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Callaway football has a leg up on its peers when it comes to getting its players recruited. Launched a month ago, the Cavs Recruits website is giving Cavalier players exposure they did not have before. 

“Everybody sends out an Excel sheet with prospects to all of these colleges, and you just have to hope your guys stand out on paper,” said Andrew Caraway, Callaway’s recruiting coordinator. “We wanted a way to differentiate our guys from the rest of the folks sending out recruitment sheets. We wanted to make it interactive.” 

The webpage is constantly adding players from the Cavaliers team with eyes on having every player that has a desire to play college on the website eventually. Right now, it consists of upperclassmen. Individual players each have their own “card” that you can click on. In each player’s card, there are measurables such as height, weight, how much they bench, 40-yard dash time, etc. 

There is also a section for each player to put GPA, SAT and ACT scores, which are very important when being recruited.

“A school like Wake Forest is recruiting nationally, and it can be hard to get major college football players with the academics that we require,” said Dave Cohen, Wake Forest’s defensive line coach. “Time is of the essence. To have a website that we can dive into the nuts and bolts of the guys we should be looking at makes my life a lot easier.”

The website also offers a quick way to contact the coach and even the athlete. What might be most important is the inclusion of links to Hudl, which contain highlights for each athlete. 

“I actually started this plan this summer,” Caraway said. “I reached out to some coaches at the next level that I really respect. I reached out and asked ‘what would you think about something like this?’ The overwhelming response has been ‘it’s awesome, and it really makes my job easy.’”

The recruiting landscape has changed drastically over the last few decades. The internet age has changed so much about how college coaches and scouts recruit. 

“It can be harder to recruit (in the internet age),” Cohen said. “There are no secrets anymore. You used to be able to out work people, but now everybody is so aware with social media and everything else. Most people know about where the good players are. News travels fast.”

Caraway is keeping up with the times. He also created digital business cards for the players so when coaches scan a QR code it will send them directly to the player’s profile on the website.

While the 3-5 star recruits that come through Callaway will not have trouble being recruited, not everybody has that luxury. The Cavs Recruit website helps to boost the platform of some lesser known players that come through the Cavaliers program. 

“We just want to get players’ names out there,” Caraway said. “We hope this helps coaches evaluate our kids and hopefully lead to some scholarship opportunities.”

None of this happens without Caraway. Since getting reinvolved with the program in 2020 – he graduated from Callaway in 2007 – he has boosted the Cavaliers ability to be recruited by both colleges large and small. 

“He makes himself available, and he loves this program,” Cohen said. “He’s great with the information, but he’s also very honest about who is the right fit for your school.”

The next step for the website: expansion.

“We film every play on Friday nights, and we want to have something other than your standard film on Hudl,” Caraway said. “We want to add some actual footage from the sidelines so you can really see how big a player is or how fast he is. Incorporating live highlights so that coaches can login to the website and see what individual players did.” 

The Callaway football recruiting website can be found at https://www.cavsrecruits.com/.