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This is the first in a multi-part series to be published this summer exploring different aspects and perspectives of the college recruiting process for Wisconsin's high school football players. We will talk to and look at the process from a number of sources, including the University of Wisconsin, out of state Division 1 schools, Division 2, Division 3 WIAC schools, in-state private D3 schools, as well as speak to the athletes themselves. The purpose of this series is to explore and explain what can be a complicated and at times confusing process while also educating athletes, coaches, parents, and fans about ways to improve the chances of earning college scholarships or interest, what needs to be done to compete in college, and what things to expect along the way.

Division 2 - Winona State University (Winona, MN)

Winona State University in Winona, MN is nestled just across the border on the Mississippi River, only about a half hour north of La Crosse. The Warriors compete in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference as a NCAA Division II program. In 2010 the Warriors finished 6-4 in the highly-competitive NSIC (league champion Minnesota-Duluth won the Division II National Title) and 7-4 overall. Head coach Tom Sawyer has been at the helm since 1996, with 13 straight winning seasons and is the school's all-time winningest coach.

A.J. Blazek is in his third year as an assistant coach with the Winona program and prior to the 2010 campaign was promoted to co-offensive coordinator. Prior to joining the Warriors Blazek spent time as an assistant at Fort Hays State and the University of Iowa. Blazek played for the Hawkeyes from 1999-2000 and was an All-Big Ten selection in 2000. Five of the six offensive captains in the past three years at Winona State have been linemen, with four of them hailing from the state of Wisconsin:  ’10 Casey Clark (Sun Prairie), ’09 Seth Haun (Tomah), ’09 Marcus Greatens (Pulaski), ’08 Nick Urban (Brookfield Central).

Following is a Question and Answer segment with Coach Blazek about the Winona program, it's philosophies about recruiting Wisconsin players, and what athletes can do to increase their exposure for potential college scholarships.

WSN:  What sorts of qualities or traits (both physical and mental) do you look for in recruits at Winona State?

Coach Blazek:  The number one quality that we look for in a recruit here at Winona State is Character!  Coach Sawyer wants the student-athlete that sets the bar in regards to honesty, integrity, discipline, and commitment.  All of which is character.  This is the hardest evaluation to get on a prospective student-athlete because you cannot see it on film.  You have to find out from coaches, teachers, administrator, and my favorite, the lunch ladies.

The next quality we look for in prospects is that are involved in their school and community.  Coach Sawyer has built this program on players that care about the university and the community of Winona.  The only way to truly care about something is to give back to it.  The more you give to something, the harder you fight for it!

Here at Winona State we preach that you have to be tough both mentally and physically.  We want the toughest athletes available.  It does not matter what position you play.  We want the toughest guys on the field in ALL positions!  For me personally, I want to recruit the toughest, most physical offensive linemen in the country.  That means the guys that play with pain.  I’m looking for the guy that loves the game of football so much that he does not know what he would do without it.  That is what I look for.

Finally, like all college football programs, you have to a skill set that shows you can be a great player at the college level.  There are a plenty of guys that fit the mold of the first three characteristics and there are plenty of guys that fit the skill set mold.  Where you really make your mark in recruiting is to find the guy that has both.  That is what we strive for here at Winona State University!

WSN:  What is your process for identifying potential recruits initially? (recruiting services, media, HS coach contacts, etc.)

Coach Blazek:  The number one resource for us here at Winona State is the high school coaches.  These are the guys that work day in and day out with each of these prospects.  What a coach has to say about a prospect carries as much or more weight than any other resource.  We do get information from a number of recruiting services, but there are really only a couple that are credible year in and year out.  The biggest recruiting service we use is comes directly from the coaches themselves.

In this era of technology, every guy out there can put together a pretty good highlight tape and throw it on youtube.com.  Coaches get passed up a lot in the process because any recruiter can get the film and then contact the kid directly.  No matter how well a prospect looks on film (a big part of the process), we still rely a lot on what the high school coaches say in regards to football.

WSN:  How big are your initial contact lists? What is your process for getting them down to a manageable number of potential recruits?

Coach Blazek:  My initial contact list this year is about 225 prospects and I only recruit Southeast Wisconsin from Menasha all the way down to Kenosha and I do not go any further west than Wautoma.  It’s a good sized area, but you think about the high quality of football played at all levels and there is a ton of talent that I have to sort through.  All of our coaches here at Winona State have similar lists for their respective areas.

