Four-star Cam Coleman is back in St. Louis looking to jumpstart recruiting
Cam Coleman turned heads when he first hit the football field as a freshman, and the college offers started to flow almost immediately. He took an opportunity to attend IMG Academy in Florida as a junior, but is back in his hometown of St. Louis at Cardinal Ritter Prep for his senior season and looking to jump start a recruitment that has gone cold.
“Pretty much it’s Kansas and Syracuse,” Coleman said. “We have talked with Kansas about an official. I was going to go to Kansas this week, but we’re going to push it back. Syracuse will be sometime after that.”
Schools like Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, Tennessee and Wisconsin had extended offers to Coleman at different points during his high school career, but many of those schools went through coaching changes in the interim and the offers were not re-upped by the succeeding staffs.
Academically Coleman is a full qualifier and Cardinal Ritter head coach Brandon Gregory is hoping for a resurgence of interest from college coaches in the Rivals250 prospect once senior year film starts circulating.
“He looks stronger,” Gregory remarked. “Cam has always been Cam with great route-running ability. He’s still running great routes, but the biggest thing is the physicality he’s picked up after being down at IMG.”
Cardinal Ritter is off to a 3-0 start to the 2018 season. Coleman is manning the slot receiver role for the Lions and has recorded 14 receptions for 134 yards and a touchdown in those three games. He also returns punts and has started to see some time on defense as well, where he has tallied 18 total tackles.
“I’m a defensive guy and Cam is very physical, so he’s playing a Lion/Rover for us,” Gregory said. “He’s our primary slot receiver, but the way we run our receivers you have to know both, so he can be inside our outside. Then, we had a running back go down in camp and I put him back there and he didn’t look bad there either.”
Whether that versatility or return to the comforts of his hometown rejuvenates recruiting for Coleman remains to be seen, but in the meantime he is going forward with the schools that are maintaining interest in him and the Kansas Jayhawks are at the forefront of that discussion right now.
“I kind of like their vibe,” Coleman said of Kansas. “Coach (Justin) Johnson, the wide receivers coach, hits me up on a day-to-day basis, asks me how I am doing, what’s my goals and stuff like that. He just keeps that communication line open with me.”
Coleman tuned in Kansas’ win over Central Michigan last week, and likes what he has seen from Johnson’s development of the receiver position in Lawrence.
“From what I have seen, he is a wide receiver technician,” Coleman said. “Me going into college, yeah, I know a couple things about receiver, but I’m still looking for improvement and I’ve seen that he can improve my game.”
Coleman and his Cardinal Ritter teammates, which includes fellow four-star wide receiver Jameson Williams, will look to keep their perfect record intact this Friday against Helias. For Coleman it will also be another chance to show colleges that the potential they saw early in his prep career still exists.