When York High football coach Russ Stoner opened his first iteration of the York Mega Practice in 2023, he did so as a way to open the door for high school athletes in York and Adams counties to connect with top-level college coaches and showcase their skills.
Now, in his third year of running the event, Stoner is excited to see the project grow even larger.
"I decided on a whim to host our own camp so we can bring everybody to us, and we are now on Year 3," Stoner said. "We actually have taken it up a notch. Through the help of Explore York, we got a little bit of a grant to help do some things, and we are essentially trying to get the college coaches to spend the entire week here in York County and use York as the central hub for their recruiting for the week."
The York Mega Practice is a three-day event hosted by Accountability for Life, the nonprofit created and headed by Stoner. Though originally started as a local practice for athletes looking to make a name for themselves on the recruiting trail, the York Mega Practice has evolved into a multi-day event including athletes, coaches and regular high school students.
This year's Mega Practice will from May 8-10, and will include both the traditional Mega Practice, as well as a round of combine testing the following day. For the event, AFL secured the participation of Zybek Sports, the company that provides the timing systems used at the NFL Combine. Zybek will run the testing and timing systems at the Mega Practice's combine.
With Zybek Sports coming in, the combine will also be able to include the company's Standardized Athletic Testing, which runs through traditional recruiting benchmarks such as the 40-yard dash, broad jump and the 5-10-5 agility test. At the end of the combines, athletes will be able to measure their performances against others in Zybek's database to see how well they performed.
