Sarasota TE narrowing choices

Sarasota (Fla.) Cardinal Mooney tight end Patrick Danahy spent most of Sunday taking calls from college coaches who were pretty much calling one right after the other. Danahy, who has countless scholarship offers, received a new offer on Sunday and now believes he has narrowed his choices down to a final four.

"Actually I just hung up with a coach and you called right when I hung up," Danahy said when he was reached by FlaRecruiting.com on Sunday evening. "I was on the phone with Dartmouth. I've gotten about nine calls today."

Among the callers on Sunday were Wisconsin, Duke, Princeton, Stanford, Louisville, and Auburn. Patrick said he has also missed several other calls. In the early part of the summer he had received 14 scholarship offers and he's added two more recently.

"Stanford has now offered and Duke actually offered me today when they called," Danahy said.

Danahy's other offers include Wisconsin, Northwestern, Auburn, Clemson, Wake Forest, Missouri, West Virginia, Georgia Tech, Purdue, UCF, Tulane, Harvard, Rutgers, and Florida International. Patrick hasn't set up any official visits yet but he says he will definitely be visiting his current four favorites.

"I haven't set up any dates but I kind of know where I'm going to take my visits," Danahy said. "I just have to get it organized so I can visit when they prefer students to come up. I'm probably going to go Wisconsin, Stanford, Northwestern, and Georgia Tech for sure. I haven't decided if I'm going to take a fifth one or if I'm not going to. I have three other schools I'm trying to decide between if I'm going to take a visit to."

The other three candidates he's thinking about for that fifth visit?

"Now that Duke's been thrown in... I haven't really been thinking about them but that's another choice now. Maybe Florida and Notre Dame," Danahy said.

Patrick said he did not have a specific favorite yet.

"The top four (Wisconsin, Stanford, Northwestern, Georgia Tech) are pretty close," Danahy said. "They're all pretty high up there. Actually I don't know if I could pick a top one out of those four yet. I've been trying to narrow it down."

He doesn't think he'll be taking a visit during his football season.

"Most likely I'll get them in December and January because it's kind of tough with my academic schedule," Danahy said. "I don't know when teachers might throw a project at me and most of the official visits take up whole weekends."

Danahy is going to try and attend a few college football games this year at some of his favorite schools but he hasn't made any firm plans yet.

"I was going to try and make it out to the Wisconsin-Fresno State game two weeks ago but my coaches wouldn't let me miss practice," Danahy said. "It's definitely a good idea to maybe not take an official visit but maybe go up for like a Saturday and go see a game at a couple of the schools. Stanford would probably be pretty tough being all the way out there but maybe I'll get up to Florida. The Chicago area is pretty easy to get to so maybe I'll get out to Northwestern or Wisconsin. I've watched a little bit of almost every game that's been going on so far. I've definitely been watching a lot more college football now that it's been getting to where I might be going there. It's been going a lot of fun."

Cardinal Mooney came up short last week in their kickoff classic game.

"We lost but it was basically like playing in a monsoon," Danahy said. "We had so much rain and our field had about two or three inches of water. We're a big passing attack team and we couldn't get it going with all that water. That kind of shut us down a little bit."

They go up against Clearwater Central Catholic this week for their first regular season game.

"They're supposed to have that wide receiver," Danahy said. "I think he's No. 19, I just remember numbers (LeRue Rumph). He's coming back and I guess they changed him to a running back and I remember he was a real threat on the receiving side last year when we played them. Their quarterback is coming back and he's going to be good too. It's going to be a good game. We lost to them last year and they're coming to our house this year so it's going to be a battle."