North Penn seniors Ryan Bocklet and Aidan Eves capped improbable recruiting journeys when they signed letters of intent to continue their football careers at Sacred Heart University.
Photo provided courtesy of Daniella Heminghaus/PhillyBurbs.
The kicker and the tight end.
An unlikely pair to strike up a friendship on the gridiron, but not for North Penn’s kicker – Ryan Bocklet – and tight end – Aidan Eves, who are the best of friends. Both had their sights set on playing collegiate football at a high level, and both had some crushing setbacks along the way, but their stories have a happy – and surprising – ending.
On Wednesday, Bocklet and Eves both signed letters of intent to continue their football careers at Sacred Heart University.
“It’s kind of funny because usually kickers and tight ends are not best friends on the team,” Bocklet said. “But it ended up that we had some mutual friends in older classes through the football team, and we ended up getting to know each other really well.
“We were both captains this year, so we spent a lot of time together. It’s been really cool for him and me to have our separate journeys and end up at the same place.”
The two signings capped an improbable journey to Sacred Heart that began last spring.
“During the visitation period, coach Sap (Pat Saporito), who is the special teams coordinator, visited me and Aidan,” Bocklet said. “It was the first time I heard of Sacred Heart. It was good to just talk to him and get to know him and the program a little bit.”
At the time, both had their college wish lists, and Sacred Heart wasn’t on it.
“Sacred Heart wasn’t even on my radar,” Eves said. “I took five visits in the spring, and those were really my top five schools.
“I took a visit to Duke, I took a visit to Princeton, I took a visit to Columbia, I took a visit to Lehigh, and I took a visit to Villanova. I thought I was going to one of those schools. Duke was actually my dream school. Coach Lyster (assistant coach Rick Lyster), and I talked and had built a connection. I was pretty starstruck, to say the least. I thought I was going to go there, and I wanted to go there, but it fell apart.”
Lehigh was his second choice.
“That fell apart as well,” Eves said.
Bocklet was going through a similar situation. Both of his top choices – Villanova and Connecticut – opted for kickers from the transfer portal.
“Right now it’s really tough honestly for any high school athlete to find a home,” Bocklet said. “The transfer portal is really not to the advantage of the high school players, and now with all the NIL money and everything like that – it puts us all at a disadvantage.
“From the perspective of a coach at a big time school, it makes sense if they have the money and they can go get a guy that’s 22 and knows what they’re doing and has played in that environment rather than an 18-year-old kid, so I get it.”
The recruiting rules have changed collegiate sports. Coach Dick Beck explains.
“What happened with the NIL- they cut (football) rosters down to 105 so now they have 85 guys on scholarship and can only have 20 walk-ons, and they have kids that are walking on that are already on the team,” the Knights’ coach said. “Then it’s the trickledown effect. The walk-ons at D1 now start flooding the FCS and then Division 2 and then Division 3 – everything is trickling down.”
Bocklet and Eves were just two of many casualties of the new recruiting world.
“After my senior year, I thought I had a pretty good season, but recruiting wasn’t at a point where I wanted it to be,” Eves said. “Me and Ryan both started panicking. All the schools we were talking to started ghosting us.
“Ryan thought he’d go to Villanova or UConn, and both kind of fell apart. I’m having to rotate to high academic D3s even though I had 20 D1 schools in my phone three months ago. It was a quick turnaround, and it kind of was really crushing.”
It was around that time in December that Sacred Heart re-entered the picture. It turned out to be perfect timing.
“I really hadn’t heard from Coach Sap until the most recent visitation period, which was in December,” Bocklet said. “But he came out, and they offered me, which was kind of cool. It was the first Division 1 offer for me, so it was pretty awesome.”
Things also fell into place for Eves.
“Originally, I wasn’t too interested in Sacred Heart because they hadn’t had an engineering program,” he said. “They started that engineering program right at the last second, so that really flipped it quick. It was a happy ending.”
Ryan Bocklet – Sacred Heart University (Football)
Major: Business
Final list of colleges: Sacred Heart, Villanova, Connecticut, Rutgers
Reasons for choosing Sacred Heart: “In December, I went up and saw the campus – I got to meet the rest of the coaching staff. I really liked it when I was there. I thought about it and ended up making the decision. I felt it was somewhere I can thrive and do well both academically and athletically.”
