Football Side
YaYah McGurn/Sean Burgio, RBs, Easton
The only time Nick Saban has ever been at Easton Area High School to recruit was to come see YaYah for a school visit in 1999 when Saban was at Michigan State. McGurn, a 6'2 220 pound running back was coming off of a 1,000 yard junior season (in just eight games played), which included a 37 carry, 184 yard performance against the '99 Parkland team that was ranked in the top 20 in the country in one of the biggest postseason upsets we've had up here. He also was an all conference basketball player, who posted one of two 40 point games ever at Easton in the D11 tournament as a junior. Yah is a sad story - he was in an out of foster care, bouncing from Philly to Chester to Reading before settling in Easton in middle school. Started playing football in eight grade, was the varsity tailback by his sophomore year. Ran for 140 yards against P'Burg as a 10th grader in his big coming out party, before posting the eighth 1,000 yard season in school history. Did not play a down as a senior after a drug trafficking arrest that summer, then a second arrest at the start of the school year, and his athletic career was over.
The 2000 Easton team was supposed to bring back McGurn and rising junior Sean Burgio (5'9 205 who ran a 10.6 100 and rushed for 800 yards as a sophomore) in one of the premier non-CB West backfields in the state that year, but Burgio got in a fight that summer and was assaulted with a baseball bat that caused blood clotting in his brain and nearly ended his football career. He came back to rush for 1,300 yards as a senior in '01, but no colleges would touch him (he does have the distinction of being the first Easton player to receive stars on Rivals when the website started in 2001).
Juan Gaddy, RB, Easton
Slightly different, but a major "what could have been". Gaddy was the third player ever in Pennsylvania to rush for 5,000 yards in his career, highlighted by a 1,900 yard season as a junior that vaulted him into Tom Lemming's top ten running backs in the country. He was all state in 1991 and 1992, and the MVP of the '93 Big 33 game after scoring a pair of touchdowns. He was recruited heavily by Easton alum Chuck Amato to Florida State's class of 1993. However, Gaddy fell victim to the old Prop 48, a very harshly penalized sliding scale of GPA and standardized test score minimums, meaning he did not qualify academically and had to sit out his freshman year without being allowed to practice, which lost him his scholarship offers at Florida State and Arkansas. Temple jumped on the opportunity to get one of the most talented players in Pennsylvania and Gaddy sat out the 1993 season. He was allowed to participate in spring practice, where he tore his ACL, effectively a career ending injury in the early '90s.
Jordan Gray, Nazareth
One of the best freshmen in Pennsylvania in 2011, rushed for 1,700 yards and 25 touchdowns as a 9th grader and helped lead Nazareth to their first ever state playoff appearance. Disciplinary issues got him kicked out of the program in 10th grade, but then he came back as an 11th grader to rush for 1,300 yards despite missing a number of games for reasons "between Jordan and me" according to Rob Melosky. Didn't play a down as a senior.
Dante Holmes, Liberty
A 6'4 230 pound defensive end who was a two-time All State selection that got absolutely no recruiting attention because off-the-field issues. Played at Northern Michigan University and has kicked around in low level arena leagues around the country. Crazy athlete, long, ideal edge-rusher body and wreaked havoc for Liberty right after their state title team (he got some snaps as a freshman on that squad).
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I've got wrestlers for days, here are the two that had the highest upsides:
Jeff Ecklof, Northampton
Two-time state champ, four time top 3 finisher in PIAA 3A from 2000-2003. Ranked #2 nationally at 145 after his senior season. Went 154-19 with three wins in high school over future NCAA champs. Started at Oklahoma as a true freshman, where he placed 6th at the NCAA tournament, knocking out future NCAA champ Travis Paulson in the All American round. Then he got himself kicked out of Oklahoma for breaking Teddy Lehman's jaw in a fight. Transferred to Pitt, where he went undefeated in a red-shirt year because he had to sit out after not being released by Oklahoma to transfer. Then, got himself kicked out of Pitt after catching another assault charge and never wrestled in college again. I would never say somebody would definitely win an NCAA title, but Ecklof was definitely on the trajectory, certainly completed the toughest step in being a 4x Division I All American.
Mike Rogers, Easton
Two-time state champ in 2002 and 2004, and finished nationally ranked in the his final three years of high school (#6 at 135, #4 at 140, #2 at 152). Finished high school on a 107-3 run (factoring out two injury defaults), beat future NCAA champ Jarrod King for one of his state titles. Chris Brown, Max Meltzer, Matt Kocher, Pat Payne, all were future All Americans he handled as a high school wrestler. Maybe the most purely physically talented kid that has come through the Easton room, Jordan Oliver and Jamarr Billman included - the combination of speed and power plus his feel on top was unmatched. Signed with Nebraska, where he would have ended up Jordan Burroughs training partner (Burroughs came in as a middleweight two classes behind Rogers). But he did not qualify academically, so had his NLI voided. Wound up at Northern Idaho Junior College to try and get his grades right and wrestle for a national program. Couldn't keep his stuff together to qualify in Division I (and his training schedule was a mess between injuries and "extracurricular activity"), went from NIJC to Carson-Newman, a Division II school in Tennessee. Stayed eligible for one season, where he was an NCAA finalist.- bascially on raw talent - losing to Todd Meenley (who had a similar story of signing with Iowa, getting kicked out of school, then finding his way to a D2 school to compete for a few years). Carson-Newman dropped their program, and Mikey ended up at a different small school in North Carolina with lax academic requirements, but was just a shell of himself at that point. He did not have the discipline to handle not being in a super intense environment with people watching over his every move. Couldn't stay clean, couldn't stay healthy, couldn't stay out of trouble. But oh my, when he was going right was he fun to watch. For my wrestling/UFC people, he was stylistically very similar to Gregor Gillespie (quick twitch misdirection shots from his feet/unstoppable cross wrist tilt series), who won a national title for Edinboro (and also had similar demons, but at least made it into a D1 room) and Mikey was consistently ranked ahead of Gillespie when the two were in high school. I always watched Gregor and thought that's what Mikey could have been had he been able to keep his foot in the door at Nebraska.
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