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Holden: Arp You Glad You Found Me?

By Will C. Holden
January 27, 2012

“If you're good enough, they'll find you.” That's what high school athletes yearning for a college scholarship are told.

Kyle Copeland will tell you that's what he believes, but not without a hint of doubt permeating through his confident southern drawl.

The adage makes sense. These days, the press of a button and four words – “I want a hamburger" – has the power to present 30 peer-reviewed options for lunch within a five-mile radius.

What could be so hard about finding a good high school quarterback in such a world?

Well, Copeland is 6-foot-2, runs a 4.6-second 40-yard dash, led his high school team to a 10-3 record last year while throwing 44 touchdowns and rushing for 22 more en route to finishing his senior season without a scholarship offer.

It's hard to believe those numbers aren't good enough.

You know what else is hard to believe? That we're even talking about a kid from Arp (no, somebody didn't just step on a dog).

Arp, Texas, population 972, is Copeland's hometown. His high school team finished 2011 ranked 1,866th in the country and 218th in the state. When Air Force finally offered him a scholarship two months after football season, he committed. But when he makes that commitment official on National Signing Day Feb. 1, no one will officially know due to a service academy policy that prohibits the public release of signee information.

And yet any Air Force fan with a computer, a working knowledge of how to use it and 15 spare minutes can not only find out Copeland has committed to wear blue and white, but that his Arp High School team recently switched to an option offense similar to one the Falcons run.

All this about a kid from a town that consists of two gas stations and one stop sign.

It's the kind of place where "you had to be Bart Starr to even be considered for an athletic scholarship” back in Dale Irwin's day.

Those high school playing days for Arp High's current head coach came and went about 30 years ago. Irwin recalls them fondly for everything they were as much as everything they were not.

"We went home during the summer and weightlifting wasn't a big deal," he said. "Now they have summer camps that are focused exclusively on weightlifting."

Copeland would know. He suspects he went to around 50 camps over the past two years, leaving every one of them without a scholarship offer.

The discouragement welled up and he turned to his dad, a lifelong football coach and the current principal at Arp High.

"Football had been my life and I wasn't ready to give it up," Copeland said. "My dad told me it wasn't over yet. He told me to go out and savor this last year, play football and let the chips fall where they may."

Two months after that season ended, the scholarships started stacking up in his corner. The first came from Air Force. But how did the Falcons first hear about Copeland?

Did they watch him pile up over 300 total yards and three touchdowns in a 41-21 playoff win over Corrigan-Camden on a SETXsports.com live webcast? Did they catch a glimpse of one of the countless digital highlight reels Irwin shipped out to college coaches using the web-based system Hudl? Did they notice his two-star ranking on Rivals.com?

None of the above.

A high school coach in a nearby town told a personal trainer in another town about Copeland, and that personal trainer had ties to an Air Force assistant coach.

In other words: The same way news spreads in a place like Arp is the same way news about Copeland made its way to Colorado Springs.

"That's still the best way to recruit – face-to-face communication," Irwin said. "Sure, you hear about more kids these days with all the recruiting services and everything, but who knows where a lot of that information is coming from?"

All Copeland knows is he's never spoken to anyone from Rivals.com. He also knows the exact moment when Rivals.com decided his football abilities merited two-stars.

"The day after Air Force offered me," Copeland said. "That's when I magically became a two-star recruit."

So if you're good enough, will they really find you? Even with all the technology at their disposal, it's not a sure thing.

But one thing appears to be - if they do find you, it must mean – at least according to Rivals.com – that you're good enough.
Writer Will C. Holden brings you some of the unique storylines from across the Conference every week in this digital edition of Stories of the Mountain West. Next week: Rising Out of Watts - The story of how James Boyd went from the streets to LA Coliseum, from football to basketball and back, and how Bobby Hauck found it.

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