When Cameron Andersen heard the results, the head coach excitedly sent a text message to his Burley High School coaching staff.
Does everyone understand that we are now coaching the fastest high school football player in the world?
Gatlin Bair made that perfectly clear at the Texas Relays on March 31. The four-star wide receiver recruit from Idaho approached the starting blocks for the boys’ 100-meter prelims on that warm Friday afternoon in Austin, felt the tailwind and knew he was about to do something special.
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And then he ran a 10.18.
10.18!! pic.twitter.com/P5komGIwwh
— Gatlin Bair (@BairGatlin) March 31, 2023
“It’s a feeling you can’t even describe,” Bair said. “I didn’t play it super cool. I screamed. I was super pumped. There was no hiding that emotion. It all came out. It’s months and years of hard work just for that 15 seconds of sitting up and looking at that time, you know?”
That personal best was the second-fastest 100 any high schooler has run this year and would’ve been good for sixth place at last year’s NCAA championships. And Bair did it as a junior. To put the time in perspective, Tyreek Hill’s personal record in high school was 10.19. Bair laughed when he learned that.
“Are you serious?” Bair asked. “That’s funny, because Tyreek just ran a 6.70 60. My PR is 6.69. I guess I’m a hundredth of a second faster than Tyreek.”
He didn’t face the NFL’s fastest receiver at the Texas Relays. But when it came time for the 100-meter finals, he was excited to see Nyckoles Harbor in Lane 8. The freaky five-star athlete and South Carolina signee ran a 10.31 to take third place. Bair won it with a time of 10.25.
Bair is out to prove he deserves five-star status just like Harbor as he navigates one of the most fascinating recruiting processes of the 2024 cycle. The 6-foot-2, 195-pound speedster is rising up the rankings this spring — 247Sports bumped him up from No. 178 to No. 40 — and has all the tools to be an instant difference maker. But we’ll have to wait a while. Bair is planning to serve a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and won’t enroll in college until 2026.
That won’t stop dozens of college coaches from making the trek to Burley, Idaho, this spring to try to win him over. Bair said he was asked where Burley is “about 50 times” while down in Texas. “They were shocked when I told them I’m from Idaho,” he said. Andersen’s advice for the many recruiters who’ve asked how to get there: Fly into Salt Lake City, get on a jet to Twin Falls and drive 30 minutes to Burley.
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“I’ve been in this area for my whole life,” Andersen said, “and I bet you’re talking the 1980s or 1990s since a guy has left here and been on a full-ride scholarship at the Division I level.”
Bair is getting ready to focus on just five schools going forward. When asked who’s doing the best job of recruiting him, Andersen offered praise for Nebraska, Michigan, Utah, BYU, Boise State, Oregon, Texas and TCU. Plenty more schools reached out after his Texas Relays performance. Bair told them he wasn’t interested.
“I want to stick with the people who had faith in me from the beginning,” he said, “and aren’t hopping on the bandwagon.”
It’s easy for coaches to have faith when they hear about his family. Brad and Shae Bair were track and field athletes at Utah State who went into coaching. Mom was a three-time All-American pole vaulter and is in the Hall of Fame there. Their oldest son, Peyton, was Idaho’s Gatorade Player of the Year in 2020 and is now at Mississippi State following his mission. He just finished second in the decathlon at the Texas Relays. Jaxon won the USATF National Junior Olympics in the decathlon 2021 and signed with Arkansas. Gatlin’s younger sisters Karlie and Londynn are up next. Karlie, an eighth grader, has already won a Junior Olympics championship in the pentathlon.
“As soon as we could walk, my parents had us entered in track meets,” Gatlin said. “That’s pretty much all I know.”
But Gatlin isn’t just a track kid who plays football in the fall. After starting as a freshman, he convinced his parents this is what he loves most. Last season, he caught 73 passes for 1,073 yards and 18 touchdowns. Burley put up 84 points in one game and 82 in another. “They played man coverage,” Andersen said. “That’s the reason.” Bair caught 17 passes over those two games for 448 yards and nine touchdowns. On other nights, he faced triple coverage.
