Calabasas High football becomes talent agency
This is the home of Bieber and of Kardashians, of actors, musicians, retired able athletes, reality-television stars and executives, with a boilerplate assets that attests to the surrounding wealth: The boilerplate domiciliary in Calabasas makes added than $120,000 annually, according to the a lot of contempo U.S. Census.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the bounded antic arena is a breastwork of country-club pursuits, Calabasas Top Academy Principal C.J. Foss heard aloft her accession in 2008. We’re acceptable at tennis and acceptable at golf, she was told, but football is an afterthought; kids don’t wish to get hurt, and families don’t wish their kids to play.
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| Calabasas High football becomes talent agency |
This began to change in aboriginal 2014, if Calabasas begin a new coach: Casey Clausen, already a quarterback at at the University of Tennessee so acclaimed for his address he becoming the appellation “The Iceman,” who was again confined as an abettor drillmaster at adjacent Oaks Christian School.
“I was searching for somebody that was traveling to body actualization and adherent and accompany some success for the kids,” Foss said. “I capital the kids to go on the acreage and atomic feel like they had a shot, that they were competitive. And this happened immediately.”
In the amount of two seasons, Calabasas has been adapted as a alpha assertive — champ of 19 amateur during the accomplished two seasons, including a 13-2 mark in 2015 that culminated with the school’s aboriginal actualization in the California Interscholastic Foundation Accompaniment Regionals.
For years, the program’s abridgement of success led bounded affairs with any admiration to be accustomed by academy recruiters to play elsewhere, with abounding electing to appear one of the abundant private, football-obsessed institutions dotting Southern California. For many, the best was simple: Calabasas artlessly didn’t abide as an option.
“If you were a accomplished amateur and you lived in Calabasas, you were apparently traveling to a clandestine school,” said Dartmouth-bound arresting lineman Arthur Kaslow. “There are some abundant clandestine schools for football in the area, so Calabasas wasn’t even a thought.”
The academy now houses a amount of high-profile recruits, acceptance who chose to advice body a championship-level affairs in their own backyard rather than chase the departure of aptitude to the surrounding area. Above academy football programs now army to Calabasas, aided in allotment by Clausen’s relationships with coaches at Alabama, Arizona, Baylor and Nebraska, a allotment of others.
“I just absolutely capital to be able to accompany my city-limits to addition level,” said quarterback Tristan Gebbia, who abounding average academy at Oaks Christian. “When I aboriginal got here, I told humans why I came here, to play football. Everybody affectionate of looked at me like, ‘Do you apperceive how bad our football aggregation is?’ Well, you know, I’m actuality to accomplish a difference.”
Said Clausen, “Our ambition now is accumulate as abounding bounded kids home now as we can. We’ll just body a affairs that the association is aflame about.”
It ability not be an altogether arresting adventure at aboriginal bloom — it ability be about common, in fact: academy hires coach, drillmaster finds talent, aggregation wins games. Yet there is little that’s accepted about Calabasas, which has bound adapted itself from punchline to one of the hottest basic programs in the nation.
“This has consistently been a acceptable accessible top academy to go to from an ambiance and bookish standpoint,” Clausen said. “The one section that’s consistently been missing is football.”
This is a accessible school, for starters, in a arena breadth clandestine schools boss the standings and the headlines, and a accessible academy with no history of football success. It’s amid in high-end Calabasas. The affairs earns little revenue, authoritative what it can from low-price tickets — even then, acceptance acceptance to appear amateur for chargeless — and a aliment angle tucked into the end breadth of its 3,000-seat stadium.
Calabasas trails in absolute numbers. There were beneath than 50 players in the affairs if Clausen aboriginal arrived, and almost 80 on the agenda this spring. A lot of accessible schools backpack a minimum of 115 players, acceptance for varsity, junior-varsity and apprentice teams. Calabasas artlessly doesn’t accept the aforementioned luxury.
The apprenticeship agents draws no salary: Clausen and his administration — which cover his brother, Rick, who played quarterback at LSU and Tennessee, and above Southern California active aback Marshall Jones — plan for free, with Clausen cheating alfresco of his accustomed business hours as a agent at Flintridge Insurance, a aggregation started by his father.
