<p>Austin Booker has long had the physical tools needed to play major college football. It just wasn’t always clear whether he’d actually get there — even as recently as a year ago.</p><p>Standing at least 6-foot-5 and checking in at around 230 pounds, with long limbs and hands that can easily swallow those of a normal-sized human, Booker passes any possible eye test. But his on-field performance through his first two years of high school hadn’t measured up, and so he wasn’t getting the same sort of recruiting notice that some of his other teammates were.</p><p>"A lot of guys, like (Caden) Curry or (Carson) Steele, had tremendous sophomore film," Center Grove coach Eric Moore said. "Tremendous sophomore film will always bring the milk to the milkhouse. (Booker) didn’t have any film. To be frank, he didn’t play very hard. He didn’t get on the field much; he was very uncoachable. He was trying to do six sports, and thought he was going to go to the NBA, I think."</p><p>After a 2018 season that saw Booker make just nine tackles in limited playing time, Moore sat down with the then-sophomore for a little heart-to-heart chat.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]<p>College coaches were going to be coming to town to check out some other Trojan players, Moore told Booker — and I’m going to introduce them to you. And when they see a tall, rangy athletic defensive end, they’re going to be more than a little bit intrigued — but they’re also going to want to see some results.</p><p>That, Booker said, helped light a fire under him. Hearing that playing big-time Division I football was a realistic possibility got him more focused and pushed him to work harder going into his junior year.</p><p>The work was evident last fall. Booker became a menace up front for the Class 6A state runner-up Trojans, making 14 of his 67 tackles behind the line of scrimmage. He had eight quarterback sacks and forced a pair of fumbles.</p><p>Over the fall and winter, the scholarship offers started to roll in. Cincinnati. Purdue. Indiana. Iowa. Texas Tech. Michigan State. By the end of May, Booker was sitting on roughly 20 Division I-A options.</p><p>He also knew which of those he wanted to accept. On May 30, Booker posted a video announcing his verbal commitment to the University of Minnesota.</p><p>The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the recruiting process for a lot of athletes and coaches. With prospects unable to physically take campus visits, some have opted to play the long game and wait until they could. Others have chosen to trust their online research and the connections they’ve made with coaches and players. Booker fell into the latter group.</p><p>"Once they told me how long it was going to be until I’d be able to visit, I kind of just wanted to decide on the schools I had then," he said. "I just decided which schools I felt most comfortable with, and also the 2021 class (Minnesota is) recruiting there is pretty good, so I feel like we have a good chance of winning some games. … I also wanted the city aspect. It just checked off a lot of boxes."</p><p>Moore wasn’t at all surprised to see major college programs showing interest once Booker began to tap his potential last season. When those coaches see that kind of length on the edge, they see a player who can knock down passes and block kicks — and someone who can reach out and make a play even when they’ve been blocked. Those players aren’t a dime a dozen.</p><p>In fact, Moore had to go back more than 20 years, all the way back to his days coaching in Florida, to come up with the right comparison.</p><p>"We don’t have that many kids that have this kind of a ceiling on them," the coach said. "He reminds me of (former NFL All-Pro) Jevon Kearse — big, tall, long kid. Jevon, in high school, was only about 185 pounds; really, I thought he was going to be a safety or a split end, and Steve Spurrier said, ‘Nope; we’ll feed him six times a day and he’ll have his hand on the ground next spring.’ I laughed at him, and bam — the rest is history.</p><p>"Austin Booker has a lot of the same traits as him."</p><p>Before he takes those traits to the Twin Cities, though, Booker still has some unfinished business at home. He’s eager to get back on the field with his Center Grove teammates and begin the state championship push that many expect them to make this fall.</p><p>"I just want to get the team together," Booker said. "We all need to be on one page. I’m just ready to dominate with all of them and just roll through the MIC this year."</p>