What was the progression that led you to competing in football at the collegiate level? “It’s interesting because I didn’t play football until my freshman year. I was a soccer kid growing up. A lot of my family
is a big soccer family, so I had played soccer, and one of my good family friends – a neighbor -is a coach on the team (Dave Franek). He always had been on me to just try and see if I could do it. (North Penn) ended up having two kickers get hurt and go down the week before the home opener my freshman year. I got a call from (Franek), and he was like, ‘We need you. Can you at least just give it a shot?’
“I went over to practice and put on football pads for the first time. I kind of got rolling from there. I loved it. My first year was okay. I had never played before, but I got the job done. I worked really hard, and my summer going into my sophomore year I kind of figured it out that – ‘Hey, this might be something I might be pretty good at.’”
Coach Dick Beck says: Ryan Bocklet “Ryan was a four-year starter. His longest career field goal is a 49-yarder. It probably would have been good from 60 – he murdered that one. He was 45 out of 46 extra points this year. The only extra point he missed was blocked. He was 8 of 11 on field goal attempts. He’s just been solid as a rock for us all year. He had something like 28 touchbacks during the year. If you can get it in the end zone, it’s an automatic touchback – when you have to drive 80 yards every time, that’s a huge weapon for us on special teams, Plus, he was a punter also. He was first team all-league punter and kicker for the last two years.
“At least 10 times this year he had a snap that was going over everybody’s head except his where he jumped, one-handed caught the ball and got the punt off. I think it was against Ridley at the end of the half. It was a high snap - he jumps up, fingertips it, catches the ball and punts it and then gets roughed, and we get the automatic first down (for roughing the kicker). We drive and score again at the end of the half, which was a huge flip. Because he went from getting it blocked to getting it off and getting roughed, that gave us the first down. It was a huge turnaround.
“We’re going to miss him next year. We have to find somebody to replace him because he was everything for us – punter, kicker, kickoff guy. He was really, really big for us.
“He got caught in a numbers deal. In any other year, he’s at least a preferred walk-on at Connecticut. He got a little short-changed, so he got this opportunity at Sacred Heart. I think he’s going to go there and just wow them to death. I think he’ll be ready to play early.”
About Ryan:
Favorite food: Pasta
Favorite TV shows: Yellowstone & Ozark
Favorite music: Country
Aidan Eves – Sacred Heart University (Football)
Major: Mechanical Engineering
Final list of colleges: Sacred Heart, Carnegie Mellon, RPI
Reasons for choosing Sacred Heart: “I felt like I was wanted the most by the Sacred Heart coaches. In the back of my mind, I really think a huge part of where I decided to go was how much I felt wanted there. Coach Sap and tight end coach, Coach Woody (Kevin Woodring), were giving me calls pretty much every day telling me – ‘We want you here.’ It was awesome. I felt a lot of love from that.
“I knew I wanted to major in engineering, and they’re actually starting (that program) in 2026, so that really propelled that forward because, first and foremost, I value my education more than anything else.”
What was the progression that led you to competing in football at the collegiate level? “Everyone wants to play football, especially D1. Everyone has the same goal going into high school. It’s step by step.
I always knew I wanted to play football, and I knew I was going to play after my junior year because I had a good junior season.”
Coach Dick Beck says: “We liked to call Aidan our Swiss army knife on offense. He could block, he could catch the ball, run the ball, play quarterback. His junior year he started four or five games at quarterback and got us into the playoffs pretty deep. This year, luckily, he only played a little bit of quarterback in short yardage situations. He was our tight end. Offensively, when he got inside the 10, he was the guy we were going to throw the ball to because he’s so big and strong, and he attacks the ball so well. I think there were at least four times this year at the end of the half where we would just throw to him on a corner route and just throw the ball up for grabs. We did it against Downingtown East, we did it against CB East, we did against Ridley where we’re just letting him make a play on the ball, and he grabbed the ball and scored a touchdown. He was a very, very big player for us.
“Playing defensive end, he was our leading pass rusher and disrupter up front.
“He was in the weightroom every day working his tail off, every day at practice working his tail off. He’s a guy kids look up to in the building and in the hallways, always doing the right thing. He’s a great student (a member of National Honor Society) and involved in some of the community things. He was a fantastic leader and a lead-by-example guy. I remember him saying to me – I just love ball.
About Aidan:
Favorite food: Lasagna
Favorite movie: Guardians of the Galaxy 3
Favorite artist: Megan Moroney
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