GREG LUCA | STAFF WRITER
Jamaar Taylor knows there is a stigma surrounding high school athletes in the Valley. An ex-NFL player, Taylor saw it when he was playing at Mission High, and he sees the same things today as he helps the next generation.
The criticisms against Valley athletes are numerous: Their teams aren’t good. The standout players aren’t worth sending scouts all that distance. Athletes who do leave the region often return home. And the financial and academic requirements of attending major institutions are often too lofty.
All together, the prospects of a Valley athlete earning a college scholarship — particularly to play Division I football — are daunting.
“We don’t get that opportunity very often,” Taylor said. “We get a couple signees every now and then, but that number, everyone knows it needs to increase.”
Of the 286 commitments from 47 graduating classes since 2007 reported by responding programs from the Edinburg, McAllen, Mission, PSJA and Sharyland school districts, only eight were Division I football players. Four of those were walk-ons.
The past two seasons produced only one Division I football signing from the Valley: Edinburg North’s David Anzaldua, an offensive lineman who inked with the University of Texas-San Antonio in 2014.
The man who recruited him, UTSA assistant coach Polo Gutierrez, said the level of competition is what hurts Valley players the most in their quest to be recruited.
“You have a Division I tackle, maybe, with David Anzaldua, but he’s blocking a 5-foot-9, 195-pound defensive end,” Gutierrez said. “So you go, ‘Well, I haven’t seen him versus anybody.’”
And those questions about competition go for all sports.
In the past five years, the Valley has failed to advance a Class 6A or Class 5A baseball, boys basketball, girls basketball, football or volleyball team past the fourth round of the state playoffs. Fifteen boys soccer teams, three softball teams and two girls soccer team have accomplished the feat during that span.
Harlingen High’s football team came close in 2011, losing 42-27 to San Antonio Madison in the fourth round of the Class 5A playoffs. But that group is the exception.
“It can be one, maybe (Valley teams) are out-athleted,” Gutierrez said. “Two, they’re not used to that stage. Whether nerves get you. … A freshman at Harlingen High School doesn’t get to see that until they were seniors.”
BJ Garcia, who works with athletes across the state as the director of South Texas Showcase, said part of the issue comes down to the old adage of bigger, faster, stronger.
“That does play a part,” Garcia said. “You can’t always do something about the bigger. Some people are just big. The faster and the stronger, you can work on. … I just don’t think there’s as many top quality athletes in one concentrated place.”
Despite the scarcity of talent, schools as big as the University of Texas claim to give South Texas a look in recruiting. McAllen Memorial’s Tyler Marriott was a walk-on for the Longhorns last season, and former Memorial offensive lineman Edward Pequeño will also be walking on to the team in 2015.
“We make sure that we try to get in as many towns as we possibly can,” Texas coach Charlie Strong said during a stop in McAllen last April. “Everyone is assigned a different area. We have a coach who is assigned the Rio Grande Valley, so he has a chance to come down.”
Despite the sentiment, Gutierrez said he rarely sees Valley football players scouted by anyone other than UTSA and Division II’s Texas A&M-Kingsville. The main reason, Gutierrez said, is that the entirety of South Texas, ranging as far north as Victoria, will typically produce “maybe four or five Division I athletes.”
Houston alone has 16 players ranked among ESPN’s top 300 football recruits for the 2016 and 2017 classes. The Valley has none.
“You’re doing a lot of driving time, you’re doing a lot of stuff and investing a lot of money in seeing those five guys,” Gutierrez said. “The majority of the schools, they can go to Houston, they can go to Dallas, they can go to San Antonio, go to one high school and see five Division I signings in one high school.”
When athletes do leave the Valley to pursue college athletics, the perception is that they often return home prematurely.
The effect is felt not just with football players, but with athletes across all sports. Ben Lopez, the recruiter for Lindenwood University’s NAIA and Division II athletic programs in Missouri, said he recruits an average of 35 athletes from the Valley per year. Still, he runs into many who are set on staying home.
“The parents just tell me right off, ‘I don’t want my son to go,’” Lopez said. “I say, ‘OK, sir,’ and that’s it. I don’t push anymore because it’s a culture. It’s nothing new. It’s an old system that we have.”
