June proves to be pivotal month for Southeast Missouri State football team

Just because it's June doesn't mean it's summer break for the Southeast Missouri State football team.

Ninety-four Redhawks players arrived on campus for summer workouts on May 31 and there's been almost no down time for the coaching staff since.

The majority of coach Tom Matukewicz and his assistants' time hasn't been spent on their current players but rather prospective student-athletes during what Matukewicz considers one of the most important months of recruiting.

"This is the life of a football coach," Matukewicz said before rattling off his and his staff's agenda for the past few weeks.

The whirlwind month commenced with the Redhawks coaches working at the University of Memphis camps June 1-3, where there were about 180 kids each day.

After that they spent a day at an Illinois camp in St. Louis before hosting their first Individual Prospect Camp of the year on June 5 at Houck Stadium.

That Saturday was spent at a Western Kentucky camp and on Sunday the staff was at Missouri's camp in Columbia.

GLENN LANDBERG ~ glandberg@semissourian.com Marshall Grammer preforms a running drill for Southeast Missouri State University's running back coach Matt Martin during a football prospect camp at Houck Stadium, Friday, June 5, 2015.

After a brief stint back in Cape Girardeau for the program's Brick by Brick golf outing the coaches made the trek back to Columbia for another day of camp at Mizzou.

They took one day off on June 10 before they attended a camp put on by Iowa at Lindenwood University in the St. Louis area.

June 12 was Southeast's Kansas City Prospect Camp at Liberty High School and the Redhawks held two prospect camps in St. Louis on June 13 -- a morning session at Gateway Tech and an afternoon session at DeSmet.

This Thursday and Friday they held their Kids Camp for second through eighth graders and their final prospect camp is today at Houck.

Southeast will host a high school team camp June 25 and 26 and its 7-on-7, offensive line and defensive line camp will be June 27.

There is a method to this month-long madness.

"With our recruiting model we place a high value on a live eval," Matukewicz said. " *... I want to see if they're in the front of the line, I want to see what kind of work ethic, along with their movements and testing results. But there's a lot of other things you can evaluate. One of the other things is you can start that relationship because at those camps now you can coach a kid for a couple hours and help create that relationship, which is what recruiting is all about. You could be the guy that they don't want to say no to."

GLENN LANDBERG ~ glandberg@semissourian.com Southeast Missouri State University coach Tom Matukewicz meets with Seth Hedrick during a football prospect camp at Houck Stadium, Friday, June 5, 2015.

Of the 18 high schoolers that signed to play at Southeast in February, the Redhawks coaching staff saw 12 at a camp. Just like he did at his signing day press conference, on Tuesday Matukewicz compared recruiting a kid solely on film to buying a house or car based on what you see on the Internet.

"I'm not going to buy a house or a car off of YouTube," he said. "I want to see it, touch it, feel it. Same way with the prospects."

The first evaluations for the 2016 recruiting class began in the last week of April. That week each assistant coach -- offensive coordinator Sherard Poteete, defensive coordinator Bryce Saia, offensive line coach Jon Wiemers, defensive line coach Ricky Coon, safeties coach and recruiting coordinator Eric Burrow, running backs and special teams coach Matt Martin, wide receivers coach Salim Powell, cornerbacks coach Melvin Rice and tight ends coach and director of football operations Joe Uhls -- was sent to their primary recruiting area to talk to coaches and others at schools about recruits as well as check on their academics.

The first list of prospects included around 1,200 names, according to Matukewicz, and after each assistant's week of recruiting Matukewicz was brought in to meet the coaches of the top prospects. This continued the first couple weeks of May, which falls within the NCAA's evaluation period.

Matukewicz estimated that the Redhawks have extended around 30 offers to players so far.

"Through these camps and through these live evaluations and just through the D-1 food chain where all of a sudden this guy picks up this offer, then that thing starts to whittle down," Matukewicz said of the recruiting list. "That last week in June we'll have about 100 to 125 kids that are on our board and we'll have about 30 to 40 offers out there."

Bryan Lewis from Arlington, Tennessee puts on a Southeast Missouri State University football jersey during a football prospect camp at Houck Stadium, Friday, June 5, 2015. (Glenn Landberg)

After today's prospect camp the coaches' efforts will become more focused on individual recruits because they'll have a better idea of what BCS schools they're competing against.

"June you have a good idea of who Mizzou has not offered," Matukewicz said during his signing day press conference on Feb. 5. "If you don't have a Mizzou offer by June you [aren't] getting one. Kids start listening a little bit more to us and we want to be right there early on."