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“There’s a corner that plays outside leverage, there’s a safety like 20 yards off over the top and then there’s an outside linebacker apexed out,” Bair explained. “If I release inside, he walls me off and basically smacks me if I try to come across the middle. And then the corner basically tries to get hands on me and grab me and keep me from releasing outside.”
“It was a lot of work to get him the ball,” Andersen said.
Want to know something fun? @BairGatlin made football plays like this when he was 10.46, today he ran 10.18. What people don’t know is the sacrifices he and his family make to achieve success. A SPECIAL family. A special player. A special human. Get your 🍿 ready for ‘23 #idpreps pic.twitter.com/F7mNPtoWlg
— Cameron Andersen (@Coach_CAndersen) April 1, 2023
Andersen coached Michigan tight end Colston Loveland, a four-star recruit in the 2022 class, at Gooding High School and gained experience in dealing with a high-profile recruitment. But he admits Bair’s process has felt completely different due to the influence of NIL money.
“As one coach put it to me — I won’t tell you who — but one of them said, ‘Coach, speed is expensive,’” Andersen said.
Bair says NIL is playing very little to no role in his decision. If you pick the right school and succeed, he reasons, the money will come. He stopped communicating with a few schools that suggested doing things he considered against the rules or shady. If he thinks a coach is going about this the wrong way, he’s done with them. Andersen has leaned on his contacts throughout the coaching business to understand what is and isn’t allowed. What both have experienced so far has been eye-opening.
“The more the bigger schools come in, the more you just can’t get away from it,” Andersen said. “Gatlin legitimately has Boise State as one of his top schools right now. The response from bigger schools when they come in is, ‘Well, he’s not going to Boise State because they’re not gonna be able to afford him.’”
The first person Andy Avalos walked over to after the spring game?
Four-star WR Gatlin Bair (@BairGatlin) pic.twitter.com/QKeFBejO4L
— Jordan Kaye (@jordankaye_23) April 8, 2023
One interesting idea that has been floated by some schools competing for Bair: helping him pay for his two-year mission. They’ve proposed finding legal ways for him to benefit from his name, image and likeness while he’s away to defray the cost of living on his own.
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“LDS missions cost money,” Andersen said. “It’s not like you go on a mission and the Church pays for it. You’ve gotta pay for all those things. But that’s been offers from places, beginning in that scope. That would be an absolute blessing for him and his family. They’re not afraid to collect off legitimate means of making money off his NIL.”
Bair explains his plan to coaches before they offer. It’s important to him to serve a mission and, as he puts it, “learn what’s important in life, who you are and what you stand for.” He knows lots of coaches will change jobs between now and 2026, which complicates the process of finding the right fit, but he’s grateful for how supportive they’ve been.
As one coach who’s recruiting Bair told The Athletic, “He ran a 10.2. We’ll take him whenever.”
Utah and Boise State were among the first to offer last year, and BYU wasn’t far behind. Nebraska’s Matt Rhule and receivers coach Garret McGuire have made a big impression on Bair and hosted him on a visit in March. He stopped in to see Texas while in Austin and will visit Oregon later this month during the Oregon Relays. Michigan coaches traveled to Burley twice in the winter, and Bair is eager to get out to Ann Arbor.
“It’s going to be a faith thing,” Bair said. “You have to feel it and go with your gut, do the best research you can and make the best educated choice you can and hope it all works out.”
He plans to commit before his senior year. Bair already has a grand plan in the works, one that goes far beyond his mission. He wants a degree in kinesiology. He wants to be a strength and conditioning coach when he’s done playing. He dreams of opening a training facility with his brothers and coaching high-level athletes.
But for now, he’s training to smash state records in the 100 and 200. He had a good feeling about what he was about to achieve at the Texas Relays. He told everyone he was going to run a 10.2. He told Andersen he wanted to beat Harbor. Confidence, he says, comes from knowing your own ability. And now everybody else knows.
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“The way I would describe Gatlin is he’s kind of like a 24-year-old 17-year-old,” Andersen said. “This kid is different. You talk to any coach that’s offered him and they’re gonna agree. He’s very focused. He knows exactly what he’s going to do.”
(Photo courtesy of Cameron Andersen)
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