Editors note: Junior Mark Zachery plays both cornerback and wide receiver for the Class 6A No. 1 rated Giants. He also is sports editor of the Spotlight.
They always say things happen when you least expect them to. This quote was definitely the case for me and my college recruitment.
I’ve been playing organized basketball since I was 2 years old and football since I was 5. This allowed me to be more skilled and coordinated than most because of the experience of the sports over everyone else. I knew I was a good player, but I didn’t realize how much potential I had to be as highly recruited as I am to play high level college sports.
My recruitment process for football started in early January of 2022. This was after my freshman football season in which I started varsity and had two interceptions. It’s not very common for freshmen to play varsity at all, so for me to start at corner and doing good gave me a great kick start on my recruitment.
Miami of Ohio was the first school to reach out to me and wanted me to take a visit to see what their facilities looked like. When I attended the visit, I had received my first full ride scholarship offer to play football. I was very excited but my dad expressed to me that it was just the start and he was definitely telling the truth.
During the period of time in the spring when most college coaches are on the road to recruit, a lot of schools came to see me. There were some schools that came that I would’ve never thought would come to see me. Especially for it to be my freshman year that I felt that wasn’t the best. From May 3 to May 20, I received six different offers to play football.
Then after a successful team camp with Ben Davis at Indiana University, I received an offer from Coach Tim Allen. This was my first power five conference offer so that’s when I knew it was getting serious.
In my sophomore football season I only got to play in about six games so I felt like I had a lot of film left on the table for other colleges to see but I guess I was wrong. In the winter after the season I had received four more offers. It was around the same time period in the spring when all these colleges came in and recruited and this time around there were way more coaches that wanted to see me.
The number of schools that offered me scholarships jumped from 12 to 26 over the span of 54 days. This is when different recruiting sites and press started posting rankings for players in my class and asking to do interviews about me and my recruitment.
In the summer I camped at Ohio State and Georgia. Both of these schools I have been watching for a long time. I had great performances at the camps and earned offers from both.
So going into my junior season, I have 28 division offers to play cornerback and some of the schools have also told me that they would allow me to play basketball. I’m so grateful for these opportunities at these great schools. This process is fun but also takes a lot of time and development to get to this point.
It is a lot to handle but when all the work that is put into whatever you do pays off is the best feeling. And I’m not stopping here.
