Jake Hornibrook of Malvern Prep in Pennsylvania had a whirlwind 24 hours of recruiting. He got the news Friday that Stanford had offered and by Saturday afternoon Northwestern, Minnesota and Oregon followed.
It seemed Stanford was the starter pistol announcing that Hornibrook is national recruit. He was at the airport coming back from a class trip in Florida when he missed a call from Stanford offensive line coach Kevin Carberry. Malvern Prep head coach Dave Gueriera told Hornbrook to make sure to call back.
"He said, ‘You have some good news coming.’ I was like, ‘Wow.’ I was blown away. Then I called and he offered. I was pretty shocked," Hornibrook said.
It was only his second conversation with Carberry, who a couple months ago emailed Gueriera to say he was interested in Hornibrook and ask about his transcript. Hornibrook reports a 4.03 GPA and has an Army offer.
"I called him a couple weeks ago and had a good conversation with him," Hornibrook said. "I thought he was a pretty good guy. He seemed like a good coach. We talked about a visit and he told me he liked my film. He said they would take their time with me.
"On Friday he said they met as a staff and they got my film up there and they all liked it. They decided to offer."
Hornibrook said it was "impressive" when Carberry talked about his NFL background. And as a life-long Eagles fan he won't hold it against Carberry that he coached at two division rivals, Washington and Dallas.
The fact that Philadelphia star tight end Zach Ertz attended Stanford may be one of the few things he knows about the program.
Hornibrook has plenty of research to do on Stanford and the other recent offers. He said he's heard "a lot of great things and I see Stanford on TV a lot, but I’d like to get out there and learn more about the school and program."
He and his family are working on plans for a visit and Hornibrook wasn't sure when outside of hopefully during the spring.
If Hornibrook is able to get to Stanford he'll likely find the competitive academic and athletic environment on campus is similar to the one within his family. His sister, Mackenzie, was a swimmer at Penn State and his brother, Alex, is the starting quarterback at Wisconsin.
Jake said his brother and sister would brag about their SAT scores to each other.
"It definitely starts with my sister," he said of the academic standard. "She went to Penn State Schreyer (Honors College). She set the way for me and my brother (Alex). My brother was always pretty smart in high school. He went to Malvern (Prep) and I do, too, and it’s a high academic school. It’s just a part of us and a part of our family. We think highly of academics."
Of course, given Alex went through the recruiting process recently he has offered Jake general advice of how to approach it: "He told me to take my time and see what fits best for me. That’s what he did. He fell in love with Coach (Paul) Chryst at Pitt and followed him to Wisconsin."
Hornibrook wants to wait until after he takes more visits to start thinking about which schools he favors. Right now he's not thinking in terms of which he has more interest in than others.
