The stalwart
Bocopreps.com
The dance between college coaches and gifted high school prospects is a delicate exercise in the elaborate and intimate. Where production value is important in the social media age for 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds, real connection and fit are hoped by traditionalists to be even more so.
In Boulder, Fairview quarterback Bekkem Kritza’s impressive freshman season quickly placed him on the ‘can’t miss list’ for college football’s powerhouses.
Alabama, LSU, Georgia, Texas A&M and USC have been among those that have taken interest. Colorado schools CU and CSU have plugged away too, getting early offers in to try and convince the 6-foot-4 quarterback to stay in state.
“It’s been a great experience,” Kritza said by phone this week. “All the colleges, all the coaches, real great dudes. With the whole recruiting thing, I’m sure to have fun with it. I’m still young and have a lot of time to decide. I just want to go everywhere I can.”
Kritza, who threw for 3,192 yards and 22 touchdowns in 10 games as a freshman for the Knights, has already made recruiting stops in college football’s heartland cities of Tuscaloosa, Baton Rouge and College Station.
Upcoming, he plans to visit each coast with stops in Florida — at “The Swamp”, Tallahassee and Miami — and “Niketown” in Oregon. He currently has offers from CU, CSU, Kansas and Texas A&M.
In the fall, Kritza will look to lead Fairview back to the postseason after the program had to forfeit its first-round game to Thunderridge in 2021 due to COVID-19 exposure.
He has help.
A first teamer by Bocopreps and a 5A all-state honorable mention as a junior, the Division-i prospect should be
LONGWY, France — Tadej Pogacar is back in the yellow jersey at the Tour de France. And it’s earlier than perhaps even he expected.
On the way to his wins in the 2020 and 2021 Tours, Pogacar took the yellow jersey in the mountains, but on Thursday all he needed was the modest Côte des Religieuses hill in the border town of Longwy.
Asked about the prospect of being back in yellow, which wasn’t confirmed when he was speaking, Pogacar said in televised comments that for now he was focused on the stage win and “anything else is just a bonus.”
After an imposing sixth stage of nearly 220 kilometers (137 miles) through Belgium and northern France — the longest of this year’s Tour — Pogacar pulled away in the sprint finish on the crest of the Côte des Religieuses to take his first stage victory this year ahead of David Gaudu and Michael Matthews on Thursday.
Pogacar now leads the Tour by four seconds ahead of American rider Neilson Powless, thanks to the bonus seconds based on stage placings.
“Every time I win it’s even better,” Pogacar said. “We rode the last two climbs really hard, it was above our thresholds. It was super hard for the final climb and hectic and everything. I guess I had good legs to push in the end.”
Wout Van Aert was the leader heading into the stage and was the focus of attention with a breakaway,