Would be great to make inroads to St Peter’s Prep in Jersey City. That’s school is typically good for one blue chip recruit each year. Pretty sure JerseyHusker’s son went there, or maybe still goes there.
Funny story about St Peter’s Prep… they built a brand new athletic practice facility a few years ago, funded in large part by donations from Minkah Fitzpatrick. Long ago, when they were planning the expansion, they discovered that they needed an additional 5 yards of land to complete the northwest corner of the end zone. However, that land was occupied by a very old, windowless dive bar called Golden Cicada Tavern, seen here:
Golden Cicada is a tiny, completely windowless bar owned by an old Chinese man where new customers are given baijiu shots made from sorghum and there aren’t any fixed prices (he just looks at you and decides what the drink will cost). In 2005 St Peter’s Prep got the city to bring an eminent domain case against the bar to claim the land. The owner fought the case for five years and won. Eventually, the school offered him a few million for the property and he told them to fvck off, ultimately leading to SPP building a beautiful turf field that is missing approximately 100 sq yards from its north end zone. I would imagine they don’t run many fade routes to that side during practice.
A couple years ago, the owner of the Golden Cicada decided to retire and sold the property to a development company, likely for something north of $10M. Good for that guy.