The entire month of June and July is deemed a quiet period by the NCAA, which means that coaches can't have face-to-face contact with recruits or their parents or visit their schools, but that policy doesn't extend to camps the coaches work. Instead the coaches can -- and will -- reach out via telephone, e-mail and social media during the quiet period.

"We're on social media hitting these guys every single day, and just like you would with anybody you're recruiting, you're showing them how important they are to your recruiting class, you're telling them all the great things about Southeast and then you're trying to get them on campus to meet our players before they start their season," Matukewicz said.

Southeast increased funding to start summer sessions for players during Matukewicz's first year last season.

Summer workouts vary for other Ohio Valley Conference universities.

Eastern Illinois began its six-week summer session on Monday with "a good portion" of the Panthers and incoming players on campus for workouts, according to Associate Athletic Director for Media and PR Rich Moser.

Most of Eastern Kentucky's players will return to participate in unofficial workouts and the second session of summer school in early July, according to Assistant Athletics Director for Communications and Branding Michael Clark.

UT Martin sports information director Ryne Rickman said in an e-mail that some Skyhawks players are currently on campus taking classes and completing voluntary workouts. The majority of the team will return to campus in mid-July, but due to a lack of funding for summer the players have to pay for their own housing and meals.

E-mails to other OVC schools were not returned by press time.

Matukewicz said his players have been "killing it so far," in everything from the conditioning and workouts to their community service.

Soldan football coach Jarrett Kendall was contacted by the Southeast coaches to let him know how his former player, Trevon Billington, was doing since he moved in. Besides visits to Soldan, the high school of Southeast senior all-conference receiver Paul McRoberts that is located in St. Louis, toward the end of the school year, Kendall also has talked to the Redhawks coaches on the phone about a couple of his current players -- Jaylen Bohannon and Jaylin Swan -- that they've got on their radar.

The continued contact and relationship formed with college coaches is critical for the Tigers' coach.

"It's probably the most important thing because if you're really serious about your kids you want them to have a relationship with the university as opposed to just sending your kids to the biggest name college or the first college that says that they want to sign one of your kids," Kendall said. "It's a little bit easier to talk to people from SEMO because we've got a relationship with SEMO already seeing as we already have Paul down there as well as with Tre going. Now it's a little bit easier. When they come around it's just *... easy to talk to them."

Matukewicz's philosophy of recruiting in the Southeast Missouri region first continued this year. He was the first to offer Central star Al Young a scholarship in October and Malden's Nick Thompson at the end of April.

They've offered several other Missouri players as well as several in Florida, Kansas and Arkansas among others.

"They're definitely one of the schools that comes in the St. Louis area. I think they opened up the door, especially from a public school standpoint," Kendall said. "They have not been shy about coming and getting kids out of the public schools. A lot of universities kind of shy away from the public schools because we do have a lot of bigger schools in our area, but SEMO, whenever they come to town they stopped at school."

Kendall said they also differ from other schools in their honest approach with recruits.

"They're realistic with what you can do at SEMO. They're realistic when it comes to the program," Kendall said. "At the end of the day if they feel a kid is bigger than SEMO they don't have a problem telling him, 'You know, I would love for you to come here, but I think you could probably go to a much larger school.' Because at the end of the day recruiting is funny. Like I always tell kids, it's a sales game, some coaches sell better than others. *... But I feel, in my opinion, that when people come from SEMO it's not a sales game. It's really that they really want to come and find a good kid that fits their program."

As coaches become more familiar with the regime at Southeast, which officially will kick off its second season at Missouri on Sept. 5, and their recruiting practices, it becomes easier for the Redhawks coaches.

The key for Matukewicz is to try to outdo not only other college coaches on the recruiting trail, but to get himself and his staff to outdo themselves from year to year.

"There's a really good spirit about the program right now in the areas that we recruit. If you walk in high schools in St. Louis and you bring up SEMO now there's like a sense of newness, a sense of energy, those type of things, so you can recruit off of that," Matukewicz said. "What makes recruiting harder and harder each year is you've got to out-recruit the last class. So are we going to be able to out-recruit [senior running back] DeMichael Jackson? Can you bring a better player than DeMichael? That's our job as recruiters is to out-recruit your current two-deep. To be honest, that's not too hard with this first class. I think as this thing goes it's going to get harder and harder and that's what makes it challenging. You've got to keep trying to step up and maybe get that next-tier guy."