IOWA CITY — As LeVar Woods recruits more than 1,200 miles away from Iowa City in the Phoenix area, the Iowa special teams coordinator has found “a lot of connections” to home.

“Every school I’ve ever gone into, I’ve run into someone I either know from Iowa or someone that there’s a connection to Iowa,” Woods said.

Those connections will be important as Woods tries to expand the Hawkeyes’ football recruiting territory into the Grand Canyon State.

“We’re really just kind of getting started out there,” Woods said recently on The Gazette’s Hawk Off the Press podcast.

Arizona historically has not been a strong recruiting area for the Hawkeyes.

Since 2017, the Hawkeyes have brought in players from 28 different states, plus Australia. Nearby California, Nevada and Colorado are among the 28 states, but not Arizona.

The last time the Hawkeyes had an Arizonan on the roster was 2012-13, in backup quarterback Cody Sokol.

Sokol, a junior college transfer from Scottsdale (Ariz.) Community College, did not attempt a pass in his two years with the Hawkeyes. He then finished his career with Louisiana Tech.

But Iowa’s staff has more incentive to recruit Arizona now than before.

“The football there has improved dramatically,” Woods said.

A look back at 20 years of 247Sports recruiting ratings — its “composite” ratings from 2005-2010 and 247Sports-specific ratings since then — shows a dramatic rise in football talent.

In the 2024 recruiting class, 62 prospects from Arizona had three, four or five-star ratings. In 2005, that number was 15.

Jason Jewell, the head football coach at Brophy College Prep in Phoenix, attributes much of the improvement to the population growth in the region.

From 2002 to 2022, the population of the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metropolitan statistical area grew by 43 percent, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“You’re going to get an influx of talent just based off the population growth,” Jewell said. “You get more coaches, and quality coaches, moving in.”

Woods also has noticed the pedigree of some of the football players coming out of Arizona.

“There’s a lot of guys that retire there after playing pro football, and they’ve got kids,” Woods said. “Typically, the body, the frame, all that kind of stuff turns into someone that you want to recruit.”

Class of 2024 defensive back Kennedy Urlacher, for example, is the son of longtime Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher. The younger Urlacher picked up an offer from the Hawkeyes, but he eventually chose Notre Dame instead.

The Hawkeyes tried to lure Kyler Kasper — the son of former Iowa standout Kevin Kasper and a four-star wide receiver recruit — from Gilbert, Ariz., to Iowa City. Kasper visited Iowa, but he eventually chose Oregon instead.

Iowa finally picked up an Arizona commitment earlier this summer with defensive lineman Devan Kennedy. He is the son of former NFL defensive lineman Jimmy Kennedy.

Kennedy, who plays for Jewell at Brophy College Prep, “thought he was a basketball player” before the 2022 season and “didn’t know how to put on shoulder pads.”

Kennedy “started showing progress” during the season and had a pick-6 in a playoff game, Jewell said, but his junior-year film still was “not Big Ten-worthy.”

As Kennedy bulked up — from 190 pounds before the 2022 season to 205 by the end of the season, 225 about a month later and now 245 pounds — his recruiting interest accelerated.

“These college coaches all started coming out to spring practice,” Jewell said. “He got quite a bit of interest. … Everyone wanted (Kennedy) to go to camp.”

After going to camps, he picked up offers from Penn State, Illinois and others.

Woods’ connections to the Phoenix area — he played for the Arizona Cardinals from 2001-04 and still had a house there until the mid-2010s — were helpful as Iowa looked to distinguish itself amid Kennedy’s increasingly-crowded recruitment.

Kyle Vanden Bosch and Woods were high school teammates at West Lyon High School more than 30 years ago. Now, Vanden Bosch coaches special teams at Brophy College Prep.

“To have that trust and know that Devan is going to be taken care of and his best interests is going to be looked out for — Kyle and LeVar’s relationship was a big deal,” Jewell said.

As Woods tries to use his connections to recruit more players from Arizona, some logistical factors can make 1,200-plus miles as the crow flies between Phoenix and Iowa City seem not so distant.

Improved flight connectivity from The Eastern Iowa Airport “helps tremendously,” Woods said.

Allegiant Air has offered a nonstop to Phoenix’s smaller Mesa Gateway Airport since 2007 with varying frequency. Then American Airlines added a nonstop flight to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in 2019.

What started as seasonal American service now is a year-round daily flight. Therefore, a recruit could theoretically spend a full day in Iowa City, jump on the 6:30 p.m. American flight out of CID and be back in Phoenix by 7:50 p.m. local time on any given day.

“You’ve got to fly over a few schools, a few states, to get here,” Woods said. “But people get on campus, they tend to fall in love with this place.”

The upcoming addition of USC and UCLA to the conference in 2024 means Iowa will be playing some road games closer to Arizona although that has not appeared to be a factor quite yet.

“Not many people have spoken about that, but I think that will be something that comes up in recruiting over the next year or two,” Woods said.

Arizona has some recruiting challenges, too, mainly stemming from the competition with other schools.

“You see more and more schools coming in here and recruiting, almost to the point where Arizona is kind of over-recruited,” Jewell said. “The top kids are getting recruited by everybody.”

“Mega-showcases” allow college coaches to see several teams at one place. Eastern Iowa also is far from the only place with easy access to Phoenix — a hub city for American Airlines and an operating base for other airlines.

Jewell’s high school, which is about a 10-minute drive from Sky Harbor, gets “about 80 to 100 schools” per spring evaluation period. Kennedy is one of 11 players on the Brophy roster with Division I offers.

“There’s no such thing as a sleeper really in the Phoenix metro area,” Jewell said.

Thankfully for Woods and the Hawkeyes, there always seems to be the Iowa connection.

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