“Kids want it to be done quickly,” coach Rick Chamberlin said. “If you’re not in contact with them early, like here in the spring — let’s say all at once you pop up in August — it’s going to be a little tougher to keep their attention.”
As a non-scholarship program, Dayton doesn’t recruit as far ahead as other schools. The 2024 and 2025 classes are not a priority at this point.
UD coaches hope to get a class with close to 30 players, and the 2022 class Chamberlin announced Wednesday is exactly that big. The 2021 class had 26 players. Dayton had 45 recruits in 2020, 35 recruits in 2019, 26 in 2018, 35 in 2017 and 38, 36, 38 and 28 players in the previous seasons.
As usual, it’s a group full of team captains (17), strong students (3.5 is the average GPA) and accomplished players. Eighteen of the 29 players starred in more than one sport in high school.
“This might be the biggest class of multi-sport athletes coming here to Dayton,” Chamberlin said. “They’re basketball players, volleyball players. They play baseball and run track. We’ve got two kickers coming in, and one is a pole vaulter, and the other one’s the captain of the volleyball team. That shows you two things. One is they’re competitors. They don’t want to just go through the fall competing. They’re competing year round, most of them. Also I think that shows you a little bit of athletic talent because you’re using one type of athletic skill in football, and now you go to baseball and that’s a little different — hand-eye coordination, that sort of thing.”
Chamberlin likes athletes who play multiple sports and doesn’t support the idea of spring football coming to Ohio — a long-debated issue — for that reason.
“It all comes down to the skill level they’ve been born with, first of all, and then how they’ve developed it over their life,” he said. “Spring football, 10 practices, to me is not going to make that big a difference.”
One of those multi-sport athletes is Catholic Central wide receiver Ashton Young, a Division III state qualifier in the 100-meter dash a year ago who also ranked second on the basketball team in scoring as a senior. He caught 11 touchdown passes last season, ran for three scores and scored on a kickoff return.
“We’re excited about Ashton,” Chamberlin said. “He’s fast. He really is. He just stands out on film with a speed.”
There are two quarterbacks in the class. Logan Landers, of Dixie Heights High School in Edgewood, Ky., and Joey Daniels, who helped lead Mt. Lebanon High School, of Pittsburgh, to its first state championship in Pennsylvania last season.
Dayton coaches paid special attention to safeties in the recruiting process. One of the safeties is Vandalia Butler’s Luke Mitchell, whose mom played soccer at Dayton.
Another player from the Dayton area is Carroll defensive tackle Elliott Braun.
“Elliott is one of those guys that can develop into a very good football player,” Chamberlin said. “He’s got good size. They played him at linebacker, his coach told me, just so he could run all over the place. He has that body build we think can really develop and has the tenacity of a defensive player that we like.”
Among the three offensive linemen on the list is Middletown’s Logan Osborne.
“We can never get enough offensive linemen,” Chamberlin said. “We only got three this year. But we think they’re three young men that have great feet to start with. That’s what we always look for. And they’ve got size. We think Logan is a guy who can even get bigger. But he’s very athletic.”
Dayton’s 2022 recruiting class
QUARTERBACK
Joey Daniels, Mt. Lebanon (Pa.), 5-10, 185
Logan Landers, Dixie Heights (Ky.) 6-0, 190
RUNNING BACK
Will Cohen, Robinson (Va.), 5-10, 180
TIGHT END
Jacob Denney, Liberty Union, 6-4, 220
Silas Snell, Cincinnati Country Day, 6-4, 245
WIDE RECEIVER
AK Agee, Marist (Ill.), 5-9, 160
Dominic Vrbancic, Louisville Male (Ky.), 6-1, 175
Ashton Young, Springfield Catholic Central, 6-0, 175
OFFENSIVE LINE
Ben Huefner, Olentangy Liberty, 6-3, 280
Logan Osborne, Middletown, 6-5, 245
Tommy Shipman, Niles Notre Dame (Ill.), 6-5, 280
DEFENSIVE TACKLE
Elliott Braun, Carroll, 6-4, 225
Joe Vormbrock, Simon Kenton (Ky), 6-3, 240
DEFENSIVE END
Chase Brown, Moeller, 6-2, 225
Jayson Harris-Woodard, Marist (Ill.), 6-3, 225
LINEBACKER
TJ Kathman, Lakota East, 6-1, 200
Gideon Lampron, Keystone, 5-11, 220
Bennett Lawrence, Olentangy Berlin, 6-0, 190
Westyn Pemberton, Martinsville (Ind.) 6-0, 200
CORNERBACK
Cam Cope, Cincinnati La Salle, 5-11, 180
Noah Hordhaus, Robinson (Va.), 5-10, 170
SAFETY
Josh Anderson, Cincinnati St. Xavier, 6-1, 190
Mac Grant III, St. Christopher (Va.), 6-0, 185
Brock Kidwell, New Albany, 5-11, 185
Eli Kirk, Cincinnati St. Xavier, 6-1, 190
Luke Mitchell, Vandalia Butler, 6-1, 175
KICKER
Robby Smart, North Canton Hoover, 5-10, 150
David Maurer, Cincinnati Elder, 6-3, 215
PUNTER
Logan Forcum, Cincinnati La Salle, 5-11 165
LONG SNAPPER
Austin Yeager, transfer from Saddleback College (Calif.), 6-4, 200
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