National signing day is supposed to be like Christmas morning for college football teams. Santa Claus skipped Fort Lewis College this year.
While rival teams in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference such as Adams State, Colorado Mesa, CSU-Pueblo, Colorado Mines and Western State landed huge 2017 recruiting classes Wednesday, the Skyhawks signed only three players to National Letters of Intent. All three were junior college transfers from California.
Second-year head coach Ed Rifilato said he expects more letters to be faxed in overnight, but the class will still pale in comparison to the rest of the teams in the RMAC.
But, according to Rifilato, some of that was by design, as FLC will have 19 redshirt freshmen on this year’s team from last year’s recruiting class.
“Next year we’re focusing on freshmen,” Rifilato told The Durango Herald. “It depends on how many guys you redshirt I think.”
Still, after losing 18 seniors from last year’s squad and another 20 set to complete eligibility after the 2017 season, it’s safe to say Fort Lewis needed to land a class of at least 15 new players to solidify the future of the program.
They still might get that many, but the staff’s focus this year was on junior college transfers to add immediate depth and competition.
“I felt like we needed to get older at some spots,” Rifilato said. “We only activated two freshmen last year. At this point, we’ve got a lot of good backups.”
But what do those junior college transfers bring the school? They lend their athletic abilities to the team for a year or two and move on. It is the freshmen who are truly valuable to a college campus. They bring school pride, are invested in the college for four to five years and more often leave with degrees.
National signing day is perhaps the best chance a college has to market itself on social media to incoming and future recruits. While schools across the nation eagerly jumped on Twitter to announce each new addition, Fort Lewis’ websites and social media accounts were silent for much of the day, aside from announcing one women’s soccer signee in the afternoon.
At 7 p.m. Wednesday, when all the excitement had largely quieted for the night, FLC had officially introduced only two football players on Twitter. While schools received thousands of “likes” and “retweets” that reached an uncountable audience, Fort Lewis had garnered only a combined 76 likes and retweets on posts about the new addition to the women’s soccer team and the two football recruits.
While schools from around the RMAC had website homepages redirecting to full signing day coverage, Fort Lewis served up only a link to the three new players’ biography pages, absent comments from Rifilato while other coaches were posting videos boasting each addition.
Fort Lewis’ biggest failure Wednesday was the inability to attract a single high school player in Colorado. According to a Colorado High School Activities Association database, 234 seniors from Colorado signed to play college football Wednesday. In all those gymnasiums across the state packed with athletes, coaches, friends and parents, not one Fort Lewis hat or pennant was present to perhaps spark interest in the college by another bystander.
All three of FLC’s football recruits named Wednesday come from California. That won’t do much to bring more fans to games in Durango.
Black Hills State in Spearfish, South Dakota, was able to land 12 Colorado players in a class of 27 signees.
Western State in Gunnison, which should have a similar recruiting dynamic in a mountain town as Fort Lewis finds itself in, was able to land 50 players, 30 coming from in-state.
Colorado Mesa raked in 31 new players, including Bayfield star lineman Sam Westbrook, who spurned an offer from the hometown Skyhawks and a chance to play with former BHS teammates to join the Mavericks in Grand Junction.
In one half of a game, Colorado Mesa showed Westbrook more to be excited about than a lifetime of opportunities to watch Fort Lewis play in front of lackluster crowds, even during John L. Smith’s tenure as head coach from 2013 to 2015.
Smith turned the Skyhawks from an 0-10 team in 2012 into a 7-4 team in 2015. The Skyhawks quickly regressed to 4-7 in the first year after his departure.
No matter how much money FLC pours into the football team, nothing will change at Ray Dennison Memorial Field until the Skyhawks have the resources to attract young student-athletes. It starts with a new field and providing facilities and amenities rivals only a few hours away are able to dangle in front of 17- and 18-year-olds.
To the couple of thousand students on campus who don’t play sports, those much-needed improvements will only be seen as a waste of money.
For now, the Skyhawks appear content to reach into the bargain bin and swoop up whatever is left.
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
