USA Academy: Kenyatta Watson on What Could Be the Next Major Recruiting Hub
Dustin DeVaughn is the founder of the upstart Ultimate Student-Athlete Academy that will be located in Montgomery, Alabama, and will begin Varsity competition in football this fall. The USA Academy Eagles will play their home games at a local university while their facilities are under construction.
DeVaughn is starting this program from scratch after being frustrated with opportunities for students who are either homeschooled or desire digital or blended learning opportunities. The academy, as the name suggests, wants to compete at the highest level in athletics as well.
Bulldog Maven on SI.com recently caught up with Director of Football Operations and Player Personnel at USA Academy, Kenyatta Watson.
Kenyatta Watson is the perfect fit for the USA Academy in terms of making sure the program is running smoothly in terms of operations and definitely in player personnel. Watson, formerly at Georgia High School football powerhouse Grayson, has built relationships with players and coaches all over the country over the past several years.
According to Watson the success and the relationships made can all be attributed to, marketing and social media.
"When I first arrived at Grayson, under Mickey Conn, they were very successful, but the program wasn't being marketed and branded well. I have degrees in marketing and child psychology. It really just made sense that if you promote what the program has, especially with the talent and success that Grayson already had, that more talent would want to come. The program was built to sell itself, we just had to package it up and put things out there for the world to see. It's not just about your community anymore, it's on an entirely broader level."
The talent certainly did come. Grayson High School has produced as much talent into the college ranks as nearly any school in the country over the last few years. This past year, Watson oversaw and helped orchestrate an incredible amount of signees at Grayson. The Rams had 40 players sign football scholarships in 2019 alone and 24 of those were to Division 1 schools.
Watson was in talks with a couple of major college programs this offseason about director of on-campus recruiting roles, but when well known USA Academy Head Coach Rush Propst gave him a call, the opportunity was too good to pass up. Watson has a passion for helping young student-athletes achieve their goals and the opportunity to help build and mold a national brand and program from scratch was very inticing.
So far, Watson says that interest has been overwhelming.
"Believe it or not, I have not had to pick up the phone once to make initial contact with a player. We have more and more student-athletes reaching out each day. I'd say the number is well over 500 and there are currently just over 40 players committed to the program. We want to have a roster of 75."
When asked about the purpose and the mission of USA Academy, Watson answered:
"It's all about providing young men who are very talented an opportunity to suceed in the classroom and gain a level of exposure that is hard to gain elsewhere. The schedule alone is enough. You are going to get to play some of the best competition and some of these games will be nationally televised.
This is no knock on regular high school programs either. We want to be clear on that. There are programs and schools that do a great job. However, USA Academy is going to provide an added level of exposure for players, it's going to optimize the learning environment for them as students, because not everybody does well in a typical classroom setting, and it's just overall an opporunity that is hard to maintain anywhere else."
The natural parallel that will be made to USA Academy is IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. However, DeVaughn and Watson have both made it clear that USA is not attempting to compete with IMG. They have learned a lot form the model that IMG uses, but ultimately they are focused on providing an excellent environment for student-athletes.
One thing that will be similar to IMG is the level of talent. USA Academy has just started to announce some of the players that will be attending in the schools inaugural year. When asked about what the talent level will look like in the first season, Watson acknowledged that USA Academy, "will have players that are being recruited by every major program in the country. When all the players are announced, people are going to be shocked!"
One thing that seems to be a trend so far for USA Academy is the reclassification of players. Several of the student-athletes that have announced their commitments to attend USA were originally in the class of 2020, but for one reason or another, they have decided to virtually redo their senior year of high school and will be eligible to be signed by colleges in the 2021 class.
Maybe the biggest name to announce so for USA Academy is CJ Dixon, formerly from Grayson High School. Dixon was a 4-Star Pro-Style Quarterback in the class of 2020, with offers from Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Ohio State, and others. A confluence of events and circumstances has lead Dixon to the decision to not sign a letter of intent and reclassify to the 2021 class.
It is well known that Georgia and other elite college football programs visit IMG Academy regularly. With prospects like Dixon and apparently several others coming into USA, I'd expect to see some private jets and helicopters landing in Montgomery, Alabama before too long.
The Eagles of USA Academy will have a regular spring practice and summer conditioning program in preparation for a very tough schedule in the fall of 2020. Five of their ten games will be against teams that finished 2019 in the top 100 ranked programs in America.
USA Academy 2020 Schedule
USA will host two schools from Canada in Riverside Academy and West Toronto Prep. The Eagles will travel to the nation's capital to face St. John's, alma mater of 2020 Georgia signee and 5-Star linebacker MJ Sherman. Finally, the crown jewel of the schedule will be November 6th when IMG Academy makes the trip northwest to visit the upstart program.
All of these events will provide college coaches the opportunity to see large collections of talent on the same field. Nobody knows the inner workings of major college recruitments better than Watson. Coaches from every major college in the country came after the prospects that Watson and company coached at Grayson.
USA Academy will be no different. With that being said, I asked Watson what separates Georgia from the rest of the pack when it comes to recruiting and what that means for the program going forward.
"The culture that Kirby has built. I just spoke to Kirby the other day, talk to him once or twice a month, and he's going to win a national championship here soon, it's just going to happen. And you got to go through the bumps and the bruises that he has gone through for it to happen. Took Nick Saban a while before he won his first one. Pete Carroll didn't just roll into USC and start winning them. So, what Kirby has done at Georgia in his first 4 years, it's phenomenal. Athens is a great city, Kirby is a great guy. He has great coaches. I talk to Dell McGee, Tray Scott a lot. Coach Schumman reached out and congratulated me on the job here. I have a very good relationship with a lot of those guys on their staff.
I'm not shocked at anything they're doing. Kirby is very cerebral. He's driven by being the best and you can see that by the way he is recruiting. What's interesting is that he's putting Georgia on a national level (when it comes to recruiting). Georgia can go into any state that they want and pull out the best guys. That's just relentless recruiting. They believe in their product and they're selling their product. They're putting guys in the league. Georgia has 10 players in the NFL Combine this year and will probably have 10 guys drafted. When you're doing that, sometimes that's more important to some kids, to have the opportunity to get to the league."
That same winning culture and the culture of striving to be the best is exactly what USA Academy aspires for as well. The Eagles will be extremely detailed in their pursuit of building a culture and a program that will succeed on a national level and produce a ton of talent at the next level.
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