Rokfin Articles on recruits
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Not going to post the article bc it's behind a paywall but Tig beat the younger harer (state finalist) and pinned state champ Zach jacaruso to start the season before eventually getting hurt and missing a large part of the season. 28-4 and two of them being defaults.
Sounds awesome, now looking forward to seeing his upcoming season! 💪🏾
Sounds awesome, now looking forward to seeing his upcoming season! 💪🏾
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Conner Harer’s drive to get better is taking him further – in more ways than one.
Montgomery Area’s two-time state champ and the No. 4 wrestler in the country at 152 pounds has been on the radar for a long time as one of Pennsylvania’s most promising talents. He has more than made good on all that promise to this point, but he comes off a recent performance at True Power where he looked bigger, stronger, quicker and more skilled.
Harer was explosive from his feet and punished from the top to take an 11-2 major decision over No. 8 ranked Collin Gaj at the September showcase event (watch archives here). It was a good check-in point, a few weeks before the official start of the preseason, to get a gauge on where he stands in his bid to forge another dominant path to state title No. 3.
Harer’s gauge simply said, “Ready.” He had clearly made the most of his offseason training time and arrived at a better place mentally to compete at a high level.
“Before this match, I was just telling myself, ‘Just have fun. This is your last year of high school, just do what you do best,’” Harer said. “And I know that if I'm doing my best, win or lose, I'm going to have fun. And at the end of the day, it's just a wrestling match. So I think going out there really calm and just believing in my training, believing in my preparation and just doing what my coaches say, it helped me get to my offense and let it fly the whole way through.”
If the upward trend in Harer’s game seems to coincide with the commitment he made to Rutgers in April, there’s probably some truth to it. The level of seriousness in Harer’s approach, always a strong point for him anyway, has escalated with his future home set. Harer said he started online schooling this fall to build flexibility for a more demanding training routine.
The centerpiece of that routine is 3-4 drives per week from Montgomery to Piscataway, N.J., which totals 180 or so miles each way, to train and acclimate at Rutgers. The logic, Harer said, had two-fold benefits in the advancement of his wrestling and his ability to navigate campus life. And then there's also the fact he's learning to be more independent and make things happen on his own.
“I just want to take my game to the next level,” Harer said. “I put a lot of work in this summer, but I just want to change it up a little bit before the season starts. So, I talked with my parents, my guidance counselor, my athletic director, and I talked with the coaches. Rutgers has never really had a high school kid who's doing what I'm doing and making the sacrifice like I'm doing.
“It was a long process, knowing that it's going to be a commitment. I gotta go down, Sunday, Monday to Tuesday or Wednesday, three hours by myself. Just knowing that and watching the NCAA Tournament on YouTube in my free time and just watching elite wrestlers, just something clicked. If I want to be at that level, I'm gonna have to make a sacrifice, and I'm gonna have to make a little bit of a change.’”
As the son of coach Denny Harer and older brother to state runner-up Brandt, Conner has long been a student of the sport. But he has accepted that graduating into mastery of wrestling requires more than what he has done so far. And while wrestling offers few guarantees that the end results will automatically match the commitment level, it often does reward those who combine athletic gifts with the right amount of drive and training.
Conner Harer would be quick to admit that Brandt got more of the family’s athlete genes than he did, but he got more than enough to keep winning big at the college level. And with increases he’s seen in his strength and skill this offseason, Harer wrestles with more confidence than ever that he’s done everything in his power to make his goals happen.
And if they don’t, Harer remains committed to his process of improvement. It has taken him a long way over the course of his career, but especially in the past six months.
“When you have coaches who are constantly pushing you past limits that you didn't know you had, it just opens your eyes to how much more and how much farther you can go,” he said. “It just opened my eyes to just believing in everything I'm doing and that if I go as hard as I can in practice that at the end of the day, when I lose, I shouldn't have any regrets.”
Montgomery Area’s two-time state champ and the No. 4 wrestler in the country at 152 pounds has been on the radar for a long time as one of Pennsylvania’s most promising talents. He has more than made good on all that promise to this point, but he comes off a recent performance at True Power where he looked bigger, stronger, quicker and more skilled.
Harer was explosive from his feet and punished from the top to take an 11-2 major decision over No. 8 ranked Collin Gaj at the September showcase event (watch archives here). It was a good check-in point, a few weeks before the official start of the preseason, to get a gauge on where he stands in his bid to forge another dominant path to state title No. 3.
Harer’s gauge simply said, “Ready.” He had clearly made the most of his offseason training time and arrived at a better place mentally to compete at a high level.
