West Virginia Commit Chase Guers Is First Player Selected for 2026 All-American Bowl

Long before Chase Guers was announced as an All-American at the Hall of Fame Village in Canton, Ohio, this past July, he arrived there as an 8-year-old boy wearing Dallas Cowboys gear, surrounded by brothers who loved football just as fiercely as he did.

Nearly a decade later, football brought him back to Canton under dramatically different circumstances.

This time, the 6-foot-3, 190-pound four-star wide receiver and defensive back from Blue Mountain High School in Pennsylvania entered the Hall of Fame Village as the first player selected for the 2026 All-American Bowl.

The selection added another milestone to a football journey that will eventually take the West Virginia commit to Morgantown — and one that has always seemed to lead Guers and his family toward another stadium.

That journey to Canton began on New Year's Day 2016, when Chase's parents, Bob and Brook Guers, took their sons to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In the Guers family, however, a planned destination rarely prevented an impromptu adventure.

After Canton came a stop at the Cleveland Browns' stadium. Then the family rerouted through Pittsburgh to see the Steelers' home. The boys collected pictures and stadium pins along the way, but Brook and her husband decided the journey needed one more surprise: their sons' first NFL game.

They found one within driving distance and bought tickets. After dropping off Chase's father and older brother Garrett, Brook took the three boys to watch Philadelphia play the New York Giants. For one afternoon, regardless of the different allegiances they had carried into the car, the family became Eagles fans.

Philadelphia won.

“I was only eight,” Chase said, “but it made me fall in love with the game even more.”

Football Is the Family Business

Chase is the youngest of five children and the latest in a long line of Guers athletes. His sister played college basketball, while two older brothers preceded him into college football. Chase is preparing to become the third brother to play the sport at that level.

He started early. Before he was old enough to wear his own uniform, he served as a waterboy and manager for his brothers' teams. One coach's wife even gave him a jersey of his own. By age 5, he was playing flag football. Around the same time, he was already training alongside his brothers at a local gym.

“They were always competitive. They pushed each other regardless of age,” Brook said. “However, they always supported each other. They were the most vocal on the sidelines cheering for each other. Each brother's success was motivation for the next.”

Football filled the family calendar from Thursday through Monday. Chase learned how to set television reminders when he was 6 or 7, and the “College GameDay” alert he programmed still appears every Saturday.

He kept notebooks predicting NFL results and building playoff brackets. Once, when his family turned on a replay of a two-year-old Penn State-Ohio State game, Chase looked at the screen and immediately announced that the next play would be a blocked kick returned for a touchdown.

It was.

The family's football trips continued, too. Two years after the Canton adventure, Brook loaded the boys into the car and drove from Pennsylvania to Texas for a Cowboys game on Dec. 23. They drove straight home afterward, arriving minutes before midnight on Christmas Eve.

For Chase, the trips were more than sightseeing. They made the enormous world of football feel tangible. Stadiums were no longer distant structures appearing on television. They were real places, reachable at the end of a long road.

So was college football.

When Recruiting Changed

Chase had always believed he could play in college. The possibility of playing at the Division I level became real during his sophomore track season, when he ran the 100 meters in 10.4 seconds.

Soon afterward, Syracuse delivered his first scholarship offer.

That speed remains his most obvious weapon, but Blue Mountain coach Chuck Kutz saw more than a track athlete wearing shoulder pads. When Kutz began coaching Chase as a sophomore, he found a receiver with advanced hands, polished routes and an understanding of the game developed through years of watching, studying and playing it.

Kutz, a longtime Central Pennsylvania coach who played wide receiver at Bucknell, understood the nuances of the position.

Early last season, Chase scooped up a rolling punt without breaking stride and returned it for a touchdown in a rivalry game.

“The coordination it took to pick that up in stride and outrun the defense proved he was a special player,” Kutz said.

Chase can stretch a secondary at receiver, attack the football at defensive back and change a game as a returner. Kutz has watched him get behind defenders quickly, manipulate leverage and locate open space. Chase, meanwhile, continues sharpening his route tree and release through coaching and daily repetition.

The work produced a recruitment that was exciting, demanding and far less glamorous than it may have appeared from the outside.

During the 55 weeks between Chase's first offer and his commitment, the family spent 27 weekends on the road. The itinerary included seven camps, nine game-day visits, three junior days, eight spring-practice visits and three official visits, plus home visits, school visits and a constant stream of calls and messages.

Both parents worked full time. Chase attended school, competed in multiple sports and trained while two of his brothers were also playing college football. As Brook put it, recruiting became “a complete family team sport.”

Chase felt the weight of it.

“My recruitment became very busy and even stressful throughout my junior year,” he said. “I try to stay grounded, grateful and in the moment.”

His eventual decision came down to relationships and instinct. Chase committed to West Virginia after developing trust in the people he met there and feeling comfortable around the program.

Kutz believes the fit extends beyond athletic ability.

“Chase did his homework and really felt at home with the coaching staff, facility and environment at WVU,” Kutz said.

First Player Selected for the All-American Bowl

Before his West Virginia commitment, another landmark moment arrived unexpectedly.

At Blue Mountain's end-of-season banquet in December 2025, Chase's coaches surprised him with a graphic, a jersey and the announcement that he had been selected for the All-American Bowl.

He wasn't merely on the roster.

He was the first player selected for the 2026 game.

Chase Guers shows off his No. 26 All American jersey he received as the first player formally selected to appear in the 2026 game. | Joel Franklin

Rich McGuinness, a former college wide receiver who has helped lead the All-American Bowl for more than two decades, said the selection reflected more than Guers' recruiting profile.

“Bowl tradition searches for the athlete who is a major college prospect, comes from a great football tradition, and simply loves the game,” McGuinness said.

For Guers, the honor represented another step in a journey built around football and family.

“It is a blessing and an honor,” Chase said. “I have to thank God for helping me earn that honor.”

Football Brings Guers Back to Canton

The recognition brought Guers back to Canton in July for a media event and photo shoot with fellow All-Americans as the game's 2026 uniforms were unveiled.

He also toured the Pro Football Hall of Fame and Hall of Fame Village, returning to the place he had first visited with his family as an 8-year-old.

He met the people behind the game, learned more about football's history and stood inside the world he had first encountered as a wide-eyed child on a family road trip.

Yet the honor hasn't changed the player Kutz sees every day.

Guers remains even-tempered, receptive to coaching and quick to move into the next repetition without an excuse. He helps younger players with technique, brings energy to practice and handles attention without making it the center of the room.

“He is a very humble kid and never made a big deal about the attention he was getting,” Kutz said.

There is still another high school season to play, more strength to build and more details to master before Guers arrives in Morgantown. He understands that Division I football will demand even more from him.

But he also knows where the road can lead.

The first player selected for the 2026 All-American Bowl is Chase Guers. Behind that selection is a coach who recognized the difference between speed and football speed, a mother who turned stadiums into family landmarks and a household that treated every mile, practice and game as part of something larger.

Years ago, the Guers family drove to Canton simply because they loved football.

This time, football invited Chase back.

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