I came across a Globe article on boarding schools recruiting increasing numbers of athletes from abroad. Have you all seen this at your schools? They mention Gridiron Imports as one of the primary pipelines, but I had never heard of them before. A former Salisbury coach started it with Björn Werner, the German linebacker he coached who went on to Florida State and the NFL. They’ve placed 350 kids at boarding schools (150 in the past two years) and only three have paid full tuition. Those numbers sound huge.
Some of the examples sound like game-changers for these programs. Tabor’s starting tackle is a 6’8", 310-pound Hungarian who has started all four years and is headed to Syracuse. This fall Milton recruited a Hungarian lineman, Governor Dummer has a German center, and St. George’s has an Austrian lineman. Governor Dummer also has a kid from China who had never played football before and is now committed to Dartmouth.
Have any of you seen this at your kids’ schools? I’m curious whether it’s mostly a football thing or showing up in other sports too, and how it’s affecting other kids who may be getting displaced by these international students.
In search of bigger athletes, New England private schools are starting to recruit abroad
For coaches in the New England Prep School Athletic Conference, finding sizable offensive and defensive linemen is a prerequisite for success.
As the old saying goes, “You can’t teach size,” but where can you find some of the biggest and most powerful teenagers on the planet to fill those roles when the rest of the region — and the country — is also recruiting the best blockers?
The answer: look abroad.
Former Salisbury School coach Chris Adamson found success when German linebacker Bjöern Werner entered his program in 2006. After starring at Florida State, and playing in the NFL, Werner teamed up with Adamson to start Gridiron Imports in 2016. Three years later, they made the small company a nonprofit, and after the COVID-19 pandemic, it started to take off.
Do Canadians who play hockey count? Non-US soccer kids in general?
Because those sure have long been happening. In fact, my S24’s mostly day school regularly played a local boarding school in soccer, and it was always amusing how their team was often communicating in Spanish. Just lots of Latin American kids on that other team.
I’m not personally very familiar with private school football, but I guess the difference, such as it is, is the idea this is sometimes more about sheer physical traits as opposed to many years of skill development. Not that, say, being naturally very fast and coordinated isn’t a soccer attribute, but I do think that the skill development side is a large component of non-US recruiting as well.
But football has evolved to be a game designed around extreme outlier physical types. So I guess I am not surprised that would be a more prominent element in football recruiting in particular.
The Right To Dream program brings kids from Africa, mostly Ghana, to boarding schools to play soccer. All of them are on full financial aid, and are much better than the rest of the teams. Several are playing in the MLS now. This is a not for profit program aimed at giving impoverished kids a future.
I went to prep school in 90s and we had international recruits for hockey (Canada) for sure, I think for racket sports (or certainly international students dominated them) …Definitely not football though - that part seems very recent to me.
w/o outing myself I have noticed my own alma mater’s soccer team has a TON TON of international students now.. from every continent…not sure how many are recruits (I assume quite a few, team is good).
When DS was at BS, several teams had very international rosters, but they weren’t recruits. Football and lacrosse were notable exceptions.
Soccer and tennis were truly global.
Racket sports are definitely another good long-standing example. I similarly do not know who was actually recruited, and was not particularly sorting out the boarding schools in particular, but when my S24 went to HS squash tournaments, there were a LOT of International kids on the private school teams.
yeah, squash in particular, top of rosters were incredibly international… And I am not entirely sure what % was proactive recruiting back then…I think there was quite a bit, but not like now. My understanding was there was a proactive aspect to it AND it was somewhat just the good international players congregated to some schools. It definitely was NOT the industry like it is now.
And for Hockey were only a few players, not a ton…now there are way more recruits is my understanding..