Meet Kole McKamey
Accompanied by his twin sister Kayla and his mother Kay, Artesia High School's Kole McKamey signs a national letter of intent to attend UNM on a football scholarship. Approximately 150 people attended Kole's signing. |
Loboland.com: Let’s start with the recruiting process—tell us about the process, the schools that contacted you and ultimately what led to you to make the decision to attend the University of New Mexico?
A. To start off with my junior year, about midway through the football season, we started sending out tapes to different schools where I’d like to play. Highlight tapes, game tapes all sorts of stuff like that. [Then, we started waiting.] I started to get some replies from smaller schools at first, but then after awhile more towards the end of my junior season bigger schools started to get in touch with me and asking me a bunch of questions and having me fill out questionnaires. That summer it really kind of picked up and began taking off. I went to all those camps and got some recognition.
I did pretty well and then I got invited to the Nike camp, top-100 and only the best in the nation got invited to the camp. I got to go to that in San Diego and competed against a lot of good guys and I got ranked third at that camp at quarterback. The rankings of that were sent out to colleges nationwide everywhere and coaches got to look at those and could kind of see who was doing well and who they could keep there eye on during their senior year. That helped me out a lot. It got my name out and got coaches calling me and asking me if I would ever consider their school and wanting to know if I would go to their camp. That’s how I picked which camps I went to—the ones who had the most interest and kind of the more elite schools.
After my camps the recruiting really slowed down because it was a dead period for two or three months. No school can contact you. They can send you letters, but they can’t have any personal contact with you—they can’t call you on the phone. So it kind of slowed down, but at the start of my senior season it really, really picked up again and that’s when I was getting five or six calls a week from all different schools asking about where I want to go and all sorts of different stuff—every week. It really kind of got annoying after awhile. It’s real cool at first, but after awhile it gets really annoying especially when you’re trying to do your homework and the phone is ringing off the hook. Finally I started to tell my mom if it’s a coach I’m not here and different stuff like that. It’s really tough, but it’s actually a really cool thing to go through.
Moving on towards the season it kind of slowed down a little bit as more and more colleges received quarterback commitments so they wouldn’t have to recruit you anymore. The colleges that really stuck with me to the end were Colorado, Marshall, New Mexico State, of course UNM and Boise State. At the very last minute Colorado pulled out and said they weren’t going to have enough scholarships to offer me as a quarterback. So that kind of put them out of the question, but I still had four other schools and it was kind of an easy decision after that because I had already been out to West Virginia and didn’t like it out there at all.
That’s how UNM kind of became an easy choice for me. I got to see a lot of the schools at the camps I was at. I only took official visits to Boise State and UNM. I didn’t really want to go on any other trips because at that time there were only four schools still interested with Marshall, New Mexico State, Boise State and UNM. I took trip to UNM and Boise State and I had already been to Marshall. I knew what it was like up there so I didn’t want to waste my time or their time because I already made up my mind I didn’t want to go up there. I had already been to New Mexico State and made up my mind I didn’t want to go there. In fact, after my trip to Boise State, on the flight home, is when I called coach and told him I wanted to go to UNM.
Loboland.com: Tell us about the Lobo coaching staff? Which coach(es) recruited you?
A. I really, really liked how a lot of them are just down to earth type of guys. I’ve been a lot of schools where head coaches are really popular and he doesn’t really talk to anybody. They only really talk to the GA’s (graduate assistants) or the other coaches like the linebackers coach or the quarterbacks coach. All these coaches talk to you just like any other guy. I remember being at Alabama and Coach (Dennis) Franchione would make an appearance every other day and he wouldn’t really talk to anybody. The coaches at UNM really made you feel comfortable. They would sit down and talk to you about pretty much anything.
Coach (Dan) Dodd recruited me and he came down to visit me. I talked to Rocky quite a bit over the phone and he visited me once and that was when I had pretty much narrowed it down to UNM or Boise State.
Loboland.com: Tell us about your visit to UNM?
A. I had already seen their facilities. I’ve seen them a lot of times. In fact, when we were up there for the State (Championship) game we got to hang out there and kind of relax and watch highlight videos so I already pretty much knew about the facilities. What I really liked was all the players and all the good things they had to say about UNM. All the coaches told me this was a good place, but I wanted to see what the players said about it so I talked to a lot of them. I talked to Dontrell, Hank Baskett, Casey Kelly, Kirk Robbins, and Rudy Caamano. I talked to a lot of those guys and they all said pretty much the same thing about how the coaches treated them fair, it’s a good place to be, the community supports them. Everyone is friendly—it’s not like one group hangs out together. It’s really a close knit family and that really kind of weighed heavily on my mind.
Loboland.com: Describe your emotions when you were signing your national letter of intent?
A. There was a lot of people there. There were a lot of athletes and people watching. It was kind of like it’s official now. I don’t have to worry about UNM pulling out or something happening. It was kind of relaxing. Wow, it was kind of fun and now it’s over. Now all I have to wait is to get up there and get started because after I committed I couldn’t wait until I sign. I kind of dreamed about that all my life. I guess a lot of things went through my head. They held it at the Pit, our basketball gym. All the athletic teams were out there. They let all the athletic periods out from 8 to 8:45. A bunch of my friends are in sports and they were there. All my family was there. There was about 150 people there. It was way cool.
Loboland.com: What do you think of the current state of the Lobo Football program?
A. I think really truly think that UNM is an up and coming program. They are on the verge of letting go and winning the conference. With the recruits they’ve gotten in the past year or two I think that they are definitely going to be considered for conference champs. Of course you know you have to work to get there. I think they plan to redshirt me my first year, but I think I am really good about learning things. I love the mental part of the game as well as the physical so I enjoy sitting down watching films and studying playbooks. I think I can catch on pretty well with the type of offense they run and the defenses we’ll see.
I’m hoping I’ll be able to play a little early and I think I’ll bring some leadership. At Artesia as a quarterback, you’re expected to be the leader not only on your football team, but also in the community. A lot of people look up to me and ask me for help. If someone needs some firewood moved or something a lot of times I’ll be the first person they call and if I can get up some guys to help them move something. That’s just kind of how the community is here. I think that being looked at like that—being a leader. I think I bring that to the team. I like when all eyes are on me and people look up to me like that.
In Part 2, Loboland.com talks to Kole about playing and competing at the quarterback position, the type of player he is and his style of play, and his plans for the summer. Loboland.com would also like to thank Kole and his family for taking the time to talk with us and for all their assistance with the story.
"We Will Never Forget." September 11, 2001 |
