With season on hold, St. Charles North enlists help of ‘Story of the Season’ service to help recruiting

St. Charles North senior Josh Bridges had 14 carries, 104 yards and a touchdown in his true first season on varsity a season ago.

His twin brother, Ethan, had two carries for negative yardage and two tackles on defense.

With the fall season canceled and the possibility of a spring football season still uncertain, many senior and junior football players face a harsh reality. That is, marketing themselves to college programs based on limited varsity experience and game film that is over a year old.

In some cases, they have film with only a handful of snaps on special teams or elsewhere.

"[Colleges] have been using last year's film, really," North Stars senior defensive back Jordan Nubin said. "...They kind of just have to take a chance on us."

Reliance on football combine film and results – 40-yard dash, cone drills, broad jumps and more – are now one of players' most valuable selling points. The Bridges twins visited defending Division III national champion North Central College last week.

"I like to say I have speed as one of my major focus points for scouts," Josh Bridges said. "I put together videos of me training. I pinned them on my Twitter and sent them to the top schools that I want to be recruited by."

"...I know my junior film isn't that extensive," Josh Bridges continued. "But, it's what I got. [And I tell them] I honestly feel like I can do amazing things for your program."

Josh Bridges has six opportunities between NAIA and Division III schools. Ethan Bridges has NAIA interest from Culver Stockton.

In a pre-COVID-19 world, college recruiters and coaches could come visit recruiting targets during school. In-person visits to college campuses, gameday experiences and more would be a part of that process.

"The question was: How do we get from [colleges] coming to us to us getting to them?," North Stars coach Robert Pomazak said. "Text message is great. Twitter has been helpful, but I wanted to be able to get more than just an [info] sheet to these guys."

Pomazak enlisted the services of a company, StoryIt LLC. – StoryoftheSeason.com – to fill that need. Story of the Season is a high school and collegiate sports media/consulting platform.

"It started off...where we publish weekly interactive digital magazines covering a team week in, week out," founder Chris Herman said. "Where we integrate video highlights with an article, the interviews, the photos...everything that happened."

Herman, 25, previously played quarterback at Oberlin College in Ohio. Fifty percent of his business, Herman says, currently consists of Illinois-based high schools and colleges.

However, when football seasons got canceled and delayed, he quickly had to pivot to create two new services.

Story of the Season now also offers high school programs the ability to create in-depth recruiting profiles for their athletes. For colleges, it can build a virtual visit experience to bring campus and the football program to them.

Programs are charged a fee of $750 for the recruiting profiles.

The business is in its third year, and Herman has clients like the University of Chicago, Carthage College, Washington University in St. Louis and more.

"What's special about our platform: Our digital magazines...if you ask [Pomazak], he'll call it 'The Harry Potter of Football'," Herman said. "It's like [a book coming to life in] 'Harry Potter'."

Each of the 18 senior and junior North Stars recruits have their own customized resume. The North Stars program has paid for all its profiles.

It includes complete contact information, combine results, scouting report comments from Pomazak and updated highlight film for coaches. It can all be accessed from the convenience of a smart phone, desktop or tablet device.

"Everything that a college coach would need to know about a player, he can view and have access to...completely customized per team and we give them a platform to showcase their players," Herman said.

"I've had a lot of good feedback from it," Pomazak said.

As a junior in 2019, Nubin had 26 tackles and averaged nearly four a game. The brother of Minnesota sophomore and former North star Tyler Nubin, Jordan has added 30 pounds of muscle and improved many combine-related times over the course of a year.

Nubin has three roster spot opportunities at Dayton, Valparaiso and Butler. He also has three Division II offers from Winona State, Minnesota State and Minnesota-Mankato.

Nubin arguably will be a more dynamic and complete athlete than he was last year. He may just not get that chance to showcase it for potentially more opportunities during an actual football game.

“I think any coach that takes a chance on me is going to get a good player,” Nubin said. “I think anybody in the 2021 class, if they take a chance on them, they’re going to get a good player because we’ve been working all winter, all summer up to this point.”