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Just because the state of Oregon isn’t known as a recruiting hotbed doesn’t mean that the Oregon State football team isn’t going to dig deep to find talent and hidden gems.
Since his arrival in December of 2017, Beavers’ head coach Jonathan Smith has placed a high-emphasis on owning the state and keeping in-state talent right here.
Oregon State needed someone who was familiar with the territory and had relationships spread far across the Beaver State to achieve their goal of keeping the talent in the state.
While several Beaver coaches have helped with in-state recruiting, there’s been one man whose [mostly] sole recruiting job has been to search Oregon far and wide for future Beavs.
Jake Cookus.
Cookus came to OSU as a safety in 1998 from Roseburg High School and was a four-year letterman for the Beavers from 1998-2001. He’s widely known for being a four-year OSU team captain and having three interceptions against Joey Harrington and the Oregon Ducks in the 2000 Civil War.
“When Coach Smith got the job and told me I’d be the in-state recruiter, I was really fired up,” Cookus said. “We want to make a border around the state and find every player in the state regardless of where they’re at to find hidden gems. Growing up (in Roseburg), I have a lot of pride for Oregon State.”
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Since his playing days, Cookus spent time at Kentucky, Southern Oregon, Weber State, Montana, and Hawaii before returning to Oregon State in 2016.
Cookus spent the 2016 and 2017 seasons as a Quality Control Analyst before being promoted to special teams coach once Smith arrived.
He was one of the very few staffers that was kept on during the Andersen/Hall - Smith transition and was rewarded by Smith by being handed the keys to in-state recruiting.
In terms of the 2019 recruiting class, it has Cookus’ fingerprints all over it as he traveled near and far to make sure that the Beavers were owning the Beaver State.
Oregon State added the following prospects from in-state: defensive ends Kelsen Hennessy and Cory Stover, wide receiver Anthony Gould, offensive lineman Jacob Ferenczi, tight end Luke Musgrave, and linebacker Omar Speights (although he's from Pennsylvania and moved to Oregon last year).
The Beavs also added a few preferred in-state walk ons and will likely add more in this class before it's all said and done.
“We have some good players coming in from all-around the state and we’re really excited to get them in our program,” Cookus said. “We’ve got a guy from the coast, a guy from central Oregon, and quite a few guys from Portland, and guy from Salem, so we’re representing the whole state.”
Added Smith: “Coach Cookus drove a lot of miles in this state. Oregon has good players. It sometimes takes driving a lot of miles to find those guys and Jake did a great job of being able to find those guys. We want to make sure we don’t miss anyone in the state.”
During the 2019 recruiting cycle, Cookus got the full range of what the state has to offer as he trekked as far north as Astoria and as far east as Baker City in search of the next great in-state recruit for Oregon State.
“He’s so passionate,” Smith said. “Being from this state and having relationships across the state before he started recruiting has been really good for our program. He has the passion to go across the state and find some of the nuggets that are uncovered. That’s a big part of the process when we’re recruiting.”
