Head coach Hunter Hughes has brought in his first signing class at West Texas A&M. This year’s class boasts 31 signees all but two are from Texas, providing any further late signees come.

Having been hired about two months ago, Hughes worded that he and his staff were working “behind the 8 ball”. Nonetheless, Hughes and his staff gladly accepted the challenge and were pleased with what they have and spoke about how they got the results.

“You just go to work,” Hughes said. “You find guys, and get people out there to talk to them. The guys we have on staff are not afraid to work. We’ve had some long nights, some early mornings. We wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t our goal to find the right guys who are going to come in for us and make us successful.”

From day one, Hughes discussed how he would look for athletes who not only performed well on the field, but off the field as well. The incoming class averages at a 3.19 GPA. With a stat like that, Hughes has made it clear on how import class room success is to the program as well.

“As I’ve said if you’re good off the field it means you’re going to be good on the field,” Hughes said. “I think you got to find character guys that know school is important, because they are here to graduate. I think that our players we have now are understanding that. With the academic game plan we have set for them we’ve stressed that to the guys coming in. There are going to be some at risk players coming in but we understand that but we think we have a program for those guys to be successful when they come in here.”

All but two signees are from here in Texas, which perhaps is expected. A great thing to see is also the number of incoming players who are from local areas in the panhandle. Hughes spoke about how big of a goal this was to him.

“My goal is to keep all of the local guys here,” Hughes said. “I know that’s not always going to happen because sometimes people want to get away from home. We wanted to keep guys close, thought it was important to keep them close and I want to keep doing that. We have to make sure we have a strong impression and strong recruiting push. We’re going to try to lock this place down.”

Hughes spoke very highly of many recruits for many reasons. Does that mean we may see some of them making an immediate impact? Maybe.

“It depends on if they are physically and mentally ready to play,” Hughes said. “If they’re one of the best 11 or 22 guys we have on offense or defense, then they’ll play. I’m not going to put a guy out there who isn’t ready to play because I don’t want them to be disappointed in the game. When I say ready I don’t just mean on the field, they have to be able to handle the workload in the class room and the field in order to be successful in all phases of life.

Most of the class is expected to start working out on campus this summer. Spring football is scheduled to begin in late March. A full list of the incoming recruits can be seen below.

WT Football 2017 Signees