LYNN — Joenel Aguero is home now, planning to play his senior year at St. John’s Prep, secure in the knowledge that he is among the top prospects in the 2023 college recruiting class.
The 6-foot, 195-pound safety who grew up playing East Lynn Pop Warner is high on the lists of a lot of colleges and universities as he prepares for his last year at The Prep. The University of Georgia has him as the second-best high school safety in the country and the 23rd highest overall recruit. The Bulldogs have already offered him a scholarship.
Everyone’s just going to have to wait a couple of more weeks. Aguero will make his decision public July 23. And when he does, he will be St. John’s second Division 1 recruit (Jesse Ofurie committed to Rutgers last month).
Aguero spent his freshman year at St. John’s and was a safety on a team that defended its Division 1 Super Bowl title with a win over Catholic Memorial. However, he spent the next two years at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. — a school that caters mainly to high-level athletes.
“I went down there because it was a good opportunity to help me understand the game better,” he said, “and to prepare me for college.”
But, he also felt as if he was depriving his family and friends of a chance to see him play every week, so he moved back up here and went back to St. John’s.
“I wanted to play my last football season in front of my family every weekend,” he said. “I grew up in Lynn, but I went to middle school in Lynnfield. I’m back in Lynn now.”
“I feel like family’s everything,” Aguero said. “I’ll be graduating in December to get early enrollment in college, so I want to spend some time up here before I go wherever I go.”
And wherever he goes, it’ll be Division 1, and it’ll be a school you’ll see on television a lot for as long as he stays there. He has been told he may be the best high school safety in the country.
He is anxious to catch up with his old Pop Warner coaches, Duke Wilson and Darrell Murkison.
Aguero was 10, he thinks, when he first discovered he liked to play football.
“I liked the physicality of it,” he said. “I always liked the game, and the fact that I was good at it made it better.”
As he prepares to make his college decision in a little over two weeks, he does so with the knowledge that he is highly regarded.
“I’ve got somewhere near 50 scholarship offers,” he said. Among them, besides Georgia, are offers from Alabama, Ohio State, LSU, and almost every school in the country.
“I’ve heard I’m the best safety in the country,” he said. “That’s why I made the move to IMG, so people could see I can play in a different state, and not just in Massachusetts.”
