Little known Brown close to getting offers

St. Louis (Mo.) Cardinal Ritter safety Raymond Brown has not received his first scholarship offer yet, but it shouldn’t be long.

“He doesn’t have any offers yet,” Cardinal Ritter coach Ron Villans said. “But several schools told him they would be coming after their camps were wrapped up in late June. So, I would anticipate them coming anytime.”

Villans believes he has a special athlete playing all over the field.

“Raymond is just such a great athlete,” he said. “Pick your position and he can do it. We’ll start him at quarterback most likely this fall. Then we’ll move him to wide receiver on offense. But, his best position might be defensive back.

“He’s just a good one. He has the ability to cover receivers and also lay a good hit on you if you come out looking for something out of the backfield.”

The schools recruiting Brown include Iowa, Northern Illinois, Indiana, Kansas State and Kansas.

“It’s a lot like last year for us,” Villans said. “We had two guys that nobody knew about in Bryan Baldwin and Laron Haymore. We had K-State and Northern Illinois on him early. Then others realized how good of players they were and jumped in too. We’re a 1A school, but we play only bigger teams until we get to the postseason. That shows these guys can do it against better competition.”

Villans did not have statistics from 2002 for Brown, but had a good reason.

“We moved him all over the place last season, so he couldn’t get any kind of numbers that looked good on a stats page.”

Brown has not been to any schools this summer.

“He just hasn’t been to any camps. Those things cost a ot of money to go to. And the coaches that put those on are after two things. First it is what you pay to go to it. And second, they are after the big, well-known players that they wanted to come. If you’re not one of them, the odds of getting seen aren’t the greatest.”