a spring-break trip to the east coast this week has given isaiah foskey an opportunity to take his first look at a handful of schools farther from home. He decided to include a stop at tennessee. The four-star junior tight end from de la salle high school in concord, calif., visited the vols on wednesday in the middle of a weeklong trip that also has included trips to georgia, clemson, ohio state and penn state, and he said tennessee made a good first impression on him.
ive been talking to coach simon and (tight ends) coach (brian) niedermeyer, and i just like the relationship that i have with them, said foskey, whos ranked the no. 145 overall prospect and no. 4 tight end in the 247sports composite for the 2019 class. and i know a little bit about tennessee. Plus, coach simon is a de la salle alumni, and my head coach, coach (justin) alumbaugh, said he was one of, like, the best players ever to come to de la salle. So i was like, let me just check them out and see what theyre doing up there, and i like what theyre doing up there.
i liked their indoor football facility and how everything is so close together, with the football aspect of it, and how the coaches rooms are, foskey said. when i first got there, they gave me the tour. I felt like you could just go back and know where everything is at right now. I like how thats all set up. foskey admitted tennessees facilities caught me off guard. he said he was particularly impressed by neyland stadium and the indoor football facility. that was the third campus i had seen on my trip, and that caught me off guard, he said. i havent been to a lot of colleges like this.
pruitt, who was hired in december, talked with foskey about his ongoing efforts to get tennessee back on track. he was just saying hes trying to build up the program, and having me be there, thats just something that would help them build the program, foskey said of pruitt. its just a program that everyone wants to go to a high, powerful program. foskey said he starts on both sides of the ball at de la salle, and while hes being recruited by most teams as a tight end and would prefer to play there in college he said pruitt expressed some interest in perhaps playing him on either side of the ball. he just wants me to go there, either at tight end or defensive end, foskey said of pruitt.
The chance to be part of tennessees rebuilding efforts, foskey said, is one of the main reasons hes interested in the vols. im interested in the way theyre trying to build the program back up and how coach pruitt was describing how hes trying to build the program back up, foskey said. thats what interests me the most.
with offers from nearly 30 schools under his belt, foskey said he doesnt expect to decide on a college until close to signing day or on signing day. he has yet to plan any of his other four official visits, but he said theres probably going to be some more in the summer. while he said he doesnt have any favorites right now, he didnt rule out that he could return to tennessee at some point. it might be too early to say, foskey said. but i feel like ill be able to come back up there.
