Advertisement
football Edit

Jewell adding interest

It has been quite a year for Decorah native Josey Jewell. The 6-foot-2, 200-pound high school senior was named player of the year in Class 3A after leading his team to a 14-0 record and their first state championship since 1989. Now, Jewell is starting to pick up more college interest, including some from the Iowa Hawkeyes recently.

"The school showing the most interest right now is UNI and then it goes Iowa, Iowa Western, the South Dakota and North Dakota schools, and Iowa State a little bit too," said Jewell. "I already made an official visit to UNI and Iowa is going to be sometime in January."

Advertisement

For the Hawkeyes, assistant coach Reese Morgan has been staying in close contact with Jewell, who made it to Kinnick Stadium for a game this fall. While there is no scholarship offer on the table yet, the Iowa coaching staff has asked him to stay patient with them as they finish out their class.

"Coach Morgan said he is trying to talk Coach Ferentz into offering a scholarship, but as of right now there's not one yet," Jewell said. "He said maybe in the next couple of weeks there might be something."

Meanwhile, Jewell has a partial scholarship offer on the table from UNI, which he received on his official visit to Cedar Falls last week.

"UNI was nice," said Jewell. "I liked the whole campus area and the fact that it's kind of in between a big school and a small school. It was a good visit."

One question coaches may have with Jewell is what position he will play in college. In high school, he rarely came off the field, starting at linebacker and fullback and playing on most of the special teams units as well. As a senior, Jewell finished with 100 tackles, 13 TFL, and 6 sacks on defense to go along with 1,314 rushing yards and 21 touchdowns on offense.

"Iowa says linebacker or fullback," Jewell said. "UNI says linebacker or maybe a nickelback type of position. I'm thinking it will probably be linebacker, but I'll have to put on about 20 or 30 pounds."

Currently, Jewell plans to wait and take some more visits in January, including the one to Iowa, as he stays patient while college coaches continue to evaluate him.

"It's a long process," said Jewell. "I can't really change anything. I mean there's nothing else I can really do to convince them any more at this point. I've just got to get them my information and all of my film and then wait to see what they decide."

Advertisement