Lopez said that those who do leave the Valley end up staying at Lindenwood just as often as athletes from anywhere else. But that doesn’t change the stigma.
“You talk to any college coach out there, and they say, ‘South Texas kids like to go home. They don’t usually stick,’” Gutierrez said. “It’s harder for these kids to go out of state or go far away from South Texas, because no matter what, the majority of South Texas is Mexican Americans, and the majority of us are family-oriented and want to be close to their families. It’s hard to go away from home.”
Indeed, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley — previously the University of Texas-Pan American — has been by far the most common landing spot for Division I athletes. The most recent rosters in each sport boast a combined 51 athletes from the Valley.
Twenty-eight of those athletes come from the school’s track and field programs, with Valley natives holding nine of 10 spots on UTRGV’s cross country rosters.
Still, UTRGV distance coach Rob Hansen said he finds about an even split between athletes who are dead set on leaving the Valley and those who are all but sure they want to stay. For those who fall somewhere in the middle, coach Xavier Richardson said he feels UTRGV has the upper hand.
“It’s easier because we’re close to ground to get into their house, to get into their schools and to go by and see their needs,” Richardson said. “I think we have the advantage in that regard.”
The move to a Division I school outside of the Valley is made more difficult by the Valley’s lack of previous Division I athletes. A Valley player transitioning to the heightened standards of college athletics, the increase in class work and the newness of being away from home has few places to look for support, Gutierrez said.
“They don’t have any guidance or people to tell them that that’s normal,” Gutierrez said. “A lot of it is just exposure. They’re just not exposed the way kids from other areas are exposed.”
To help ease the transition to Lindenwood, Lopez said he sticks with athletes through every step of the process. He develops a relationship in high school, follows them through the state playoffs, and stays by their side through orientation and the start of classes.
Taylor, who played Division I football at Texas A&M before being drafted by the New York Giants, is also combating the issue, aiming to give kids an idea of what they might face at the Division I level through his work with the Taylor Sports and Human Performance Lab.
“They hear, ‘OK, you played for the Giants. You played for the Aggies. And you actually played. You’re a letterman. You’re in the record books for that.’ They turn their heads and they look,” Taylor said. “Now you’ve got their attention.”
Compared to areas that have proven to be hotbeds for Division I athletes, Taylor sees the Valley lagging behind in many mental aspects of sports, including game preparation and game psychology. Physically, Valley athletes are a step shy in “body efficiency” — specifically things like proper running form.
“That’s what holds us back,” Taylor said. “It needs to be learned at a young age. Kids up north, they’re learning this at a young age. Kids in Dallas, kids in Houston. There are more pros in those cities.”
The Valley is also at a financial disadvantage. According to a 2012 study by 24/7 Wall Street, the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission and Brownsville-Harlingen metropolitan areas ranked as the first and second poorest, respectively, in America.
Lopez said Lindenwood recruits from the Valley automatically receive an extra $4,000 toward their scholarship offer, and he’s hoping to up that figure before next year.
“I’d say about 65 percent need more money,” Lopez said, “so I give them more money.”
The academic standards of Lindenwood have proven an even bigger stumbling block for Valley athletes, Lopez said. He said he leaves behind a minimum of 35 athletes — the same number he typically recruits successfully — because they are unable to score a 20 on the ACT.
Lopez said he is consistently pressuring teachers to have students take the tests earlier, but to little avail.
Gutierrez likewise said academics are one of the first things he looks for in a recruit, and to that end Garcia harps on the point with players at South Texas Showcase events.
Given all the stigmas and obstacles surrounding their potential recruitment, Valley athletes can’t afford to raise any more red flags. So says Sean Patterson, whose son, Shea, has gone on to become one of the nation’s top football recruits after starting his career at Hidalgo High School.
“You can’t work as hard as the guy in Houston, Dallas, or even San Antonio,” Sean said. “Geographically, you’re just in a situation where you have to work twice as hard to get noticed.”
For more stories, videos, photos and graphics covering recruiting in the Valley, visit themonitor.com/recruiting.