Ohio opens its 2026 season the week of August 20. Recruit Intel tracks 763 high schools across the state, and what follows is the whole region in one place: the best player at every position, the recruits holding real offers with no star rating anywhere, the underclassmen already producing on the field, and the programs actually producing Division 1 talent. Every number below comes from our canonical database and is stated with the sample it rests on.
Four boards, one region
Ohio is a whole-state region for us, all 763 schools. It is also the first region in this series deep enough to fill all four of our boards honestly: the best player at every position, the recruits holding real offers with no star rating anywhere, the programs producing the most Division 1 offers, and, for the first time, a full underclass gem board of unrated and unoffered players who already have a season of production behind them.
The best at every position
One player per position slot, classes 2027 through 2029. These ten hold 183 verified Division 1 offers between them. Offer counts are distinct college offers, and every commitment and star status was re-verified against the current roster on 2026-08-13.
- QB, RJ Day, St. Francis de Sales (Columbus), class of 2027. Committed to Northwestern, 18 verified offers, three-star. 55th production percentile among quarterbacks in our database.
- RB, Edmund McAllister III, Pickerington Central (Pickerington), class of 2029. 21 verified offers, uncommitted, and zero stars on any service. 96th production percentile among running backs, a 2029 already producing and recruited at that level.
- WR, Josiah Gault, Wyoming (Cincinnati), class of 2027. 6 verified offers, uncommitted, zero stars. 92nd production percentile among receivers.
- TE, Jordan Karhoff, St. Francis de Sales (Columbus), class of 2027. Committed to Virginia Tech, 39 verified offers, the most of any player on this board, four-star.
- OL, Dominic Black, Tri-Village (New Madison), class of 2027. Committed to Kentucky, 39 verified offers, four-star.
- DL, Reinaldo Perez, Columbus Academy (Columbus), class of 2027. Committed to Indiana, 35 verified offers, four-star.
- LB, Karsen Fisher, Nordonia (Macedonia), class of 2027. Committed to Toledo, 8 verified offers, three-star. 93rd production percentile among linebackers.
- CB, Aiden Farrell, Meadowbrook (Byesville), class of 2028. Uncommitted, zero stars, and no Division 1 offers on file yet. He holds the slot on production alone, an 87th production percentile among cornerbacks.
- S, Ryder Cain, James A Garfield (Garrettsville), class of 2028. Uncommitted, zero stars, no offers on file yet, and the 97th production percentile among safeties, the highest production mark on this board.
- ATH, Deontay Malone, Washington (Massillon), class of 2027. Committed to Ohio State, 17 verified offers, four-star. 89th production percentile.
Ohio's board is the honest opposite of a blue-chip roll call. Two of the ten slots, cornerback and safety, are held by 2028 players with no offers and no stars who simply out-produced everyone else at their position. Ryder Cain sits at the 97th percentile among safeties without a single offer on file. At the other end, St. Francis de Sales placed two players on the board, quarterback RJ Day and tight end Jordan Karhoff, and Massillon Washington's Deontay Malone is an Ohio State commit whose school also lands on the producers board below.
The recruits the rankings have not caught
These ten hold 61 verified Division 1 offers between them and carry zero stars on 247Sports, On3, Rivals and ESPN as of 2026-08-13. It is a ratings gap, not a discovery claim: the programs recruiting these players found them long before we listed them. Scope is the 2028 class.
- Kahlil Diming, RB, Archbishop Hoban (Akron), 2028. 8 offers.
- Roman Garr, QB, Colerain (Cincinnati), 2028. 8 offers.
- David Yharbrough, WR, Central Catholic (Toledo), 2028. 7 offers.
- Keysean Torbert, CB, Taft (Cincinnati), 2028. 6 offers.
- Ayden Dunlap, CB, Gahanna Lincoln (Columbus), 2028. 6 offers.
- Quintin Richardson, OT, Talawanda (Oxford), 2028. 6 offers.
- Andrew Cramerding, OL, St. Xavier (Cincinnati), 2028. 5 offers.
- Amileo Norvell, RB, Springfield (Springfield), 2028. 5 offers.
