My JUCO story

Okay, so today I'm talking about my JUCO story and if you don't know what JUCO is, JUCO is junior college. It's a two year school where you kind of bridge that gap between high school and four year and get a second chance at recruiting. And also if you don't know who I am, I'm Trent Lohre, I'm a former college quarterback, I played at JUCO level, which I'm going to talk about today as well as I went to an NA school afterwards. And so today I just want to share my story. So that way anybody going through the process can of has understanding whether you're just kind of learning more about me or you know, just want to hear what it was like in my whole entire thing. So first off, I'm starting off in high school. I played both sports, football and baseball up until my senior year where I decided to just do football my senior year. And throughout that time I was primarily baseball focused. And then right around my junior year I decided to put more time into football. I wasn't even gonna be a starter in my junior year. There was a guy in my class that pretty much been on the track to be the starter for the a three year starter from sophomore year to senior year. I ended up kind of pushing him. Still didn't start until about I got my first start later in that year and then he ended up transferring out giving me the ability to be a starter in my senior year. And so I got a new coaching staff because we've got, we got like a total of four wins the past two years. And so I took over as a starter going into that senior year. Now had a really good first four games of my senior year. Had like 10 touchdowns, I think probably 60% plus completion percentage and one interception and we ended up going 4 0. Unfortunately that fifth game they felt like I wasn't playing well enough and ended up getting benched. And during that rest of the season I was flip flopping back and forth between the other guy. Still was able to get some film, ultimately still was able to get recruited not as much as I liked. I still got about over 10 offers out of high school though. All of them were from smaller schools, D2s, NAS, D3s, stuff like that. And so with that being said, I wasn't really into the idea of junior college. I talked to a little bit with my quarterback coach and a little bit elsewhere, but overall I had this stigma that probably you do too and most people do, rightfully so with last chance you of that junior college is for kids with bad grades, kids with bad characters, issues, everything like that, just a mess. And some of it is somewhat true, don't get me wrong. But ultimately what I did was I got a DM from shout out to coach Aiden. I got a DM from him and didn't respond to him for about a month. So shout out to him for being patient with me. And we set up a phone call, sounded like a decent place to be and so ended up going on a visit there. So I went on a visit there I think in December and just fell in love with the place immediately. I mean Santa Barbara City College, if you don't know about Santa Barbara, California, look it up. Look up the City College. It's right next to the beach, just a beautiful campus. The head coach, Coach Meropoulos coached at the Division 1 level at multiple spots I think anywhere from shoot, Texas A and M, Boise State, a couple other places too that I can't even name off the top of my head and just came off like a really honest and upfront guy. And that's really what I was looking for, is just somewhere that could grow and develop as a player which he gave a lot of reins to us as quarterbacks which was just amazing. And I still haven't seen even a four year program give us the level of freedom as players like he did. And that just takes a lot of trust. And so that was a big part of it as well as just the, it just seemed like they were the right kind of fit for me at the time. On top of that I got to stay a little closer to home, great place to be, all that stuff combined and so I loved there. But then I was still taking a visit to another four year NAA school out in the Midwest and so I ended up going there in January, took the visit out there again, nothing wrong against the place. It was a great school, a great program, all the guys seemed to like it there. To me it just at that time I was very much on the side of things of I wanted to be somewhere that football seemed like number one. And to me they didn't seem like football was number one. And again, probably if I visited there after my junior college experience where I really went after it for two years, maybe my mindset would be a little bit different. I would think about a little bit different. But being an ambitious freshman, I just didn't see it as a great fit for me. So on top of that, offense probably didn't fit me either and so decided to go the Junior college route. After that visit I got back, I let a couple weeks pass the class, kind of sort things out, make sure I wasn't going to get anything else, and ended up doing another Visit with a coach 101. Ended up committing to go there. Not like I'm signing or anything, but I just told them that hey, I'm going there. So chose that in February. Now from here, what happened was Covid happened in April, I believe, or March. School shut down everything like that. So we were all inside. We weren't really too sure about a season up until about, I believe, July. They told us that, hey, we're not gonna have a season this year. And so I still went there that first year and went down the campus. We were able to practice, though we weren't able to pad up until the spring and we were had to wear masks the entire time. It was not fun. And though I did still get the chance to grow and develop, I learned a ton. And basically it was an entire preseason to just prep for the freshman year. And so anyway we get done with that the spring, we start prepping actually for a real season. Things are getting real and it's my freshman year and unfortunately I just didn't win a starting job. It was close between me and another guy and just didn't