LAWRENCE, Kan. — In late January 2018, Ryan Held had been on the job as running backs coach at Nebraska for about eight weeks — half of it also spent coaching another team — when he received a message on Twitter from Sam Stroh, the basketball coach at Lawrence’s Free State High.
Held’s swift response set off a chain of events that led to a commitment more than 14 months later from a recruit set to leave his mark as one of the most highly rated signees in Nebraska history and a foundational piece of the Huskers’ 2020 class.
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When the message arrived, Held was recruiting in Olathe, Kan., about a 30-minute drive from Lawrence. Stroh, a Nebraska graduate with deep ties to his native state, knew about the rush under coach Scott Frost to complete a recruiting class. So when Free State offensive lineman Jalan Robinson began to attract Power 5 attention in the final days of that recruiting cycle, Stroh figured Held would like to know.
Stroh was right. And less than an hour after Stroh sent that message, Held arrived at the school, ready to meet Robinson, who visited Lincoln days later but ultimately signed with Kansas.
Their meeting, though, sparked Stroh to inform Held and Nebraska two months later when Robinson’s post partner on the basketball court, Turner Corcoran, began to blow up as a football prospect.
Kansas State offered the rising junior in March 2018, followed by Iowa State, Notre Dame, Kansas and Ohio State. Nebraska followed after a nudge from Stroh.
He and Corcoran visited Lincoln twice last spring and about a half-dozen times total before Corcoran, a four-star recruit who is the top-rated prospect in Kansas and a consensus top-40 player nationally, delivered his pledge to the Huskers over dinner at the Watering Hole in downtown Lincoln on the eve of the spring game in April.
Thank you, Go Big Red #committed #GBR pic.twitter.com/yCUOtcGi3A
— Turner Corcoran (@turnercorcoran) April 13, 2019
Stroh was there for the big announcement, alongside Corcoran’s parents, Allen and Shannon, Frost and offensive line coach Greg Austin. When Corcoran told Frost of his choice, the place erupted; the fight song played inside the bar.
“I thought I connected with that staff more on a personal level than with anybody else,” Corcoran said. “After a visit to every school, I’d always think, ‘How does this compare to Nebraska?’ So at that point, I knew I was done waiting. I was ready.”
On a crisp Monday morning in June, just after 7 a.m., the voice of first-year Free State football coach Kevin Stewart echoed through an empty stadium. Most of the players who will make up his varsity roster this fall were 30 minutes into a conditioning workout.
“Good, Turner,” Stewart yelled as his senior offensive tackle led another drill.
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This was nothing new. Corcoran, two months after his pledge to the Huskers, is not letting up. In fact, he’s pumping the gas. Nebraska strength coaches told Corcoran (6 feet 6, 280 pounds) they could shave 30 pounds of fat from his body and add 50 to 60 pounds of muscle.
“After I heard that, I was like, ‘Wow, I need to get to work,’ ” Corcoran said. “It doesn’t start after I get to Nebraska. It starts now. My junior year, I was doing my best, trying to eat well every day, get sleep and live in the weight room.”
As Corcoran left the stadium for another trip to the weight room, he shouted encouragement to a struggling teammate. Corcoran didn’t miss a workout this spring at Free State amid the constant recruiting noise.
Coaches from a few schools told him after his commitment to Nebraska that they planned to continue to recruit him. His reply? “OK, go Big Red.”
In the weight room that Monday morning, he worked on rack one — reserved for the highest-level performers. Even there, Corcoran stood out among this group, which is aiming for its fourth consecutive Sunflower League championship this year in Class 6A, Kansas’ largest classification.
Corcoran spends a lot of time in the weight room, and is a team leader when it comes to conditioning work. (Mitch Sherman / The Athletic)
As several teammates convened during the weight session, Corcoran shouted to them and seemingly everyone else who might hear. “If you’re not lifting, you’d better be doing something. I know you can’t all be on break,” he said.
Stewart, who arrived this year from Overland Park (Kan.) Blue Valley North, paid little attention to Corcoran during the workout. It’s not necessary. He said he hopes for something similar this fall.
“I expect him to protect that whole left side,” the coach said, “so I never have to worry about anybody coming from over there.”
In his down time, Corcoran recruits for Nebraska, which counts he, quarterback Logan Smothers of Athens, Ala., and Bellevue West receiver Zavier Betts as the first members of the 2020 class. Several others figure to jump on board soon, with help from the likes of Corcoran as camp season hits full swing.
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Nebraska’s first Friday Night Lights event is set for this week. Saturday in Lincoln, Adidas will partner with Nebraska and visiting coaches to stage a camp for offensive and defensive linemen.
Corcoran decided recently to graduate early and enroll at Nebraska in January. He owns a 3.8 grade-point average and has completed nearly all of his high school academic requirements. Still, he must load up with seven core courses over the summer and fall to finish in December.
Not a problem, he said. He views this challenge much like what he faces in football.
“Like they say, ‘No pressure, no diamonds,’ ” Corcoran said. “It makes me want to work harder.”
Stroh has known Corcoran since he was in middle school. Of course, Corcoran didn’t look like he was in middle school. A photo sits atop his Twitter profile from around that time. It shows Corcoran standing with five teammates; none of their heads reach past his shoulder pads.
Stroh laughs as he looks at it. Still, he said he knows Corcoran can grow much bigger.
“He doesn’t even have hair on his legs,” he said. “He has kind of a baby face. He’s a little gooey still. We even talked with Frost about it. He said he’d rather have a badass 22-year-old than a badass 18-year-old.”
Corcoran and Stroh (right) were on the sideline for what was supposed to be Scott Frost’s first game as Huskers coach. But the contest vs. Akron was canceled by bad weather. (Courtesy of Sam Stroh)
Such real talk appealed to Corcoran and his family.
Allen Corcoran said he remembers well an early visit with the Nebraska coach in which Frost told the Corcorans to always carry their “BS meter” into recruiting visits.
“He said that coaches are going to tell you what they want you to hear,” Allen Corcoran said. “That always stuck with me when we visited other schools. You feel like, at Nebraska, you didn’t have to have your BS meter out.
“It just felt right. It felt sincere. It felt like the place that would be a best fit for our son. Something just seemed to stick out. It felt to us that they had our son’s best interest.”
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Other schools talked too much about the NFL. His final options included Kansas State, Oklahoma and Nebraska, but Corcoran also had offers from, among others, Clemson, Michigan, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Georgia, LSU and Auburn.
“Some schools hadn’t even met me in person and were telling me that I was going to start right away,” Corcoran said. “I was like, ‘Whatever.’ That wasn’t realistic. I know I’m not ready for that.”
Corcoran made a final visit to Oklahoma in early April. Hours later, on the Monday before Nebraska’s spring game, he told his parents of his choice. Relationships mattered most, including his relationship with Stroh — and Stroh’s with Nebraska.
Born in Omaha, Stroh lived out of state for a decade before attending Nebraska in the late ’90s. He got into teaching at Lincoln Southeast High and connected with ex-Husker Dave Leader, former Nebraska basketball assistant Jeff Smith and ex-Nebraska basketball player Ryan Phifer.
Phifer left Southeast for Blue Valley North, opening a door for Stroh, who got his first head-coaching job at Shawnee Heights High in Tecumseh, Kan. He took over the basketball program at Free State around the time that Corcoran came of age.
At some of the schools in pursuit of him, Stroh said, Corcoran would have fit as “just another somebody.”
“But if you help turn this thing around at Nebraska,” he told the lineman, “you’ll be remembered forever.”
