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Ennis Rakestraw, 2020 Duncanville (TX) Cornerback

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Samson Doyo said:
All world name.

Go Canes!
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Actually, the name "Rakestraw" has a very bad ring for very very longtime UM fans.

Larry Rakestraw was a three year starter at QB for UGA in the early sixties. He was All-SEC twice.

In 1963, he threw for 407 yards against us and set one NCAA and three SEC records. We had our own great passer, George Mira, who was having a disappointing year, as was Gus' dream team.

Shining Moments: Bulldog Larry Rakestraw owned the 1963 Orange Bowl - Georgia Trend Magazine

For a college football career|!!| you can talk about your Charley Trippi|!!| your Frank Sinkwich and your Herschel Walker|!!| but for one single game the name that stands out is Larry Clyde Rakestraw.
www.georgiatrend.com www.georgiatrend.com
 
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Swag has been screaming for us to recruit South Dallas for about as long as I can remember. Simply amazing that regime after regime screws this up.
 
RyanCane26 said:
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May 08, 2019: Offer

FIU Golden Panthers offer Ennis Rakestraw
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:ibis-roflmao-sm3:

Took this staff a year to check the kid out
 
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slurricane3 said:
North metro Dallas and Denton have ballers too
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They do, but the culture's a little different south of I30. Those kids are natural fits at UM, IMO.

Lantana/Denton's talent is getting impressive... I see a lot of their junior high and youth games, Ryan and Guyer will be nice for a long time if they don't build any more schools.
 
TheSwagger1 said:
I knew of Rakestraw last year. My team - Southlake Carroll - lost to DV last year and this year in week 4 of the POs. But, some of the success teams had on their defense was attacking Rakestraw, including our's.

Fast forward this year.... SLC has one of the best QBs in the country (soph Quinn Ewers - one of the best I've ever seen) and one of the best WR corps in Texas. I feel like we can have some success against ER, and we went after him early. No way. Dude was a totally different player - absolutely one of those late bloomer types who looks like a different kid his senior year. He did an amazing job in coverage on a kid (low D1) that had beasted all year long for us. I was eager to see how he matched up with Jaxon Smith-Ngiba, a kid from Rockwall, who is top 3 WR in the nation the next week. Rakestraw gave him absolute fits. I knew he was the real deal and it wasn't a fluke, no one had kept JSN in check like that his entire career. North Shore didn't even look his way and they are loaded with athletes everywhere.

After that Rockwall game I came *this* close to posting his name on this forum or emailing the staff in hopes that it would trickle back to the coaches given our lackluster CB haul, but I've done that in the past several times with kids and nothing ever came of it, so I didn't worry about it.

This kid isn't going to come in and be a lockdown dude from day one - he's got to get bigger and stronger to tackle at the next level. But his cover skills are as legit as it gets at that level, and he proved it against super legit competition. I hope it works out. As mentioned earlier, Judd Thrash on the DV staff is apparently tight with Manny from Thrash's days coaching at Lake Travis. Thrash is a super motivating, charismatic dude who would have sway over kids like that. He's one of the sharper guys on the DV staff and I'd have to think he will give Rakestraw good advice. That's great news for us, as our depth chart is horrendous there. Bad news is that the buzz is that almost everyone's giving him a strong look now, and there are some programs that have a lot more mojo at the moment. Another bit of good news, however, is that South Dallas loves Miami. Despite all these ****** seasons, I STILL see UM gear more than any other out of state teams at these HS games. They remember Armstead and crew and the impact those teams had on the game of football.... and it was happening at the same time Dallas Carter was the big news in town, so there's always going to be love there.
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I have historically been of the impression that Houston and East Texas have greater concentrations of talent than the Metroplex. Is this an incorrect assumption?
 
2.0 said:
Now I ask this?

What is the difference between Division 1 and Division 2. And why dont the 2 division winners play for an overall championship?
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At the start of the year the governing body (UIL) looks at every school's enrollment/geography and separates into 1A-6A.

