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Football is about change. The pound-the-rock attack gave way to the West Coast offense. Now, the Vermont All-Star Football Camp has tweaked its format for this summer and the new design was unveiled over the weekend on Norwich University’s Sabine Field.
The Passing Academy that used to kick off the Monday-through-Friday football camps in Rutland and South Burlington has been replaced by the Prospect Camp.
The Prospect Camp at Norwich only affirmed Vermont All-Star Football Camp proprietor Chris Redding that it was the right move.
The Prospect Camp in conjunction with the Rutland camp will be held on Saturday, July 15 at Castleton University following the Vermont All-Star Football Camp at Rutland High’s Alumni Field from July 10 through July 14.
The Prospect Camp allows high school football players to be evaluated by college coaches.
Coaches from the staff of Norwich University, Castleton, Middlebury College, Husson University, Bridgewater State, Plymouth State, Assumption and Western New England University were on hand at Norwich this weekend.
“It exceeded what we expected,” Redding said.
Players were tested in the 40, vertical jump, broad jump and shuttle agility run.
“I would say that 95% of the high school players there were from Vermont,” Redding said.
“We will look to model this in the future.”
Redding said that the Passing Academy was good in the respect that it gave the quarterbacks an opportunity to throw but that participation had been low for that day.
This gets the high school players an opportunity for exposure to college coaches and also to be coached by them.
“It gets our kids measurable,” said Redding, a former receiver at Mount Anthony, Burr and Burton Academy and the University of New Hampshire.
“This was our best football camp we have run since we took over Vermont All-Star Football Camps in 2021.”
The camp is available to all rising high school sophomores, juniors and seniors.
A nice feature of the camp is that it also gives high school coaches an opportunity to learn from college coaches.
“They get to see their drills,” Redding said. “It is a great thing for the high school coaches.”
Redding said there were high school quarterbacks from 11 different schools. They included the likes of Burr and Burton’s Jack McCoy, Mount Anthony’s Tanner Bushee, Hartford’s Brayden Trombly and Bellows Falls’ sophomore Eli Allbee.
“It is the best quarterback level I have seen here,” Redding said.
Redding believes the Prospect Camp will grow and improve.
“I still want to be able to cast a wider net of coaches,” he said.
University of Rochester will be an addition to the Castleton event on July 15. Rochester head coach Chad Martinovich’s daughter Hailey is an outstanding volleyball player at Castleton.
There are college coaches who were not able to attend who have requested that the data from the testing be made available them.
The participation looks healthy at the Rutland and South Burlington camps with plenty of time left to register.
“Rutland has just shy of 100 registered and South Burlington just over 100,” Redding said.
Redding has plenty going on with football. Last August he was named the head coach at Berry Academy in Charlotte, North Carolina, a school that plays in 4-A, the state’s classification for the largest schools.
But his heart is always in Vermont high school football, the place where his love of the game was cultivated.
