No one is recruiting IMG better than Miami so far in 2023. ‘There’s a buzz.’ Here’s how
The most loaded high school football team in the country storms into their Bradenton weight room and, even among the masses of future Division I and NFL players at Bradenton IMG Academy, it’s hard to miss Francis Mauigoa.
Another day of preseason practice has finished at IMG Academy and the day is just starting. It’s not even 11 a.m. on a Friday. In the afternoon, IMG’s players will get treatment from a dedicated training staff, have mandatory trips to the cold tub and, of course, go to class, but before any of this comes an hour-long weightlifting session in the school’s Performance and Sports Science Center, and Mauigoa is one of the main attractions.
When the five-star tackle loads up on the squat rack, everyone else stops and huddles around to see what the 6-foot-5, 330-pound offensive lineman can do.
By this time next year, Mauigoa plans to be competing for a starting job with the Miami Hurricanes and at least a handful of those teammates crowded around him will still be his teammates, and his plan is for a few more Ascenders to decide to tag along, too.
“There’s a buzz about Miami here,” new IMG coach Billy Miller said. “There’s a different buzz and a different feeling around it now. It’s almost like they’re getting back to what the U’s supposed to be.”
Even though it’s in Florida, the Ascenders, in some ways, provide a pretty reliable barometer of which schools are hottest on the recruiting trail. No school has more players in the 247Sports composite rankings than IMG and those recruits come from as close as Fort Myers and as far as, in Mauigoa’s case, the American Samoa.
Right now, the Hurricanes hold four 2023 commitments from Ascenders — more than any other college team — and they hail from all over the United States. Mauigoa came from an island more than 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii; four-star edge rusher Jayden Wayne came from Tacoma, Washington; four-star tight end Riley Williams came from Portland; and three-star interior lineman Antonio Tripp came from Baltimore.
“The main reason I came down here,” said Tripp, who’s one of the newest additions to IMG’s roster, “was that they were all down here.”
Miami’s recruiting inroads at IMG
On the first day of July, Williams became the first Ascender to commit to Miami’s 2023 recruiting class. Three days later, Mauigoa followed him and then Wayne did the same after five more days.
In less than 10 days, the Hurricanes nearly doubled the number of all-time blue-chip commitments they’d gotten from the Bradenton powerhouse.
At IMG, feelings about Miami have waxed and waned. Typically after a new coach arrives, the Hurricanes have gotten a little bit of a bump. Even if it hasn’t always yielded new recruits, the new energy and new attitude — whatever cliches any new coach throws out — have at least gotten Miami into contention for top Ascenders.
Although the Hurricanes can’t officially lock in their four commits until December, people around the IMG program are believers in coach Mario Cristobal and his staff — believers this time will be different.
Some of Miami’s early success with the Ascenders is owed to coincidence — Williams and Wayne are both from the Pacific Northwest, and Cristobal was recruiting them hard when he was coaching the Oregon Ducks; Mauigoa has a close family relationship with defensive tackles coach Joe Salave’a; and Tripp was committed before he even joined the Ascenders earlier this month — but the Hurricanes are prioritizing IMG, too.
“It’s close, they play really good football, they’ve got really rich tradition, you’re living in Coral Gables or South Beach for a couple years,” said Miller, who praised offensive coordinator Josh Gattis and has a relationship with special teams analyst Marwan Maalouf, as both previously coached with the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. “They’ve hit the ground running over here when they first got here.”
Mauigoa will help, too. The lineman is the top-ranked prospect on the team and the only Miami commit entering a second season with the Ascenders. He’s one of the leaders within the program, both because of his talent and how vocal he is.
He and Wayne are working hard on recruiting five-star edge rusher Samuel M’Pemba, who has the Hurricanes in an unofficial top four. If it can add M’Pemba, Miami would hold commitments from IMG’s top three prospects in the 2023 recruiting cycle.
“We’ve got him wearing Miami gear now,” Mauigoa said.
Added Miller: “There’s a lot of Miami wristbands.”
Still, Mauigoa’s No. 1 priority goes beyond the state lines: five-star tackle Samson Okunlola from Thayer Academy in Braintree, Massachusetts.
“I was trying to get him to come here,” Mauigoa said, “so that way I can be on his [expletive].”
Added Tripp: “I feel like we’re in a good spot for Samson. ... I think he’s the final piece to finish our O-line.”
Mauigoa wants Joe Moore Trophy
Even with five offensive linemen already committed to the Hurricanes in this recruiting cycle, Okunlola is perhaps Miami’s top target left between now and the early signing period in December.
If they get both Mauigoa and Okunlola, the Hurricanes would sign multiple five-star tackles for the first time ever and multiple blue-chip offensive linemen for the first time since the Class of 2018.
Add Okunlola to a group already including Mauigoa, Tripp, three-star tackle Frankie Tinilau, and three-star interior linemen Connor Lew and Tommy Kinsler, and Miami would have perhaps its best ever haul at the position.
With this sort of group, Tripp believes the Hurricanes could win a national title while he’s at Miami. Mauigoa has an even more specific goal to have his position group heralded as the best in the nation.
“My goal,” Mauigoa said, “is to win the Joe Moore Award.”
In Manatee County, the future of the Hurricanes’ line is getting good preparation.
IMG is not a typical high school — obviously — and it means most to linemen, who often get to college either overweight or underweight, and need something close to a full year in D-I strength and nutrition programs to be ready to contribute.
The Ascenders give them get a head start. The machines in IMG’s weight room are Sorinex Exercise Equipment, which record the velocity of each repetition to give players a real idea of how much they should be lifting. Every three months, the Ascenders measure the body-fat and muscle percentages of their players to make sure everyone is keeping on track. Players’ diets are monitored, too.
It’s something similar to what they’ll get at the next level.
“IMG is not like no ordinary high school. It’s a college prep out here,” Mauigoa said. “We’ve got our schedule based on college: We’ve got school in the afternoon. ... We’ve got nutritionists. Some schools don’t have nutritionists, some schools don’t have trainers and stuff, so you’ve got to take advantage of everything.”
Those practices will help, too. Mauigoa and Wayne match every single day — and each one is quick to brag about a recent battle he won against the other — and Tripp and Williams both have to compete for starting jobs against other future D-I players.
The Ascenders, who are No. 4 in MaxPreps’ rankings, will begin their season Friday with a preseason tilt in Venice and the schedule won’t let up from there: They play No. 15 Miami Central in Week 1, face Baltimore’s St. Frances Academy in their finale and have two other games against top-100 opponents.
There are plenty of reasons why college coaches love to recruit IMG and, right now, no one is doing it better than the Hurricanes’.
“I knew I was going to come here and work hard, play against the best,” Wayne said. “Iron sharpens iron.”
This story was originally published August 17, 2022 at 3:17 PM.
