When Drew Christo announced his commitment to the Nebraska baseball team Sunday afternoon, it meant the Huskers added a promising young arm and continued the recruiting momentum that has only seemed to pick up steam as Will Bolt and his staff have settled into their roles.
The son of former Nebraska quarterback Monte Christo, Drew Christo is one of the state's top athletes in the 2021 class. The right-handed pitcher chose NU over offers from Creighton, Kentucky, Virginia, Duke, Notre Dame and Kansas State. He was also receiving interest as a football player.
Christo carries on a run of in-state recruiting success for Nebraska's new coaching staff.
"We’re not going to fly over talent to get talent," Nebraska athletic director Bill Moos said when Bolt was hired. "There’s talent in Nebraska and then we’ll fill in the gaps."
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So far, Moos' words have proven true. In Nebraska's 2020 recruiting class, three of the eight verbal commitments are from Nebraska, including Papillion-La Vista outfielder Garret Anglim, who was the first 2020 recruit to commit to the Huskers after Bolt was hired.
In the 2021 class, four of the seven verbal commits are from within the state, including three from Elkhorn. Besides Christo, a pitcher at Elkhorn, Jackson Brockett and Luke Jessen (both from Elkhorn South) have also committed to NU. Lincoln Southwest's Max Petersen is also a part of the 2021 class.
"We’ve talked about it strategywise as far as recruiting goes, and we want to lock down the state. We want to put up a fence around the state of Nebraska," hitting coach and recruiting coordinator Lance Harvell said this summer. "We’ve already been in touch with a lot of coaches and players here and kind of identified who we want to go after, in addition to the guys that the previous staff had already recruited.
"So there’s a lot of excitement right now — talking to some of the guys on the phone, just kind of letting them know a little bit of who we are and what they can expect and making sure that they’re still on board. You can really sense it talking to the kids that they’re excited too. That’s, as a coach, what gets you going."
In total, the Huskers have 15 players committed between the 2020 and 2021 classes, along with holding together an 11-member freshman class that joined the team this fall.
This all comes after Bolt said Nebraska got off to a somewhat slow start on the recruiting front. The spark came when Bellevue native Cade Povich transferred from South Mountain Community College in the summer. Drew Mackie, a former Texas Tech commit, followed shortly after in early July.
"Being able to get Povich and Mackey here this summer was big," Bolt said last week after the opening game of the Red-White Series. "It kind of took a while to kind of get the first yes, but then when we did it, it was just, it’s kind of been a bit of a domino effect. And we’ve had a lot of success with guys that come on campus. So it’s been good."