Next Level Recruiting held its first senior evaluation camp Friday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center in Plant City.
Athletes from area schools took part in the camp, which ran the football players through various drills in preparation for regional and national combines, where college coaches often discover athletes. The athletes were also measured and weighed and had their photo taken for Nike’s 7-on-7 U website, an organization Next Level is affiliated with.
“We want to run this in the same format that these kids would see at a Nike camp,” Next Level Senior Advisor Gerald Dickens said. “We are measuring the ability of these kids and we’ll use that to help get them invites to training camps and combines. It lets us identify their strengths and weaknesses and what they need to work on.”
Next Level has about 50 kids participating in at least one of its three tiers. Dickens said that he saw a spike in interest after one of Next Level’s athletes, 2014 Plant City High offensive/defensive lineman Montel McBride, received an offer and verbally committed to the University of Alabama.
“Montel has become kind of our poster child,” Dickens said. “We have several athletes from Lakeland and Tampa that have inquired about us because of that.”
