Sports

Wheeler's Staley Gets Recruiting Attention

The Wildcats' two-sport star has scholarship offers from Georgia in basketball and Vanderbilt in football, as well as other colleges.

Elijah Staley is drawing notice from more than a dozen college athletics programs in two sports, and not just in the Southeast.

The basketball and football standout, who transferred last summer from Harrison, will be a junior when the new school year starts in August, but already he's getting college scholarship offers. 

He said this week he's been offered a scholarship to play football at Vanderbit, and last weekend he visited University of Georgia and met with its basketball staff, which offered him a scholarship. 

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Staley, a 6-foot-7 football quarterback and basketball small forward, has basketball offers from Georgetown, Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech, among other schools. 

He's rated among the Top 60 basketball players in the Class of 2014 by ESPN.com and rated highly at a major football camp in March.

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Vanderbilt is the only school to offer him a football scholarship, but he's also getting attention from SEC schools, including Georgia, Alabama, Auburn and Florida, as well as Florida State, Wisconsin and USC. He was a guest at Florida's spring game in April.

He said he wants to play both sports in college but will not make a decision until he's a senior in high school. 

As a sophomore, Staley helped the Wildcats to a 4-6 season in football, the best for Wheeler in several years, as well as a first-round trip to the Class AAAAA state basketball tournament. 


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