Wisconsin athlete makes it 21 for Iowa

Kristian Welch is 6-4, 220 pounds. He played linebacker and running back for Iola-Scandinavia (Wis.) High School. He recently finished third in the 100-meter dash (11.59 seconds) and long jump (21-7.5) and helped his school's 1,600-meter relay finished third in the Wisconsin Division 3 state track meet. Welch also earned first-team all-Central Wisconsin Conference in basketball last winter.

All of that is why Welch received a football scholarship from Iowa. He said yes to the Hawkeyes during an unofficial visit to Iowa City on Monday, giving Iowa 21 commitments for its 2016 recruiting class.

'I am proud to announce my verbal commitment to the University of Iowa,” Welch said in a tweet Monday.

Welch had eight offers, with Iowa's being the lone offer from a Power 5 conference. He also had an offer from Bowling Green and offers from a host of Missouri Valley Conference schools, including North Dakota State and Illinois State. Offer lists don't tell you everything about a recruit. In fact, the Iowa staff often goes against this grain. Iowa is the lone Power 5 offer for 11 of Iowa's 21 commitments in this class.

For the most part, these recruits don't come with a degree of 'instant gratification.” You might not see them for three years. Head coach Kirk Ferentz has operated under this approach, for the most part, for his 16-plus seasons as Iowa's coach.

'We really feel like we know the players that have come to camp a little bit better than some of the others, and I think you know we've never worried too much about what other folks think about prospects,” Ferentz said on signing day 2015. 'We try to make our own evaluations, and we obviously had a lot of good feelings about all those guys.”

Yes, a lot of the 11 players without Power 5 offers from outside of Iowa's attended camp in Iowa City this summer. The Iowa staff had a chance to coach and evaluate them, found a comfort level and made the offer.

That certainly was the case with Welch, who camped at Iowa in mid-June and received an offer.

'I have a really good relationship with the coaches at Iowa,” Welch told HawkeyeReport.com in June. 'They told me if I showed them what they wanted to see, I would get an offer, and that's what happened.

'They kind of put me through the blender a little bit at the camp, just trying me out at different positions at tight end and linebacker. I had one of my best 40 times (4.52 seconds) and they were really impressed by that and just really liked what they saw.”

Welch held scholarship offers from Bowling Green, North Dakota State, North Dakota, South Dakota State, Illinois State, Southern Illinois and Western Illinois.

He could end up on either side of the ball at Iowa. No hard decisions have been made on that.

'A position decision has not been made, but either linebacker or tight end,” Welch said.

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