LINCOLN — Lincoln is not a destination for typical football scouts.
The Railsplitters’ football program, which has only one playoff berth in the last 41 seasons, becomes a more frequent destination of college scouts during basketball season. But senior Zach Poole has become a magnet for football scouts and recruiters.
Poole, at 6-foot-7 and 320 pounds, has already made more than 36 unofficial visits, including to schools in some of the biggest and best college football conferences in the country — the Big Ten and the Southeastern in FBS and the Missouri Valley in FCS.
But what makes Poole a magnet?
“A real tall kid from Lincoln,” Poole said. He loves football and baseball but grew out of baseball and became a perfect physical specimen for football.
“Until like seventh grade, baseball was my everything,” Poole said.
As of the summer, the University of Illinois leads the way with four unofficial visits. He said Illinois assistant coach Pat Ryan was the first person outside his circle to notice his abilities. The recruitment process at the U of I started after Poole’s freshman season.
“(Lincoln coach Matt Silkowski) messaged me, said he needed to forward a text to me and a phone number and the University of Illinois wanted me to take a visit there.
“I’m still in shock about it, just this whole process.”
His parents, Jennifer and Troy Poole, said they were a little overwhelmed by the college recruitment process as well, but have had a lot of help from boys basketball coach Neil Alexander and the family of Kloe Froebe, who is a sophomore on the women’s basketball team at Colorado State.
“There’s just so much that you have to learn, and there’s not a lot of help you can get,” Troy said. “Fortunately, here in Lincoln, we’ve had a couple families that have been through this. The Froebe’s helped us a lot. I was texting Kent (Froebe), if he didn’t know, he’d say, ‘Call Kari,’ the mom, and between the two of them, we’d get an answer. Coach Al’s been a lot of help (too).”
Jennifer said if her youngest of three children does pursue his dream of becoming a football coach, this has been a good experience.
“I was more okay with him doing a lot of the camps and going for all of the visits, saying yes to a lot more than maybe he should have, because he wants to go into coaching himself,” Jennifer said.
Self-motivated
Poole is not just a talented player with a gifted physique, but he has the self-discipline to keep improving.
“He’s very focused,” Silkowski said of his right tackle who will also play defensive tackle.
“He definitely has goals and he knows what he needs to do to achieve them. And he’s not afraid to work to get to that goal and get to the highest level that he can in this game.”
He also pays attention to all the advice he receives.
“I love what a sponge he’s been,” Jennifer said. “Each camp he’s gone to, everything he’s talked to, just soaking everything they tell him. He memorizes everything.
“We’ll be having conversations. He’ll mention a coach he went to weeks ago. He still remembers exactly what critiques they had for him to work on and how he’s changing things to keep wanting to get better and better.”
A side benefit to the attention
The further the campus visit, the longer the stay. Zach and his dad like to make baseball-related side trips during different visits.
In July, when Poole visited the University of Minnesota, the family took in a Twins game at Target Field. On a visit to Syracuse, they visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. While visiting Kentucky, the Pooles went to the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory in Louisville then went across the Ohio River to the Queen City, to the Cincinnati Reds’ Great American Ballpark and Paycor Stadium, the Cincinnati Bengals’ football home.
When Poole was first invited to Syracuse, his dad looked up directions and saw it was an 11-hour drive. That was going to be prohibitive until Troy saw it wasn’t too far from Cooperstown.
“That’s been on my bucket list since I was a little kid and Zach loves baseball too,” Troy said before suggesting they leave a little early and fit in a visit to baseball’s shrine.
“He was all over that. We had a blast and I want to go back. We did the same thing when we went to Kentucky, we spent the day in Louisville.”
Poole still has official visits to take before he makes his final decision. The only thing he’s decided on? He prefers a colder-weather climate and that he won’t finalize his choice until after the high school season because he wants to focus on the Railers’ upcoming season. He was a sophomore when the 2023 team ended a 39-year playoff drought. He wants to get Lincoln back in again.
“This is going to be a very exciting year for Lincoln football,” Zach said. “I think the thing that’s definitely driving us the most this year is the doubters, especially in the whole state, being told because we don’t have our star running back, star quarterback, star outside linebacker, that we’re immediately just written off, (Lincoln will go) 0-9.
“I’m just excited to go prove everybody wrong and I know everybody else (on the team) is too.”
Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, ryan.mahan@sj-r.com, Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: ‘A real tall kid from Lincoln’: Zach Poole’s Big Ten, SEC recruitment brings rare football scouts
Reporting by Ryan Mahan, Springfield State Journal- Register / State Journal-Register
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
