Ryan Day and his team got off to a spectacular start with the 2022 recruitment course. It is a class that currently ranks second in the country in the 247Sports Composite team recruitment ranking.
The class includes three of the country’s elite linebacker players in Gabe Powers, CJHicks and Dasan McCullough. These three will play together in the 2023 Under Armor All-American Game, as the three have been invited and have pledged to participate in the game.
Powers is working hard to prepare for a great senior season in Marysville as well as a great career in Ohio. He works with a speed coach in Butch Reynolds, who was an athletics star in Ohio and the Olympics. Powers is also working hard in the weight room. On Thursday, he did a 600 pound deadlift and crouched 515 pounds. Check out the video of Powers making these elevators.
Powers is working to increase his weight up to 235 pounds before the start of his senior football season and his speed in the 40-yard run under 4.5 seconds. He played his junior season with 220 pounds on his 6-foot-4 frame.
Powers and his Marysville teammates ended the 2020 season with a 6-2 record, including a 48-41 second-round playoff loss to an undefeated Clayton North team. It was a game in which Powers made 10 tackles, including two for defeat. He forced a disaster and recovered one. On the other side of the ball Powers ran for 100 yards and a touchdown in just ten charged. He took four 45-yard passes and made a 40-yard touchdown pass. Powers also returned five kickoffs for 110 yards, as he played almost every game in the game, as he accounted for approximately 300 total yards that night.
Powers played in the middle linebacker before his second season, when he moved to the external linebacker and made 90 tackles. The Buckeyes recruited him as an outside linebacker.
Powers had nearly two dozen scholarship offers, including Penn State, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Nebraska, Michigan, Florida State, Tennessee, Colorado, Boston College and Pitt before choosing Buckeyes.
Powers is a potential 4-star customer at 247Sports Composite. He is 33rd in the country’s general ranking in 2022, the 2nd external linebacker and the No. 1 overall in the state of Ohio.
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Buckeyes’ large recruiting class for 2022 includes commitments from the country’s No. 1 overview in a 5-star quarterback Quinn Ewers Texas, 5 star cornerback Jaheim Singletary of Florida, another 5 star in wide receiver Caleb Burton of Texas, prospect No. 1 in Ohio in Powers, prospect No. 1 in Kansas in linebacker McCullough, prospect No. 2 in Ohio in linebacker Hicks, prospect No. 4 in Buckeyes in forward Tegra Tshabola, potential customer # 5 in Ohio, in a cornerback Jyaire Brown, and two main narrow targets in Bennett Christian of Georgia and Benji Gosnell from North Carolina. It is a class of ten initial appointments, with nine of the ten being 5 or 4 stars.