His dad worked for Petrino. His mom went to Duke. Can UK win over in-state QB recruit?
It was the end of June when Caden Veltkamp answered his cell phone to find Kentucky Wildcats football assistant Steve Clinkscale calling.
What Clinkscale said left the class of 2022 South Warren High School quarterback shocked. The Wildcats assistant had called to offer the 6-foot-5, 205-pound pocket passer a UK scholarship.
“It was a little bit out of the blue,” Veltkamp said last week. “I wasn’t expecting it. I thought they were waiting, they were holding out till they watched me play again next fall.”
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Due to an untimely injury, many colleges are waiting before offering Veltkamp.
Off to a stellar start to his sophomore season in 2019, he suffered a broken right wrist (his throwing arm) in last year’s fifth game against Louisville Central.
“Caden’s going to end up with a lot of offers,” says South Warren Coach Brandon Smith, the former Boyle County and Western Kentucky quarterback. “I think UK was trying to get ahead of the game.”
For Wildcats football recruiters, wooing Veltkamp — and his family — shapes up as an intriguing challenge.
The quarterback’s father, Jason Veltkamp, is the director of football strength and conditioning at Western Kentucky University. The Hilltoppers were the first school to offer Caden Veltkamp a scholarship.
Across a long career in football strength coaching, the elder Veltkamp has also worked at Utah, North Carolina State and with the Cleveland Browns.
For eight years, Jason Veltkamp worked under Bobby Petrino at Louisville (2003-06) and Arkansas (2008-11).
With his dad employed at U of L, Caden Veltkamp must have spent his early childhood rooting against UK. “Yeah, we did. We hated Kentucky when I was a kid,” he says.
On the other side of the family, Veltkamp’s mom, Kristen, is a Duke alumnus, having earned a master’s in physical therapy at the Duke University School of Medicine (1994-96).
“She’s always been a Duke fan for life. That’s kind of run in our family,” Caden Veltkamp says. “She tells me stories about (Christian) Laettner, about his shot (that beat Kentucky in the 1992 NCAA Tournament East Region finals) mostly.”
The reason Mark Stoops and Co. are willing to go up against family history to pursue Caden Veltkamp is the QB’s ample upside.
As a college prospect, “he’s got a lot of the boxes checked,” says Smith, the South Warren coach. “He’s legit tall, legit 6-5. He’s really long. He’s got a lot of zip on the ball. His hands are really big.
“The most important thing, he’s got that quarterback mentality that you want. He’s a ‘gym rat,’ really a high IQ kid off the field. He’s got a lot of athleticism, but his body is not fully developed. He’s nowhere close to maxed out, which is kind of what you are looking for at the next level.”
In a show of grit, Veltkamp returned from his broken wrist last season to start for South Warren in its Class 5A playoffs second-round showdown with crosstown rival Bowling Green.
It did not go great. He completed 13 of 26 passes for 80 yards with one touchdown and his first interception of the season as the Spartans fell to their archrival 20-13.
“In hindsight, he probably was not ready,” Smith says. “But I think it says a lot about him that he wanted to play.”
Veltkamp finished his abbreviated sophomore season having thrown for 1,007 yards with 16 touchdowns vs. one interception while completing 62.3 percent of his passes.
Even as the coronavirus has had the commonwealth of Kentucky on lockdown for much of 2020, Veltkamp has been lifting weights and throwing. His offseason emphasis has been becoming more comfortable throwing on the run.
“That’s what I have worked on all quarantine,” he says. “Being able to throw on the run is a big part of my game now.”
If they offer Veltkamp, another SEC school might have an advantage in his recruitment.
Of his dad’s many career stops, Veltkamp says Arkansas is the place that felt like home. “Arkansas has been in my heart since we left there,” he said.
UK’s in-state quarterback recruiting in the class of 2022 is going to be fascinating. In addition to Veltkamp, the Wildcats have also offered Owensboro QB Gavin Wimsatt — who has blown up into a top-50 recruit nationally.
Though Clinkscale (who recruits the Nashville area) offered him, Veltkamp says he has been told his primary Kentucky recruiters will be quarterbacks coach Darin Hinshaw and recruiting ace Vince Marrow.
The QB says the lack of affinity for UK in his family does not mean the Wildcats stand no chance to land him.
When Kentucky offered, Veltkmap says his mom, the Duke alumna, congratulated him, but said “’I don’t want you to go there.’”
Says Caden Veltkamp: “I told her, ‘I would love to play at the University of Kentucky. It’s a great school. I loved it there when I visited. It’s in the SEC. The coaching staff is amazing.’ So, if Kentucky is where I end up landing, my mom is just going to have to deal with it.”