To get your list down to a manageable number, you have to talk to one heck of a lot of high school coaches in the spring.  We want to get as many prospects from our original list to our campus and then watch JR film on the same list all before we can make our first initial phone call in mid June.  Here at Winona State, we also like to e-mail as many prospects as possible so they have our contact information and so forth.  The more evaluations you can get on a prospect the better.  By August, I like to have my original list cut down to 100 prospects.

WSN:  Looking specifically at Wisconsin prospects in general, why do they fit well with what you are trying to do at Winona State?

Coach Blazek:  Well it’s plain and simple,  Coach Sawyer has won with Wisconsin kids for his 15 years as the head coach and also for the 10 years prior as an assistant.  Being a Wisconsin native himself, he tends to think just drinking the water in Wisconsin makes you tougher!  In all seriousness, Winona State’s campus is as geographically as close to any Wisconsin town as any of the other schools in our conference.  Winona is located right on the Mississippi River and we are about 3 hours from the farthest corners of Wisconsin.  If you live in southern Wisconsin, you have to take I-90 to any of our rival schools and in the middle of winter, that shorter drive is pretty nice for student-athletes, and parents.  A lot of the kids that we end up landing here at Winona State tell us that besides the winning tradition and the excellent academic standard, it would just be hard to have to drive by Winona to go to a rival school.  So to answer your question, I think location has a large part as to why Wisconsin kids fit in here so quickly and easily.  They truly feel like they are at home.

WSN:  Does the fact that there are no Division II schools in Wisconsin work to your advantage?

Coach Blazek:  I would have to say that it does help.  I mentioned location in the previous question and that would not be the case if Wisconsin had their own Division II league or teams.  That being said, we do recruit pretty heavily against the Division III schools in the WIAC.  Some of those schools also have great tradition and that is still a hard pull at time for us if a prospect lives in the backyard of one of those tradition rich programs.  In the big scheme of recruiting, I would have to say having football scholarship money definitely does play into our favor.  Any little bit that you can help a family pay for college helps and so I think now more than ever, that football scholarship helps to draw some of Wisconsin’s best high school talent.

WSN:  Is it difficult to recruit against the successful Division III schools that are in the state?

Coach Blazek:  I mentioned this in the above question.  If a prospect lives in the backyard of one of those tradition rich DIII programs, it is tough to recruit them at times.  But with scholarship money available and the opportunity for a recruit to compete at the highest level possible, I would say we still do a nice job picking up some of the WIAA’s finest student-athletes.

WSN:  What is your general philosophy or plan in recruiting the state of Wisconsin?

Coach Blazek:  My personal philosophy in recruiting Wisconsin is to build strong relationships with the high school coaches in my recruiting area.  My father was a 30 year high school coach in Kansas and Nebraska and my grandfather was a hall of fame high school coach in Iowa.  I learned growing up that the football coach in a school has as much influence on not just the football players, but the entire student body.  So, this is why I’ve learned to trust high school coaches.  Through communication (e-mail, phone, etc.) with coaches year round, I think they appreciate the right amount of communication.  I personally like to get out to spring clinics and not just talk about what we’re doing here at Winona State, but more importantly stay on top of what’s going on in the high school ranks. I love to spend time with coaches at clinics.  It is the best time of the year because nobody is hurrying off to class or I’m not trying to hurry to the next school.  You really get to know the coaches on a personal level.  This is where you find the guys that truly like football and this is where you find the coaches that you can trust in December and January during crunch time in recruiting.  Once you find those coaches you know and can trust, you really rely on them a lot to not only tell you about the guys on their team, but also those in their league or in the surrounding area.

Now that I’m going into my third recruiting class at Winona State, I’m starting to communicate earlier with some of those coaches that I’ve really learned to lean on for good information the past couple years.  It amazing that there are some coaches that care so much about the high school football in Wisconsin that they have the all the information on kids around the state.  I have for the past 10 years and I will continue to rely on the guys that spend more time with these prospects than even parents.

WSN:  What are some of the benefits of recruiting in the state of Wisconsin? Any challenges?

