By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
College coaches find various prospects on football teams in Alamance County.
Recruiters might be making visits this year with the same thing in mind – tight ends.
With recruiting for juniors ratcheting up, two members of the Class of 2027 receiving considerable attention play the same position. Tight ends Drew Easter of Southeast Alamance and Braeden Vetter of Williams have been on recruiting radars.
“Summer was slam packed,” Easter said. “I was going camp to camp, trying to get my name out and represent our school. Bring more attention around here. It went really well, actually.”
While Easter has been on college targets, Vetter has been a more recent curiosity for recruiters.
“I’ve been traveling,” Vetter said earlier this summer. “It has been a lot of fun.”
Easter, who already holds an offer from Gardner-Webb, attended camp at Old Dominion and had spring practice visits at Florida and North Carolina State among his stops.
Southeast coach Tony Aguilar touted Easter as a college football prospect since the player’s freshman year – that also marked the opening of the school and dawn of the football program.
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Easter, also has been a post player for Southeast’s boys’ basketball team, already had good size, but by this year – listed at 6-foo4 and 235 pounds – Aguilar had to do something regarding Easter.
“Order different size uniforms,” Aguilar said.
Easter made three touchdown catches in 2023 while racking up 22.5 receiving yards per game. Last year as a sophomore, he caught four TD passes and checked in at 15.8 receiving yards per game.
If the recruiting continues, he said he hopes the Stallions benefit as well.
“A lot of schools plan to come here,” Easter said. “I feel like there’s a lot of attention coming to Southeast. Especially with all our other guys, too, going to all the camps. We were able to really get our names out. Get Southeast Alamance out, that’s always a good thing in my opinion.”
Vetter’s game credentials aren’t as established as Easter’s, but that could be changing.
The breakthrough for Vetter came in the spring’s Carolinas Coaches Combine in Greensboro.
“It all kind of started after the combine,” Vetter said. “I had some good numbers there. It started ramping up after that.”
What drew attention was Vetter’s 4.6-second sprint in the 40-yard dash.
“That was sent out to every college in the country,” Williams coach Patrick Stokes said. “So he starts getting invitations.”
That put Vetter on the move for camps at places such as Duke, Wake Forest, Georgia, West Virginia, Virginia and Harvard.
Vetter said he’ll potentially major in sports medicine.
“I would like to go to school where I can get a good degree while playing football,” he said.
Vetter is looking to bolster his football stock this season. He was a second-stringer a year ago.
“He was a sophomore,” Stokes said. “He was big and he was good, and at times could be a little goofy because he was still growing into his body. Now he’s power-cleaning 260 pounds and doing great things. It’s his time.”
Vetter, also an all-conference goalie for the lacrosse team, is 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds.
He described his 2024 football role as more of a blocker, though with the ability to play in the flats and run after catches.
“It has been fun to prove myself,” Vetter said. “Some high schools don’t utilize their tight end enough, but I feel like I’ve been blessed and I play in an offense where we do utilize the tight end as a pass catcher and a blocker. I feel like that has been very good for me as well. That has given me good opportunity for film.”
