HARRISONBURG — When James Madison finishes practice each night, Dale Steele returns to his office where he knows a flooded email inbox awaits.
Steele, in his first season as the team’s recruiting coordinator, said JMU is beginning to see an increased interest in its program from high school players and coaches.
Coming off their bye week, the Dukes are currently 6-1 overall and an unbeaten 4-0 in the Colonial Athletic Association. Steele said winning on the field has a correlation to visibility on recruiting trail.
“This is just coming across emails that we get from the high school coaches or individual players, but I probably get about 75 a night right now,” Steele said.
The different emails could contain a prospect’s information or include game film.
“This isn’t just from the Virginia area either, but from everywhere we recruit,” Steele said. “There’s been an increased interest for us to evaluate film and look at these players. It keeps us busy evaluating film and getting the film in the coaches’ hands once we’ve evaluated a prospect and feel that the player can help the program.”
JMU running backs coach De’Rail Sims has spent much of the past week on the road visiting with both verbally committed prospects and some undecided players.
On Monday, Sims was in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina and spent the last few days in the greater Atlanta area.
Sims said he’s seeing first-hand how well JMU is being perceived right now, even with a coaching staff in its first-year at the school.
“I was out Monday, so I spent some good time on the road recruiting and going to see some top targets at tailback — watching them practice. The same Thursday and Friday,” Sims said. “The best part is that you get to see a lot of coaches. And as hot as we are right now, a lot of high school coaches want to talk.”
Determining which high school coaches to talk to, where to visit and in what order was settled when first-year JMU coach Mike Houston established his recruiting plan shortly after being hired.
Steele said Houston’s philosophy begins with recruiting the state of Virginia and then the areas outside the state where the program has found past success or assistant coaches have ties.
Out of Madison’s 12 verbal commitments for the 2017 class, six of the prospects are Virginia natives.
“The number one thing we did when we got here was take care of the state of Virginia. We want to put a fence around the state,” Sims said. “Virginia Tech is going to get their share of who they want and Virginia, too. But after that we feel like we’re the next best available school.
“At times, honestly, we feel like we can go toe-to-toe with Virginia Tech and Virginia. Our mentality is to never back down from anyone in recruiting and try to get the top kids. I think we’ve done that. We’ve started off recruiting strong in the summer and this sucker has picked up big time.”
Earlier this month, James Madison received a commitment from Hanover High School (Mechanicsville) quarterback Clayton Cheatham. The signal caller initially pledged to walk-on at Virginia before opting to take the Dukes’ scholarship offer.
According to Rivals.com, Cheatham held other scholarship offers from Army, Navy, Old Dominion, Richmond and Towson.
Last week, Houston said he believes JMU could continue to land prospects even if the players had FBS-level opportunities.
“I feel the bulk of our committed kids are mid-major type players,” Houston said. “Most of them have mid-major offers in addition to our offer. We’re very happy with the quality of kids that we have committed right now.”
