Recruiting history lesson

Before 247, Rivals, Verbal Commits, ESPN and a bunch of other digitally based recruiting services — in other words, back in the dark ages — the gold standard for prep talent was Parade’s All-American list, typically consisting of three/four/five (it varied over the years) quintets. First-team All-American, second-team, etc.

In other words, the top 25 or so prep players in the nation.

What’s Parade, some of you youngsters ask? It was (is, though with a much smaller circulation now) a publication inserted into Sunday newspapers. The All-American listings started in the late 1950s and was phased out sometime in the 2000s as the McDonald’s All-American list supplanted it, along with the aforementioned recruiting services.

Anyway, knowing next year’s recruiting class is one of if not THE best (on paper) in program history, I wanted to see how it compared to previous classes.

These are the Flyers’ Parade All-Americans recruited by Blackburn and Donoher:

— Henry Burlong
— Roger Brown
— Bill Chmielewski
— Glinder Torain
— George Janky
— Mike Blevins
— Donald Smith

Brown is the only one to have been named to the Parade list twice. What’s most remarkable is only three of the seven spent their entire career at UD —Torain, Janky and Smitty.

I’m not trying to make any particular point here, but I thought it was interesting that we had several prep All-Americans choose UD way back when. We’ve never had a McD All-American, save for Ally Mallot on the women’s team.

Here’s hoping Holmes and company are as good as advertised.