Defensive end receives offer from Florida
A bit of an anomaly has occurred.
To state that Florida doesn't often recruit the state of Iowa is a bit of an understatement.
According to the database, in the 17 years that Rivals has been in existence, Florida has only offered four high school prospects from the state.
That is until today.
Now, you can make it five as the Gators extended an offer to West Des Moines (Iowa) Dowling 6-foot-5, 230-pound defensive end John Waggoner earlier today.
Other than to avoid bad weather – it was a good 30 degrees warmer being in Florida today rather than Iowa - it isn't often you see a prospect from the Midwest on campus in Gainesville.
To be sure, this trip didn't just happen, it was planned.
I had been talking to [Florida grad assistant] Coach [Eric] Ellingsworth for a couple of weeks via Twitter,” replied Waggoner. “My family and I were driving down to Florida for spring break, so I messaged him to see if there would be a good time to stop by."
Not only did he get to 'stop by' the three-star defensive end received the offer after watching Florida practice today.
“I toured campus before practice, then I went and watched practice. The competitiveness of today's practice stood out to me the most,” stated Waggoner. “I talked to Coach [Chris] Rumph and Coach [Jim] McElwain and they both said they want to work with me this summer sometime.”
When asked Waggoner said he is looking into returning to the Sunshine State in order to camp with Florida this summer.
That of course would be a trip further down the road.
In the here and now, this visit to Florida is just one of many he will be taking over the next 10 days. On Tuesday he will visit Minnesota, on Friday he sees Notre Dame, on Saturday it's Ohio State, before finishing up with Michigan next Sunday.
He has already been to both Iowa and Iowa State this off-season.
Other than Florida and Michigan he has ties to each of the programs he will visit this coming week.
“Two of my brothers (Josh and Joe) attend Iowa State. I have a buddy named Jack Bethel at Iowa. And I also have a buddy Ben Fox at Minnesota. I've had five cousins attend Notre Dame.”
In this case being from the Midwest hardly means being overlooked. On the contrary, Waggoner has been one of the most sought after defensive ends in the nation so far this spring.
Since the beginning of the year he has picked up offer-after-offer from programs across the nation.
With such an impressive offer list and more to come, as you might expect Waggoner is in no hurry to name a leader.
“I'm pretty wide open on all my schools right now because I haven't had a chance to visit everywhere I want to yet and compare them from that standpoint,” stated Waggoner. “For me, I'm pretty blessed to have the offers I currently have, so I'm just focused on working hard and getting better and hopefully I'll be fortunate enough to add some more nice schools to my list.
As a junior Waggoner was named First Team All-State (4A) after recording roughly 26 tackles, 9 sacks, and 13 TFL.
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