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It isn't uncommon for a high school athlete to perform well late in their careers and garner increased recruiting attention from other schools, but for Waukesha West's Joe Schobert, "late" got a whole new meaning.

Schobert gave a verbal commitment to join the North Dakota football team as a preferred walk-on at outside linebacker back in February. However, after an outstanding week leading up to, and performance at the WFCA All-Star Game in Oshkosh in early July, he began hearing from several schools who realized they may have missed out on a quality football player.

I said all season that Schobert may be the most underrecruited player in the state. Despite rushing for nearly 3900 yards and 51 touchdowns as a running back, being a two-time All-State selection, earning All-Conference honors on defense, and posting impressive measurables, he did not receive any Division I scholarship offers.

That changed after his performance at All-Star Week though. Since he did not sign any binding Letter of Intent as a preferred walk-on, other schools remained free to contact, recruit, and offer. Both North Dakota State and Northern Illinois offered some form of scholarship money, and the University of Wisconsin extended a preferred walk-on invitation.

Schobert had built a strong relationship with the North Dakota staff over the last several months and felt a great deal of loyalty to the program. He informed the coaching staffs at North Dakota State and Northern Illinois that he appreciated the offers, but was not considering them. It was down to preferred walk-on invitations at North Dakota and Wisconsin.

Last night, he reaffirmed his commitment to North Dakota and will head to Grand Forks next week to get settled in for practices.

"I just felt like the North Dakota coaches like me and I liked the campus," Schobert told WisSports.net. "And I'm excited to play outside linebacker."

sioux24/7 wrote:Turns out he is going to Wisconsin. This is from Joe on siouxsports.com "Hey everyone,
this is Joe Schobert, Unfortunately for everyone in Grand Forks I received a call from Coach Bielema today and he assured me that I would be able to get in to Madison for the Fall semester and that was what I was waiting to hear all week long last week. But on Friday they couldn't tell me so I thought i would be heading to UND. Im sorry that this has turned out this way, I loved the coaches and people I met that worked for the University but this is an opportunity to live out my Dream and i am going to try and take it. I wish you all the best of luck in the future and the UND football team certainly looks like it will make noise in the BSC very soon.
Thanks,
Joe Schobert "

Darell1976 wrote:

sioux24/7 wrote:Turns out he is going to Wisconsin. This is from Joe on siouxsports.com "Hey everyone,
this is Joe Schobert, Unfortunately for everyone in Grand Forks I received a call from Coach Bielema today and he assured me that I would be able to get in to Madison for the Fall semester and that was what I was waiting to hear all week long last week. But on Friday they couldn't tell me so I thought i would be heading to UND. Im sorry that this has turned out this way, I loved the coaches and people I met that worked for the University but this is an opportunity to live out my Dream and i am going to try and take it. I wish you all the best of luck in the future and the UND football team certainly looks like it will make noise in the BSC very soon.
Thanks,
Joe Schobert "

UND losing a walk-on to his homestate school which is a BSC powerhouse. Very understandable and I wish him the best of luck.

bison07 wrote:

Darell1976 wrote:
UND losing a walk-on to his homestate school which is a BSC powerhouse. Very understandable and I wish him the best of luck.

Hmmm.....this is quite a tone change

AZGrizFan wrote:

bison07 wrote:
Hmmm.....this is quite a tone change

A tone change from what?

bison07 wrote:

AZGrizFan wrote:
A tone change from what?

From the spewing his crap that he turned down NDSU all over the internet

sioux24/7 wrote:

bison07 wrote:
From the spewing his crap that he turned down NDSU all over the internet

Well he did turn down NDSU so I don't see where you're going.

bison07 wrote:

AZGrizFan wrote:
A tone change from what?

From the spewing his crap that he turned down NDSU all over the internet

bison07 wrote:

sioux24/7 wrote:
Well he did turn down NDSU so I don't see where you're going.

What school did he end up at? Sounds like he also turned down your guys.........just saying four barrel Darrel made way more out of it than was worth

mgbison wrote:If Schobert would've taken the NDSU or NIU offer, it would've looked terrible for UND. We offered him late in the summer, so who cares. At least we had scholarshiop money available to offer a kid last minute.

If I were a UND fan, I'd be wondering why did we not offer the kid some money. Would he have stayed in Grand Forks?

I'm confident we will win the majority of recruiting battles vs UND. UND fans should enjoy this moment because it's probably gonna be a long season in Grand Forks this year.

mgbison wrote:I'm more concerned about UNI and SDSU beating us out for recruits than UND at this point. As long as Mussman (sp?) is at UND, I like the direction UND's program is going. I would put UND ahead of USD though (even with Glenn). USD would be a tough sell.

Darell1976 wrote:

mgbison wrote:I'm more concerned about UNI and SDSU beating us out for recruits than UND at this point. As long as Mussman (sp?) is at UND, I like the direction UND's program is going. I would put UND ahead of USD though (even with Glenn). USD would be a tough sell.

I think USD is going to have a lot tougher time in the MVFC than UND in the Big Sky.