KILLEEN, Texas — Neil Searcy played college football with Cory Yates at Texas A&M-Commerce.
Years later, now the two are once again working together, this time to send Searcy's players to play college football.
Searcy, the head football coach and campus athletic coordinator at Killeen High School, recently announced the program was partnering with Recruiting Analysis to provide colleges with more advanced data of the school's prospects.
"This is a great tool for that," Searcy said. "Because, we can take all of our kids' old film and do all of the analysis on it."
According to Searcy, the service helps differentiate players by body type and find their top speeds in game situations. That means with pads on, a football in hand and defenders trying to tackle them, rather than in shorts and a tshirt in a non-football setting.
"If we don't play a down of football this year, our kids can still be recruited and be seen by all the colleges around the country," Searcy said.
Searcy said the discussions started before the ongoing coronavirus pandemic forced the sports world to take a long pause, but the pandemic boosted its value.
He also said they tried it with two of the Kangaroos' fastest players: Kadarius Marshall and Jayden Hill.
"Kadarius, he maxed out at something like 19, 19.5 miles per hour on a touchdown run we used," Searcy said. "And then Jayden, he had an interception return early in the season and his maximum speed was 21.1 miles per hour."
Searcy said he's not aware of any other Texas high schools working with Recruiting Analytics through this process, but he's excited to still give his players hope in a time where the sports world has so many more questions than answers.
"Thinking about our kids and our future, how are we going to get our kids recruited if we don't play," he said.
Watch our full interview with Killeen High School coach Neil Searcy below.