6A -2200+ enrollment
5A - 1230+
4A - 515+
3A - 230+
2A - 105+
1A - everything smaller - these schools play 6 man football - which is really awesome to watch.

After that, they're grouped into 5-10 team districts depending on geography/travel. This is a problem because some of the West Texas ISD's favor opening multiple schools (El Paso, Lubbock), while some prefer keeping smaller, huge schools (San Angelo, Odessa, Midland), so the districts get spread very far apart as many of these schools are virtually in Mexico or New Mexico compared to other schools their size. 4 teams from every district make the playoffs depending on their record against each other - the 2 largest in the district go D1, the 2 smallest go D2 regardless of where their enrollments fit elsewhere. This can get screwy, because some districts are comprised of massive schools for geographic reasons (for instance, Allen and 3 Plano schools are in a single district and all have 4700+ kids) and then if several of them all make playoffs you have schools with 5000 kids dropping down to D2 and playing against much smaller schools..... in some districts the big schools stink and don't make playoffs (this is what happens to Southlake Carroll and partly explains their fall from dominance with the birth of these mega schools) and you have a school with 2700 kids playing up in the D1 bracket against schools with more than double the amount of kids. The whole thing is screwy and basically ruined by the Allen/Plano and West Texas districts with these mega schools.

Why don't they play each other? I've heard that they don't want the season to start any earlier because it would cut into Summer, and they don't want to go another round because it would be after Christmas. Also, it would sort of invalidate (and admit the failure of) the whole D1/D2 approach which was theoretically designed to prevent the mega schools with 4500+ from playing the smaller 6A schools in the 2000s. Again, they're sort of stuck from just creating a couple more divisions because in El Paso, for example, you have a lot of schools that fluctuate between 4A-6A size, and there wouldn't be enough schools within 300 miles to form a district.

There's more than anyone on this board ever needed to know about TX football districts :)
 
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JeddTheFisch said:
I have historically been of the impression that Houston and East Texas have greater concentrations of talent than the Metroplex. Is this an incorrect assumption?
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East Texas is basically the Muck of Texas. The schools are 3A-5A sized but per capita much more impressive than DFW/GHA. It's very Louisiana-ish in demographics. Tough kids who grow up country poor, not urban poor. There's a difference. Not as much poverty as the Muck, but same concept.

Houston may have more talent but less consistently good programs than DFW. Both areas took a hit with the No Pass No Play rules that killed a lot of the inner city programs that used to be dominant (Houston Yates, Dallas Carter, etc.). Houston -speaking VERY broadly - plays more old school type football (heavy ground game, physical), while DFW embraced the passing game stuff immediately with Sam Harrell and Art Briles being in the area and leading the charge. I think the players that come from the area generally reflect that. South Dallas is the exception to that.... those kids grow up tough. North Dallas has unbelievable programs and a lot of talent too, but it's kind of like those rock bands 5 years after their debut albums.... it's hard for it to mean as much when you already got the money. I'm being very general here, lots of exceptions, but you get the picture.
 
@TheSwagger1 appreciate your insight, I follow Texas HS football as much as I do South Fla because I respect how passionate how important it is to those kids down there. And the overall talent that comes from there.

I'm also fascinated by how many Coaches come from the Texas HS ranks into college & become successful.
 
Liberty City El said:
@TheSwagger1 appreciate your insight, I follow Texas HS football as much as I do South Fla because I respect how passionate how important it is to those kids down there. And the overall talent that comes from there.

I'm also fascinated by how many Coaches come from the Texas HS ranks into college & become successful.
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Lot to appreciate in both places, and yeah..... the Texas HS coaching ranks are pretty insane as far as guys moving on. Not just numbers, ingenuity also.
 
