On January 13, 2021 senior basketball player, Easton Hall signed a letter of intent with Peru State College. The signing was hosted at Schuyler Central High school. Signings are for athletes who meet the academic and athletic expectations that the colleges require. Easton chose Peru State College because he wanted to be close to family and make it easier for them to go to his games. The coaches and new recruits also played a part in his decision of choosing Peru. Easton plans to study Rad Tech, which is being able to read and interpret x-rays.

Easton also shares some advice for high school athletes hoping to play at the college level. His most important advice for other athletes hoping to compete at the college level is to put in the work and extra hours even off season. Easton remarks, “I played summer basketball to help keep me in shape for the season, and to be able to play some different competition. A lot of the guys I played during the summer are also college recruits. Work hard and put in the time and you could play in college as well.” For Easton’s last few days playing for the Warriors, he hopes to help the team and win games. 

Easton’s mother Shanda Hall who is also a teacher, Media Specialist, and coach for Schuyler Community Schools gives some suggestions from her experience of her son receiving his scholarship. Even in sports, academics come first, Mrs. Hall recommends insisting on high academic standards. Being responsible and putting education first according to Mrs. Hall, will have a good reflection on what skills players use with the team. Once parents and their child starts receiving offers, Mrs. Hall suggests that parents examine and look into every offer carefully so that the parent and child can pick the option that best fits them and also be aware of what is and isn’t included in each offer. Another thing that she recommends parents could do is see which college academic program best fits the career their child is aiming for. 

Mrs. Hall used some social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to promote Easton and the team. They would use the tournaments hashtag as a way to help market the team and coaches could look at those posts. The Schuyler Boys Basketball Facebook page was passed over to them by Natalie Peterson, SCHS alums Layne and Kinzie Peterson’s mother. The page is a place for parents of athletes to share information and pictures of their child playing. For Easton, highlight videos were emailed to coaches of the colleges he was interested in. They also had flyers with Easton’s accomplishments, honors, statistics, GPA, and physical attributes such as height, wingspan, and standing reach. The flyer made it easier to get the coaches attention and also easier for them to have access to all his information. With all of these new and different things parents can do for their children Mrs. Hall mentions, “If we had known what to do 10 years ago, we would have done some of these things for our older two boys. We just didn’t know how powerful summertime teams and social marketing could be for this process.”