“I had my time,” Clausen said. “I had my glory, I had my fame. I played Division I academy football at Tennessee. My job now is to accommodate for my family, my wife and my kids, and on the added end, in commendations to the football side, to accommodate a abundant high-school acquaintance for every alone individual amateur in our program.”
And the recruits who already larboard Calabasas — such as Miami (Fla.) quarterback Brad Kaaya and above Arizona Accompaniment quarterback Mike Bercovici — are now blockage at home. “This academy sells itself,” said Clausen. “This affairs sells itself.”
Calabasas ability abode the a lot of high-level aptitude of any accessible academy in the country: Clausen estimates that 85 academy programs paid visits to campus during the accomplished year, eyeballing Gebbia, arresting aback Darnay Holmes and advanced receiver Keyshawn Johnson Jr., son of the above USC and NFL star.
Gebbia and Johnson, both four-star recruits, accept already accustomed exact commitments to Nebraska; Holmes, a best anticipation who ability aswell agreement to the Cornhuskers, has offers from dozens of above programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Coaches are accepted in droves alpha Friday with the alpha of academy football’s bounce appraisal aeon for -to-be recruits.
“Private academy or accessible school, no amount breadth you go, I anticipate we’re affectionate of alteration it,” said Clausen. “There was this allegory out there that just to go to a academy in general, you accept to go to a clandestine school. Especially if your kid’s an athlete, because that breadth they’ll get showcased. ‘You’ve got to go to a clandestine academy in adjustment to be seen.’ Well, no you don’t. ‘You’ve got to pay all this money to go to these camps to be seen.’
“No, they appear appropriate here. From April 15 through the end of May, every academy in America.”
Seven Calabasas players in the chic of 2016 accept active to academy football, at programs alignment from Arizona and Nebraska through UC-Davis and Willamette University. At atomic four will assurance scholarship offers next February, while one 2018 recruit, arresting aback Brendan Radley-Hiles, becoming a dozen FBS offers in a alone ages afterwards enrolling at Calabasas this spring.
This is how Clausen-led Calabasas measures success: not in wins and losses, but by affirmation opportunities on the next akin — the adventitious to use football and the school’s able bookish acceptability as the alley to a four-year university.
“Our better key with our accomplished bureaucracy is accepting kids to college,” Clausen said. “We can go 5-5 next year. We can go 1-9 next year. We can go 10-0. We’re still traveling to accept four or 5 guys sign. So the almanac is the record. It doesn’t absolutely matter.
“The ambition at the end of the adit actuality is college. If you’re able abundant athletically, anyone is traveling to duke you a analysis for $250,000 and say, ‘Please appear to our academy and play football.’ But what we accent to our kids is, the ambition is to appear a four-year college. That’s altered than what 95% of added accessible schools are saying. Everything that we do is geared against college.”
Academics accept played a role in the program’s growth. We can win with you or we can win after you, Clausen said in his aboriginal affair with the team, a baking 20-minute bulletin underlining the NCAA’s accommodation requirements as a baseline for classroom success. Of the Coyotes’ 48 players if Clausen accustomed in 2014, 28 were academically ineligible; endure fall, as the aggregation able for the CIF playoffs, all 85 players on the agenda were eligible, in what Foss alleged a aboriginal for the football program.
“I anticipate Drillmaster Clausen has consistently beheld this acquaintance as a steppingstone, you know,” Gebbia said. “He acknowledges that top academy is absolutely just a aisle to get to college. He just consistently tries to adapt everybody the best he can. And I anticipate he’s been accomplishing a appealing acceptable job of it.”
In itself, an accent on the alliance of academics and contest doesn’t accomplish Calabasas unique; added schools in the breadth can action agnate advantages, admitting at the amount of big-ticket tuition. But this is a accessible school, and a academy alone in the accomplished two years adequate the blazon of success about apparent alone at its private-school peers.
“I anticipate the chat is out now,” Clausen said. “If you wish to go absorb $25,000 on a clandestine school, go ahead. But here’s this accessible academy down the alley that is free, in a abundant environment, abundant education, and if you’re acceptable enough, you’re traveling to be seen.
“That’s what altered about the school. If I say we’re accomplishing this for the kids, we’re absolutely accomplishing this for the kids. These kids capital success, and we affectionate of laid out this adapt for them. We appealing abundant bankrupt it down from the arena up.”
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