Colorado targets recruits at Valor Christian H.S.
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Valor Christian High School, located in Highlands Ranch, Colo., is easily one of the top high school football programs in the state of Colorado. They have reached the state title game in eight consecutive seasons (winning seven of them) and has been victorious in back-to-back 5A state championship games.
Rod Sherman has been the head coach at Valor since 2013 and has obviously had great success as the Eagles' head coach. In his first season at Valor, he coached the great Christian McCaffrey.
Sherman currently has three notable recruits on his roster in 2018 quarterback Blake Stenstrom, who is committed to Colorado, and 2019 recruits in quarterback Luke McCaffrey and running back Joshia Davis.
Stenstrom sat behind Dylan McCaffrey, who is now at Michigan, for the past couple of seasons, and now, Stenstrom is battling with the young McCaffrey for the starting quarterback position.
"First, Blake is such a high character kid," Sherman said. "He's a great teammate. I can't say enough about him. He's going to be a great addition at CU and for coach Mac. He has a really live arm. I think he has the ability to do some pro-style stuff and also do some spread stuff. He continues to get better every day.
"I think he's great in the pocket," Sherman continued on Stenstrom. "He does a nice job with play action - all of those types of things. I don't think there's one element of his game that we thought over the course of the offseason that we needed to improve. It's just a continued growth and refinement in a lot of areas. It's a credit to how hard he's worked for many, many years. He's passionate about the quarterback position and football. There's no glaring weakness in is game. It's just a continued polishing of all the wonderful things that he does."
Although Stenstrom was not the starting quarterback last season, he saw the field plenty.
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"We always try to give a lot of experience to our top two quarterbacks, so last year, we split offseason reps 50/50, and we're doing that this year in the offseason," Sherman explained. "We try to find unique plays to play a couple of guys. So even though Blake wasn't the starter last year, he probably played about 30-31% of our snaps on the season. He got good experience, and we're excited for the year coming up.
"I think at most schools, a backup quarterback means that you're never going to play. We played 14 games last season, and [Stenstrom] was on the field for 31% of the snaps in those 14 games. It's probably not fair and realistic to say that he's inexperienced. He's played a lot."
McCaffrey was the No. 3 quarterback last season at Valor, so Sherman had him playing wide receiver and cornerback, and he was an all-state performer. McCaffrey led Valor in receptions (47), receiving yards (717), and receiving touchdowns (9). The four-star athlete holds offers from the likes of Colorado, Colorado State, Duke, Michigan, Ohio State, UCLA, and Washington.
But McCaffrey is now playing just quarterback.
"Luke is also playing a lot at quarterback right now," Sherman said. "We’ll have to wait and see what the splitting of the reps looks like for us once we start getting ready for our first game."
"He's an incredible athlete," Sherman continued. "He continues to grow in his craft as a quarterback. Unlike Blake, his snaps last year weren't at the quarterback position, so he's using this offseason to really get experience at the quarterback position. He's a great competitor and a different type of quarterback that Blake is. The cool thing is that our system is diverse enough that we have elements that fall in line with both quarterbacks."
Davis is a 5-foot-10, 180-pound RB/WR that holds just one scholarship offer, and it's from Colorado. The Buffs offered him very early in the recruiting process.
"Joshia sometimes gets overlooked for how big of a part he was on our team last year," Sherman said. "He was our leading rusher in addition to being [tied for] second on our team in receptions. He's in our top ten list as a school in receptions coming off of his sophomore year.
"We're so excited; he can do everything for us at the running back position. He can protect; he's weighing at about 190. He can run the ball out of the backfield, but also, we love using our running backs in the passing game. He can do that so well. I don't think CU missed anything in getting on his [recruitment] early. I expect him to have a great year, especially with us returning eight of our nine offensive lineman."
Davis is listed as a wide receiver on his Rivals.com recruit profile, but Sherman sees him as a running back. With the young McCaffery, many see him as an athlete, but he is set on being a quarterback recruit.
"I think Joshia is a running back at the next level, but we're trying to do things with him that we did with Christian [McCaffrey] - use his giftedness," Sherman said.
"Luke is a quarterback. He won't play other positions for us. He's working really hard to achieve his goal of being a high level college quarterback. He's had colleges offer him as a quarterback, but he's a different style of quarterback than Blake is. Frankly, Luke is learning to do everything under the center for us too. We won't allow a kid to not understand the footwork dynamics because at some point, if they want to play past college, they're going to have to learn how to take drops under center."
"We are excited to have two exceptional quarterbacks and they are competing every day, making each other better and ultimately making our team better. Who wouldn’t be happy having two unbelievable quarterbacks on their roster? We will see what happens when the games start rolling around, but hopefully, we will be tough to defend."