A look at Union Academy verbal commitments ahead of Signing Day

College Signing Day is this Wednesday and, based on previous verbal commitments, there are at least four dozen players from the Philadelphia Union Academy who could be signing their national letters of intent on the first day of the signing period.

While in previous years, the academy signings were concentrated on schools in the south and the Atlantic Coast Conference, the 2017 class will be scattering out more to schools in the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, and West.

Three players are heading to California with Andrew Aprahamian committed to Stanford and Freeman Dwamena and Emmanuel Perez both committed to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. Three players are also headed to the Ivy League with Dawson McCartney and Tiger Graham both committed to Dartmouth (Graham signed last year but returned to the Academy for a gap year) and Matthew Freese committed to Harvard.

Kalil Elmedkhar will be the first player with ties to the Union Academy to play at Kentucky while Evan Godfrey will be the first at Liberty and Omar Ayala will head west but stay in the state at Duquesne. Frederick Gil will be heading south to South Florida while Patrick Murphy’s commitment to Drexel is the lone to a local program.

Brandon Golden is committed to Fordham and Isaiah Holquist is verbally committed to Division III University of Chicago.

The biggest question mark heading into the signing period is probably Mark McKenzie, who could be facing a similar decision Auston Trusty had last year if he shows well at Bethlehem Steel FC. Trusty signed with North Carolina last year but then backed out days before training camp to sign a homegrown deal with the Union. McKenzie has verbally committed to Wake Forest, which has already lost one recruit from the Union in recent Bethlehem Steel FC signing Matthew Real.

Justin McMaster, Josue Monge, Max Sakiewicz, Jahmali Waite, Alexander Soto, and Darius Lewis have not announced any college commitments. U18 regulars Anthony Fontana, Rayshawn McGann, and Issa Rayyan won’t graduate from high school until 2018. Rayyan recently verbally committed to Duke University.