By Stephen Oman
Murphy News Service
High school football has become more than ever about players positioning themselves to play at the college level.
The Minneapolis Washburn High School football program is no stranger to players going on to play college football. Witness current Minnesota Golden Gopher standout defensive lineman Ra’shede Hageman, who was in the class of 2009 at Washburn.
The most recent example is elite running back Jeff Jones.
Jones is a four-star recruit and the No. 1 high school football recruit in Minnesota, Rivals.com said. Jones also is the 91st-ranked recruit nationally. ESPN.com ranks him at 181 nationally and 14th at his position, while ranking Jones the top recruit in Minnesota.
The nearly 200-pound Jones is a versatile back who has put the ball in the end zone often and in different ways. He has rushed for 32 touchdowns, caught six more, and he has returned a kick for a touchdown in the regular season.
Washburn’s first playoff game against Bloomington Kennedy was more of the same. Jones ran for two, caught two, returned a kick for one, and even threw one touchdown in Washburn’s 48-42 double-overtime win.
Jones was held to 47 rushing yards on 16 carries and didn’t have a catch in Washburn’s season-ending sectional loss to Apple Valley, however.
He only had one regular season game in which he rushed for fewer than three touchdowns. He didn’t score in a loss at St. Paul Central which he left early in the second half with a hip pointer injury. That was also the only game in which he ran for fewer than 130 yards.
Jones’ play on the field has only been part of his story though. His recruitment has also been a talking point around the Twin Cities all year.
Jones is currently verbally committed to the University of Minnesota, but there has been a lot of talk about where exactly he stands with his recruitment.
Jenkins said the term “soft verbal commitment” was something that rivals.com started and he has used since. “People put a negative spin on it,” Jenkins said.
“If he had to choose a school tomorrow it would be Minnesota,” Jenkins added.
Recruitment has picked up a bit for Jones since his verbal commitment to Minnesota, and Jones wants to give other teams an opportunity Jenkins said.
Jones took his official visit to the University of Minnesota early in December and told Gopherhole.com that the visit went “great.”
“Visiting the campus always makes you feel better, you know, because you see things that you don’t see every day and you experience things that you don’t experience every day,” said Jones of the visit to Minnesota
Jones still has not made visits to several of the schools that have offered him scholarships, and he will wait until he does that to make an official decision, Jenkins said.
Jones told Gopherhole.com that he will be taking official visits to Missouri, Michigan State, Iowa State and he is looking to take a visit to one more school.
Jones would be the Gophers’ first four-star recruit since Lamonte Edwards and Jimmy Gjere in the class of 2010 and the first under head coach Jerry Kill.