Diamond In The Rough- Dalton Hoover

I travel all over the state of Louisiana to watch football and every so often I come across Blue Chip prospects that should be headliners but are not. One such person is Dalton Hoover. He is a big fish in a very little pond. In fact he is so big that he will be a big fish even in DI college. Hoover is 6′-7″ weighing in 320 lbs. He is the Left Tackle that every college coach hopes to find while on the recruiting trail. I spoke to his mom, Cynthia Hoover (who just happens to be an educator), and she said that Dalton is very respectful, hard worker, and he is the type of kid that will give you the shirt off his back.” “I always taught my boys to watch what you do because you have to protect your name.”

This past season Pearl River High School went 4 and 6 while making the playoffs. They lost to Edna Karr in the first round. In the 2016 season, Dalton went the entire season without a holding call while also having over 30 pancakes throughout the season. The Rebel offense averaged over 32 points per game and the leading rusher for PR had over 1400 yards in only 9 games.

I sat down with Dalton and asked him why he plays football, “I play football because I love the sport, the competition, and when I was young, my grandpa would read the newspaper about LSU and would tell me that he wanted to see me playing center for LSU one day. My grandpa died a while back of a heart attack, so now I want to fulfill his dream of me playing college ball. If I go to college I will be the first man in my family to attend.” “I want to major in Engineering. I like to weld and I was told when I visited La Tech that I should go into engineering.

Dalton said that he doesn’t care where he could go to school to, but he would like to attend La Tech, UL, LSU, or Southeastern. He said he has attended Southeastern camps and La Tech satellite camps.

Dalton is a model student with a 2.8 GPA and is scheduled to take the ACT soon. Dalton will be playing in the Max Emfinger All-American Game that will be played on Dec 31st at Southeastern’s campus in Hammond, La.