- Desean Flagg, WR, Colerain (Cincinnati), 2028. 5 offers.
- DJ Porter, QB, Canfield (Canfield), 2028. 5 offers.
Colerain lands two of these ten, quarterback Roman Garr and receiver Desean Flagg, and Cincinnati schools account for half the board. Every name here is pinned to a single database record before it goes public, which is how two other Ohio candidates got left off this week, covered in the method note below.
The underclass gem board
This is the board the rest of the series has not been able to fill. These are unrated, unoffered players in the 2028 through 2030 classes who already have real game production logged. The bar to be named here publicly is a genuine sample of recorded games, not a projection, so we name the seven who clear it and hold three thinner rows back until more of this season's data lands. None of these seven carries a star rating or a Division 1 offer as of 2026-08-13.
- Xavier Hendon, RB, Columbia (Columbia Station), class of 2028. 24 games of recorded production.
- Jack Montgomery, RB, Eastern (Beaver), class of 2028. 19 games of recorded production.
- Maddux McFarlin, TE, Kenton (Kenton), class of 2028. 10 games of recorded production.
- Nolan Klingbeil, QB, North Royalton (North Royalton), class of 2028. 10 games of recorded production.
- Derek Boehmer, QB, Shawnee (Springfield), class of 2028. 10 games of recorded production.
- Wyatt Swick, WR, Minford (Minford), class of 2030. 8 games of recorded production.
- Bronx Carpenter, QB, Symmes Valley (Willow Wood), class of 2029. 5 games of recorded production.
Xavier Hendon and Jack Montgomery are the two to write down, each with a full season and then some of recorded games and still no offer or rating on file. Wyatt Swick is the youngest name on any board in this preview, a 2030 who has already logged eight games of production. The three rows we are holding back have only one or two recorded games so far, which is not enough to put a name in front of the public, and we would rather run seven we can stand behind than ten we cannot.
The programs producing the offers
Ranked by current-roster offer production, the sum of verified Division 1 offers held by every recruit on the roster in the 2024 through 2027 classes. These ten programs account for 1,902 verified offers across 170 recruits.
- St. Edward (Lakewood): 253 offers across 22 recruits
- Glenville (Cleveland): 221 across 18
- Archbishop Hoban (Akron): 204 across 21
- Winton Woods (Cincinnati): 195 across 15
- Washington (Massillon): 182 across 19
- Lakota West (West Chester): 174 across 15
- Princeton (Cincinnati): 173 across 18
- Archbishop Moeller (Cincinnati): 170 across 13
- Pickerington North (Pickerington): 169 across 15
- Gahanna Lincoln (Columbus): 161 across 14
St. Edward leads the state at 253 offers across 22 recruits, with Cleveland's Glenville right behind at 221. The board also ties back to the others: Archbishop Hoban, third here, is where watch-list running back Kahlil Diming plays; Massillon Washington, fifth, sent Deontay Malone to the position board; and Gahanna Lincoln, tenth, is home to watch-list cornerback Ayden Dunlap. Cincinnati and Cleveland programs fill most of the top ten, which is the shape of Ohio recruiting in one glance.
How we counted
Every number comes from the Recruit Intel canonical database, read on 2026-08-13 and re-verified on 2026-08-14. Offer counts are distinct college offers per player, not raw offer rows, and quarantined rows are excluded. Production percentiles are position-normalized across our verified database. Star status is zero only when it is zero on all four services, checked at read time. Offensive and defensive linemen are ranked on verified offer volume alone, because linemen do not accumulate the box-score statistics the other positions are measured on.
Region membership is every Ohio high school we track, 763 in total, treated as one region. Every player named here was re-verified against the current roster for class year, school, offer count and star status, and pinned to a single database record by id rather than by name. Two candidates were left off the watch list this week as probable split records, two players sharing a name, class and offer count at different schools, because an unresolved identity does not belong on a public board.
Kickoff is next week
Ohio opens the 2026 season the week of August 20. This is the Recruit Intel regional preview series, and more regions follow in kickoff order. The unrated boards above are dated on purpose. When those players get rated, the timestamp on this page is the receipt.