guys on the staff already know.
And then we go through what I always find fascinating when you get a bunch of high school/college coaches together. You can get 15 of those guys into a room and they can carry on an entire conversation while all addressing each other as coach, and everyone can still tell who is talking to whom.
I have no idea how. It goes something like this:
“Coach, how ya doing? Great, coach. Coach, didn’t see ya there. How’s practice goin?, coach. Coach, how’s that new quarterback lookin?’ Great coach. Who ya got week one, coach?”
The point is, you have to give UNT’s staff a lot of credit.
They say that relationships go a long way in recruiting.
Ryan’s Joey Florence and Guyer’s John Walsh are two of the best in the high school coaching business and Kevin Atkinson has also been successful. He was at Keller and coached UNT commit Cody Nelson before he took the Denton job.
Florence makes it look like defensive linemen grow on trees in Denton. He had Jarvis Moss, Derek Lokey, Mario Edwards and Dominique Banks.
Walsh might be one of the top coaches in the state when it comes to developing quarterbacks and coaches UNT commit John Schilleci.
The point is the Denton schools have a lot of talent and some good coaches developing it.
You have to give UNT’s staff credit for capitalizing on an opportunity to chat up those guys when they had the chance.