Monday, July 30, 2007

First 2009 Verbal

Man, I thought it was tough digging up information on our 2008 commits. Try finding info on 2009 guys! Well, that's what I just did for the first verbal commit from that class, Marlon Pollard. He is a WR/CB from Valencia High and the 6'0", 160lb junior-to-be committed to the program today. It looks like he'll play corner for the Bruins.

In addition to football, Pollard runs on the track team and competes in the long jump. He sounds like an athletic kid with some good hops. I'm sure he'll be jumping over receivers for balls when he plays for the blue and gold. His 40 time is 4.6 seconds but with two more years in high school, I'm sure that time will improve.

One of the benefits of UCLA quickly signing the bulk of it's 2008 class so early is they can start working on the 2009 kids. It looks like that is already starting to bear some fruit. It is so hard to tell if these kids are going to be impact players this early, but the coaches must have seen something they like with Pollard.

(photo credit: scout.com)

2 comments:

jtthirtyfour said...

Pretty modest statistics - http://www.maxpreps.com/FanPages/Player.mxp/California/Boys_Varsity_Football_Fall_06-07/AreaID-8e11e7d4-d3fa-4e6f-827f-652c29439d27/SchoolID-89c14ead-be59-4089-90a0-1ce8ca47de54/AthleteID-7c63bca3-f294-4474-b9ad-d941263dd56b - he must be a freakish athletic talent for us to offer him so early, the only school to do so according to scout.com. Don't really understand why else we would offer a kid that early (with one year of varsity experience).

Anonymous said...

I think "freakish talent" might be a good description ;-) Check out the 100 yard interception touchdown return http://www.the-signal.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=34166&format=html as a sophmore against CIF champs Canyon High Cowboys. How about being selected to the Offense Defense Elite Camp as a sophmore, not to mention winning MVP awards consecutively at these same OD camps, along with his accomplishments as a sophmore starting on Varsity at Valencia. I think his stats might need to be updated to truly reflect his skills, but the boy definitely has talent that UCLA wants and should take advantage of. I might be just a "tad" biased but hey, the college world will soon see what an athletic talent he really is - Congratulations Nephew, Love Auntie!!!!