By Keenan Cummings
MORGANTOWN — The West Virginia football program hasn’t hosted a formal official visit weekend since December 2019, but the times are changing.
The NCAA recruiting dead period has been in effect since March 12, 2020, but is set to end Tuesday, which means prospects will return to college campuses for visits. As part of that, schools will be hosting camps, unofficial visitors and the return of expense paid official trips.
The Mountaineers will host three weekends throughout the month of June and things will kick off during the first weekend of the month. And with it comes a very loaded list of prospects that are high on the board for WVU in the 2022 recruiting class.
Already around 11 prospects are expected to be on campus from June Friday-Sunday, and out of that group, a total of four of those are rated as 4-star prospects by Rivals.com. The rest are safely within the 3-star range with several of those right on the borderline of being bumped to 4-star status.
Among those in attendance are some of the highest rated players at their respective positions with North Chesterfield (Va.) Lloyd C. Byrd running back Ramon Brown, Miami (Fla.) Central linebacker Wesley Bissainthe, Birmingham (Mich.) Groves athlete Jaden Mangham and Plantation (Fla.) American Heritage athlete Jacolby Spells among the names expected.
The trip to Morgantown will be the first for many of these prospects and will give them a full tour of what they have heard about from the coaching staff or seen on virtual trips.
But nothing beats the real thing, and this trip is going to give them some real insight into what to expect if they would elect to play their college football with the Mountaineers.
Getting players on campus and securing commitments has been a strength of this coaching staff, with the Mountaineers hitting at about a 60% success rate when getting prospects on campus for official visits. That will be put to the test this summer as the bulk of the board is expected.
Head coach Neal Brown has stressed the important of getting players to Morgantown and June is going to prove plenty of opportunities for the program to do just that to build on the class.
WVU has five 2022 commitments heading into June, but that’s a number that much like the summer temperatures is certain to rise and that first official visit weekend could go a long way toward that.
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