get it done. And so I ended up still pushing. I was able to get some time, ended up starting one game, had some pretty decent film that I was able to use. And still after that freshman year, was able to get recruited to a couple different spots, got a couple of Division 2 opportunities to take and offers, but decided to stay at the JUCO because I still felt like, ah, you know what, I have an opportunity to still take this another year. I'm not really going to get like the places I was talking to, they weren't really what I was looking for still and just felt better to defer somewhere that I liked being at. And so I just had one more semester to go to really push for and as far as the season. And so I go to my sophomore year, I ended up getting Covid during fall camp. So unfortunately I lose the quarterback battle again because it. I mean another quarterback is stud. He was a good friend of mine, Alex, but I also got Covid during that time and so it just. He was already ahead of me because he was starting the season before and unfortunately I got Covid. But then we played our first game, got a little bit of playing time, did well and he unfortunately also got Covid. So the starting spot went to Me for the next four games, played well during that time and ended up getting again some more film. He ended up taking the starting role back over and I was still able to play some games, get some more film and all that stuff. But we ended up finishing a great season. We finished 10 1. Our only loss was that first original game. Had the best season in our school's history. Everything like that. And ultimately after that time have the good film. Was getting recruited everywhere from about FCS down to nia. And I ended up committing to an NA school, Morningside where I committed probably late December, before. I believe it was before New Year's. I'm trying to remember off the top of my head but. And so I committed there, ended up going there that next semester. Things happened real quickly. But from that and again you can see there's a lot of ups and downs, a lot of starting, not starting, benched, losing jobs. But I think the biggest takeaways to me and anyone that's. That's listening to this and whether in high school or you're in JUCO or your parent listening to this is I think the biggest thing I can take away is it's not about like I was thinking about this actually earlier today was I've played with and played against a lot of quarterbacks. My high school was a very competitive high school, football wise. Even though we didn't have necessarily play super well. It was just a competitive conference. And when I look back at I had at a time very a bunch of quarterbacks ahead of me. I don't think anyone ever thought I'd be a good or decent quarterback. But I just stuck with it so long that it almost made it impossible to fail. And so whether you're a senior right now or you're a freshman or wherever you're at in your journey, if you're really wanting to do this thing, just commit to being in it as long as you possibly can because that will. That's gonna get you in a very good position. Like most of the time people don't make it to where they set out to go because they just give up. Whether they just don't give in the full effort or whatever it is. So don't give up on that. The second thing is JUCO is a second chance. Like I was obviously in a very fortunate position to be at Santa Barbara City College. It's a great place, we had a great coaching staff. It's just a great city overall. But every JUCO opportunity is a second chance to where you don't have to go there just because you have bad grades or bad character, you can go there just to get that second chance to grow and develop. And I think that's something that's very underutilized and I hope that this stigma can start to be lifted. There were, don't get me wrong, there were bad kids on the team, but the coaches find ways to get them off or if they're a good player then hey, maybe they don't. But there's still, there's still ways to avoid those distractions and you don't have to buy into that kind of stuff. That was a big thing for me was Sandra bar was a big party scene and I tried to avoid that as much as possible. I was surrounded myself with guys that stayed in and we'd play like Settlers of Catan and board games at nights and play video games together and whatever and just hung out and you've got to figure out what's right for you and surround yourself with those right guys because those guys are on your team at any level and you just got to find those guys so that way you can help yourself get to those goals. And that apartment that was together, not too sure about. I know one of them's going on but we all ended up with offers and two of them are Division 2. I went to NA and one of the other guys is going to go naa and so and shoot even past roommates. Another one of them went D2 as well. And so you just see that when you're around the same minded people that you're able to accomplish your goals much easier. So those are probably the two biggest takeaways. Again, don't. I think the biggest recommendation I can have is if you're going through the recruiting process, don't have the offers you want, check out a juco, just take a look at it. Visit. You don't have to commit. You don't have to commit. But if you take a look at it when you do the visit, I think you'll come away with a much better opinion of like this is definitely something that can help me. And much rather than I can totally understand the position of wanting to commit to a four year and lock yourself in so that way you can grow and develop in that program and be the guy. But I had that same mindset too and I think that going JUCO taught me so much more because you learn to appreciate a lot more for sure. And so just some food for thought there and hopefully this gave you some insight on that stuff. And regardless of whether you're a juko or not, it helped you out. So if you like this, be sure to like and subscribe. I'll see you soon. Peace.