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TheSwagger1 said:
Lot to appreciate in both places, and yeah..... the Texas HS coaching ranks are pretty insane as far as guys moving on. Not just numbers, ingenuity also.
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I used to follow it a lot closer, but now I focus on Florida.

I'm a fan of the old SWC and the various schemes (triple option, wishbone, flexbone, run and shoot) that trace their origins to innovators coaching in Texas. And Plano East vs. John Tyler 1994.

Plus Texas is weird like Florida.
 
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Liberty City El said:
@TheSwagger1 appreciate your insight, I follow Texas HS football as much as I do South Fla because I respect how passionate how important it is to those kids down there. And the overall talent that comes from there.

I'm also fascinated by how many Coaches come from the Texas HS ranks into college & become successful.
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During the JJ era, I had friends well plugged into his staff. I heard that one thing his staff liked about the Texas kids is that they came in well-schooled. The HS coaching out there was generally at a very good level.

This would be consistent with your comments.
 
TheSwagger1 said:
At the start of the year the governing body (UIL) looks at every school's enrollment/geography and separates into 1A-6A.

6A -2200+ enrollment
5A - 1230+
4A - 515+
3A - 230+
2A - 105+
1A - everything smaller - these schools play 6 man football - which is really awesome to watch.

After that, they're grouped into 5-10 team districts depending on geography/travel. This is a problem because some of the West Texas ISD's favor opening multiple schools (El Paso, Lubbock), while some prefer keeping smaller, huge schools (San Angelo, Odessa, Midland), so the districts get spread very far apart as many of these schools are virtually in Mexico or New Mexico compared to other schools their size. 4 teams from every district make the playoffs depending on their record against each other - the 2 largest in the district go D1, the 2 smallest go D2 regardless of where their enrollments fit elsewhere. This can get screwy, because some districts are comprised of massive schools for geographic reasons (for instance, Allen and 3 Plano schools are in a single district and all have 4700+ kids) and then if several of them all make playoffs you have schools with 5000 kids dropping down to D2 and playing against much smaller schools..... in some districts the big schools stink and don't make playoffs (this is what happens to Southlake Carroll and partly explains their fall from dominance with the birth of these mega schools) and you have a school with 2700 kids playing up in the D1 bracket against schools with more than double the amount of kids. The whole thing is screwy and basically ruined by the Allen/Plano and West Texas districts with these mega schools.

Why don't they play each other? I've heard that they don't want the season to start any earlier because it would cut into Summer, and they don't want to go another round because it would be after Christmas. Also, it would sort of invalidate (and admit the failure of) the whole D1/D2 approach which was theoretically designed to prevent the mega schools with 4500+ from playing the smaller 6A schools in the 2000s. Again, they're sort of stuck from just creating a couple more divisions because in El Paso, for example, you have a lot of schools that fluctuate between 4A-6A size, and there wouldn't be enough schools within 300 miles to form a district.

There's more than anyone on this board ever needed to know about TX football districts :)
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No thats perfect. California has something similar but they also have the Open Division but that usually ends up bring De La Salle vs. Mater Dei or St. John Bosco.

Maybe Texas could create another Division for these mega schools or even go with an open Division where it doesnt even matter what your school enrollment
 
JeddTheFisch said:
I used to follow it a lot closer, but now I focus on Florida.

I'm a fan of the old SWC and the various schemes (triple option, wishbone, flexbone, run and shoot) that trace their origins to innovators coaching in Texas. And Plano East vs. John Tyler 1994.

Plus Texas is weird like Florida.
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And some have said the old UM "belly series" or "Miami Drive Series" of the mid-1950's was the forerunner of option football. Coach Gus ran it with our all-time great College HOF member Don Bosseler. That offense was famous.

For those who think we just got good in 1983 or 2001, think again. Maybe not quite NC good, but respected as a national power.

The reference to the Miami Belly Option as the forerunner to the wishbone and similar option attacks can be found, as I recall, in Jim Martz's first book on UM football.
 
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