Coach Blazek:  There are two major benefits of recruiting in Wisconsin.  First, you have some of the best high school football in the Midwest right here in our own backyard.  Second, you have quality STUDENT-athletes that are taking care of business in the classroom.  This makes it a lot easier to recruiting than some place where you don’t even go to certain schools because test scores and education is so bad.  Those are the major benefits of recruiting Wisconsin.

I cannot put my finger on any major challenges.  As you look at recruiting nationally, you can actually find certain types of players based on geography.  You have teams from all levels come to the heartland and upper Midwest in search of that next great lineman.  Teams from all levels tend to head south or to the coasts to get athletes with more speed.  This is not an exact science, but generally speaking there are deeper recruiting pools of certain positions in these areas.  There are still plenty of skilled, very fast athletes in Wisconsin, just not as many as say in Florida or Texas.  I have a great friend at Florida International, Phil Ockinga.  He is a defensive coach and we talk all the time.  They have more cornerbacks and wide receivers than know what to do with.  He is always calling me looking for linemen.  This happens all the time in recruiting so it is more a part of the business than a challenge.

WSN:  What are ways that players that are interested in playing at the Division II level or earning scholarships can increase their exposure or chances of earning a scholarship?

Coach Blazek:  The first thing a high school player needs to do is let their high school coach know they are interested.  High school coaches for the most part care a ton for all of their players.  They will help almost any kid go on to play if they have the skills necessary.  Where most high school players run into trouble is understanding where they should be looking in regards to level.  High school coaches see enough kids come and go from year to year to have a pretty good idea of what it takes to play Division I, II, or III.  It is the reality of college recruiting that not every player is a major Division I prospects.  Coach Bielema, Coach Bostad, and the rest of the Wisconsin staff do a great job in regards to combing the state to find the best in-state prospects that can help them.  The fact is that there are only a limited number of those prospects.

I would say that after talking about your options with your high school coach, you need to get some junior highlights put together and mail them out to the top 20 schools that you think you can compete at.  After sending film, go visit the campus.  Attend “Junior Days” and spring practices or scrimmages.  In the summer time, make sure to get to the top campuses on your list.  If you cannot make it to a camp to work one on one with specific coaches, at least set up a meeting to go visit your recruiting and position coach when they are going to be available.  The NCAA does not allow college coaches to call prospective student-athletes in the spring of their junior years, but you can call coaches as much as you want.  So, if you want to get recruited, send a film, go visit campus, attend a camp, and communicate with your recruiting coach.

WSN:  Feel free to list or cite some of the most successful players from Wisconsin that have played at Winona.

Coach Blazek:  OT Nick Urban ‘08 (Brookfield Central), Minnesota Vikings (’09)
WR Chris Samp ‘04 (Green Bay Preble), Green Bay Packers (’05)  / Philadelphia Eagles (’05) / Pittsburgh Steelers (’05) / Carolina Panthers (’05)
QB Brian Wrobel  ’04 (De Soto), Seattle Seahawks (‘05) / Green Bay Packers (’06)


Winona State announced the following players as additions to its 2011 Recruiting Class:
Tyler Bross 6-5 295 Fr. OL Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin (Menomonee Falls)
Kyle Coon 6-0 205 Fr. LB Boscobel, Wisconsin (Boscobel)
Nicholas Fisher 6-4 250 Fr. OL Hartland, Wisconsin (Arrowhead)
Brandon Laufenberg 6-1 260 Fr. OL Mt. Hope, Wisconsin (River Ridge) -- preferred walk-on
Daniel Lohff 6-5 220 Fr. TE Shawano, Wisconsin (Shawano Community)
David Parmentier 6-5 245 Fr. DE Kenosha, Wisconsin (Kenosha Tremper)
Jake Perner 6-0 190 Fr. RB Black River Falls, Wisconsin (Black River Falls)
Andrew Robinson 6-2 210 Fr. DE Arcadia, Wisconsin (Arcadia)
Cole Solomon 6-4 215 Fr. QB Livingston, Wisconsin (Iowa-Grant)
Stephen Styza 6-4 235 Fr. DL Oconomowoc, Wisconsin (Lake Country Lutheran)
Dylan Thill 6-2 215 Fr. LB Turtle Lake, Wisconsin (Turtle Lake)
Riley Tutas 6-2 205 Fr. WR Sheboygan, Wisconsin (Sheboygan South)
Dominique Starks 6-2 185 Fr. LB Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Milwaukee Riverside)