BOWLING GREEN — Like everyone else, Bowling Green put the finishing touches on its 2019 recruiting class on Wednesday.
The Falcons, though, were not finished there.
BG also will be bringing a small army of preferred walk-ons into their program.
Bowling Green expects more than 20 walk-ons to join during this class, the result of a concerted effort by the new coaching staff to thicken the roster amid scholarship constraints. The coaching staff honored scholarship promises from the previous staff, and hopes to find a handful of contributors from a large class of preferred walk-ons.
“The walk-on program, I think, is essential,” Falcons coach Scot Loeffler said. “We need numbers and we need guys who want to be here and are interested in helping Bowling Green win. It’s an emphasis that we’ve made, and a huge emphasis in this class.”
VIDEO: BGSU finishes first recruiting class under Scot Loeffler
The Falcons added two more scholarship players in Cleveland Heights defensive lineman Anthony Johnson and Georgia tight end Christian Sims, and also formally announced the graduate transfer of tight end Austin Dorris from Indiana.
Joining the class is a large group of non-scholarship players, including a few local high schoolers who chose a chance to play at Bowling Green over scholarship offers at lower levels of college football.
Whitmer defensive back Pa’Sean Wimberly, Central Catholic linebacker Justin Schiets, and Anthony Wayne quarterback Max Denman are among the group that BG targeted as walk-ons.
Wimberly had several Division II offers, while Toledo also offered a preferred walk-on spot, but he said the staff at Bowling Green made him feel at home.
“UT, I felt they just wanted me as a number. Coach Loeffler and his staff, they loved me,” Wimberly said. “They talked to me every day and really wished they could have given me a full scholarship, but they couldn’t.”
Wimberly, a third-team all-Ohio selection in Division I, said “it came down to the wire” to make a choice between a scholarship at Saginaw Valley State and betting on himself at BGSU.
“I talked to family about it, and they know for a fact that I’m going to earn my scholarship,” Wimberly said. “They know how I play, how I work.”
Schiets was second-team all-Ohio players who will become a legacy at Bowling Green. His father, Dennis, played for the Falcons in the mid-1980s and was part of the program’s 1985 MAC championship team.
Like Wimberly, Justin Schiets had the opportunity to play at lower levels on scholarship and other preferred walk-on chances, but opted for the chance at Division I football at a school that he knows intimately.
“Just me being around BG for the longest time, it felt like home,” Schiets said. “Coach Loeffler coming in and being a great, genuine guy really sold me because I was already in love with the school.
“When the opportunity arose, it was just too perfect not to jump on it.”
Extending the invitation to walk-ons does not influence the Falcons’ scholarship numbers for this season, though Loeffler said Bowling Green hopes to find a few “diamonds in the rough” with calculated offers.
If all goes correctly in the near future, Bowling Green hopes to find a handful of walk-ons who go the route of current Falcon David Konowalski, who went from walk-on to starter during his time at Bowling Green.
“It’s really vital to practice, and you’re going to find five or six of these guys who are going to end up contributing and helping us win,” Loeffler said. “That will always be an emphasis year-in and year-out here.”
First Published February 6, 2019, 3:08 p.m.