Football, Sports, WVU Sports

West Virginia coaching staff preparing for upcoming junior days

By Keenan Cummings

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia is still working on the 2020 recruiting class, but it’s never too early to start working ahead.

That’s exactly what the coaching staff is doing when it comes to getting a jump on its 2021 efforts. The Mountaineers already hosted a pair of junior day events in December in order to get ahead of the curve with many of the program’s top prospects in attendance.

Among those who made the trip during one of those weekends were the top quarterback target in Potomac (Md.) Bullis School 2021 quarterback Christian Veilleux and perhaps the top target on the board in Spring Valley 2021 offensive lineman Wyatt Milum.

There was a long list of others, as well.

Those events were considered a success all around as top players were brought to campus in small groups in order to meet with the coaches and become more familiar with the program. Now, more are set for the future in the coming weeks.

The dead period, which basically means that coaches can’t have face-to-face contact with recruits, is in effect until mid-January, but expect WVU to be vigilant in junior day opportunities once it opens back up. The Mountaineers are scheduled to have three junior day events on three consecutive weekends beginning Jan. 19 and ending Feb. 2 before the new dead period in February begins.

In the past, February was a month that was primarily used for junior day events but with a newly adopted dead period, which will take up essentially the entire month, it makes those early visits even more important than in the past.

That’s because you can be in front or behind in recruiting and it never pays to be the latter.

Top running back options, such as Hopewell (Va.) running back TreVeyon Henderson and Milledgeville (Ga.) John Milledge Academy running back Amaad Foston, are already lined up for visits and expect the list of others coming to grow as well in the next several weeks.

January has essentially morphed into a time to get a jump start on the future of recruiting as opposed to closing up shop in the current class and this is just the next example of that.