“Before this match, I was just telling myself, ‘Just have fun. This is your last year of high school, just do what you do best,’” Harer said. “And I know that if I'm doing my best, win or lose, I'm going to have fun. And at the end of the day, it's just a wrestling match. So I think going out there really calm and just believing in my training, believing in my preparation and just doing what my coaches say, it helped me get to my offense and let it fly the whole way through.”
If the upward trend in Harer’s game seems to coincide with the commitment he made to Rutgers in April, there’s probably some truth to it. The level of seriousness in Harer’s approach, always a strong point for him anyway, has escalated with his future home set. Harer said he started online schooling this fall to build flexibility for a more demanding training routine.
The centerpiece of that routine is 3-4 drives per week from Montgomery to Piscataway, N.J., which totals 180 or so miles each way, to train and acclimate at Rutgers. The logic, Harer said, had two-fold benefits in the advancement of his wrestling and his ability to navigate campus life. And then there's also the fact he's learning to be more independent and make things happen on his own.
“I just want to take my game to the next level,” Harer said. “I put a lot of work in this summer, but I just want to change it up a little bit before the season starts. So, I talked with my parents, my guidance counselor, my athletic director, and I talked with the coaches. Rutgers has never really had a high school kid who's doing what I'm doing and making the sacrifice like I'm doing.
“It was a long process, knowing that it's going to be a commitment. I gotta go down, Sunday, Monday to Tuesday or Wednesday, three hours by myself. Just knowing that and watching the NCAA Tournament on YouTube in my free time and just watching elite wrestlers, just something clicked. If I want to be at that level, I'm gonna have to make a sacrifice, and I'm gonna have to make a little bit of a change.’”
As the son of coach Denny Harer and older brother to state runner-up Brandt, Conner has long been a student of the sport. But he has accepted that graduating into mastery of wrestling requires more than what he has done so far. And while wrestling offers few guarantees that the end results will automatically match the commitment level, it often does reward those who combine athletic gifts with the right amount of drive and training.
Conner Harer would be quick to admit that Brandt got more of the family’s athlete genes than he did, but he got more than enough to keep winning big at the college level. And with increases he’s seen in his strength and skill this offseason, Harer wrestles with more confidence than ever that he’s done everything in his power to make his goals happen.
And if they don’t, Harer remains committed to his process of improvement. It has taken him a long way over the course of his career, but especially in the past six months.
“When you have coaches who are constantly pushing you past limits that you didn't know you had, it just opens your eyes to how much more and how much farther you can go,” he said. “It just opened my eyes to just believing in everything I'm doing and that if I go as hard as I can in practice that at the end of the day, when I lose, I shouldn't have any regrets.”
In Nazareth junior Tahir Parkins, Rutgers is getting a promising talent who still has miles to go before he reaches his full potential. Parkins, who announced his commitment to the Scarlet Knights this week, took big steps in the right direction as a sophomore fourth-place finisher at the PIAA championships. He showed more polish to his game, a better competitive mindset, and a more consistent approach on the mat. Parkins also got better results when it counted.
Despite missing a large chunk of time in the middle of the season to injury, Parkins got his legs under him, won his second District 11 title, his first Northeast regional crown and hit the state podium for the first time. Parkins defeated an eventual state finalist in Brandt Harer the first weekend of the season, pinned a state champ in Zach Jacaruso the next week, then reached the Beast of the East quarterfinals before he injured his knee and defaulted out.
Parkins finished with a 28-4 record and two of his official losses came by default. The third came by a 3-2 decision to state finalist Andrew Binni of Canon-McMillan in the PIAA quarterfinals and the fourth by a 4-2 decision to Council Rock North’s Eren Sement in the bronze medal match. That was part of a career-best performance at states where Parkins showed he could still sharpen his game and reach higher levels.
That upward trajectory is a big recruiting win for Rutgers and coach Scott Goodale, and Parkins should still make big jumps over the next two seasons, as well. He has length on his side, good offensive pace and a strong top game to go along with natural athleticism and the spot he holds at one of Pennsylvania’s most respected wrestling programs at Nazareth.
Blue Eagles coach Dave Crowell has spoken highly of Parkins’ abilities from a young age, which made his arrival feel like a matter of when and not if. Last season was a nice step toward making the most of his abilities. Parkins could also be a fun kid to watch, in terms of how his weight projections might fluctuate over the next two years.
Parkins is an exciting Pennsylvania talent set to join the Scarlet Knight in the 2025 class, where he is listed by MatScouts as a future 141-pounder and the No. 57 wrestler in the class. MatScouts also has Parkins ranked No. 8 at 132 pounds.
Notably, Parkins will be a year behind another PA hammer in Montgomery’s Conner Harer, a two-time state champ who sure looked at True Power like one of the best pound-for-pound wrestlers in the country.
Not a bad move in PA in the next two classes by Goodale and his staff, highlighted once again by a commitment from a high-upside prospect in Parkins.
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