To hear
Dalton Risner tell it, life in
Wiggins is a lot like a country song.
"We go to school during the week and then on Friday night we play a little football," Risner said. "When that's over we might go cruise the country roads, hang out and chase girls. That's life in a small town for you."
Dalton Risner
Courtesy photo
A town of around 900 residents in the northeast plains of Colorado, Wiggins flies under the radar the vast majority of the time. But thanks to the emergence of Risner, the town has been a hot-bed for Division I recruiters recently.
A 6-foot-5, 300-pound senior, Risner is the fifth-ranked offensive center in the nation and the fourth-ranked recruit from the state, according to 247Sports.com. And although he committed to Kansas State on March 8, that hasn't stopped the deluge of interest from BCS programs across the nation, hoping he'll change his mind.
That isn't likely to happen, though, as Risner fell in love with the Wildcats and Bill Snyder's coaching staff the second he stepped onto campus in Manhattan.
"The coaches (are the reason I chose K-State)," Risner said. "They really laid out the red carpet for me and made me feel awesome. So many coaches I talked to didn't feel real, they almost seemed like used car salesmen. But not there. They cared about who I was and what I was about."
The K-State community also embraced Risner, as he added more than 100 new Twitter followers when he got to town and was recognized by several fans during the Wildcats spring game while he was there on a recruiting trip.
"A dad and his son recognized him at the spring game and took pictures with him and talked to him for a long time," said Mitch Risner, Dalton's father and coach at Wiggins. "It just felt like home."
And Dalton is returning the love. Considered as one of the centerpieces of the Wildcats' recruiting class, Risner is busy on the phone and social media trying to get other recruits to join him in Manhattan.
"I'm doing everything I can to get all the top guys to go there as well, selling them on how great it is," Risner said.
The middle child of five boys, Risner also had to do a selling job of himself to get coaches to notice the big kid from the little Class 1A school with an enrollment of 139 students. While he attended more than a dozen summer camps before his junior year, he didn't turn a lot of heads. He realized he was going to have to be proactive if his dreams of playing DI football were going to come true.
"I would send out literally 60 emails a week, and I would personalize every one of them," said Risner. "And I would make phone calls, two or three times a week. When I would finally get a hold of someone, I would spend 30 to 45 minutes talking to the coaches."
His game film eventually started to open eyes, and he received an offer from Northern Colorado where his older brother, Taylor, is a defensive back. Then Colorado State and Wyoming jumped on the bandwagon.
"I thought, okay, I'm not going to be able to go to a BCS school, so I'm going to have to choose one of these three," Risner said. "But then it kind of blew up from there, and I started getting interest from Cal-Berkley and Mizzou and Tulsa and Arizona State."
Impressed by not only his game film but also his 4.0 grade-point average and score of 27 on the ACT, Stanford recruiters actually made a couple of trips out to Wiggins to woo Risner. In all he's received more than a dozen offers from DI schools.
And he's well aware that the competition level will jump considerably from the 1A football opponents he's been facing at Wiggins. During the summer he and his father traveled 100 miles one way every Saturday, getting up as early as 4 a.m., to work out at Matt McChesney's SixZero60 strength and training center.
McChesney, a former Denver Broncos lineman, works with the top prep linemen in the state, and Risner worked with other local standouts such as Sam Jones of ThunderRidge, Chris Fox of the University of Michigan and Colorado State's Blake Nowland.
"I didn't want to be that guy that comes from a small school to a DI school and gets pounded," Risner said. "I know I can't get by on size and strength alone. Working with those guys showed me how much I can improve my footwork and my technique."
He's athletic enough that Risner may see some time at tight end or in the offensive backfield on short-yardage situations this season for the seventh-ranked Tigers. And he'll play middle linebacker on defense, according to Mitch Risner.
Just this past week in a scrimmage against Lyons, Risner intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown while playing linebacker.
"That was fun," Risner said. "Every lineman wants to do that."
The hard work hasn't stopped now that the season has begun, either. Three times a week he heads to a 6 a.m. workout at a local cross-fit gym, then goes to school before heading to another workout with his teammates. And that's all before the actual daily football practice.
But it will all be worth it if he can realize his ultimate goal – to play football on Sundays.
"That's always been the dream," Risner said. "Every coach I talked to (during recruiting), I'd ask them ‘Can you get me to where I want to be?' Playing DI hopefully isn't the end of it."
