Fillip Flipped Switch Senior Year

It didn’t take long for Larry McRae to realize his message was received.

The head coach at Clear Lake High School in Houston was impressed with Frank Fillip‍'s performance as a junior, but thought the 2018 offensive lineman could take another step as a senior.

“His junior year, my first season with him, he did everything on film that you want a guy to do who is 6-6, 6-7,” said McRae. “I told him, ‘I can’t coach you to be taller. I can’t coach you to be athletic like you are. I can’t coach you to bend like you do.’

“‘But, the one thing that’s missing is your physicality and you looking to finish guys on every play. That’s the difference between you going to College A over here or going to College B over here.’”

McRae saw it immediately. The Clear Lake offensive linemen were working on tight fits with medicine balls instead of pads the first day of two-a-days. Fillip was matched up with a sophomore.

“From that very first rep of that, I knew he was going to answer that call I put out to him,” McRae recalled. “He took the kid and drove him about eight yards. I think the kid hit at seven and rolled at nine.”

But it was what happened next that showed the coach everything he needed to see.

“Not in a jerk way or anything like that, he went over to the kid and helped him up and said, ‘Hey, I need you to hold that ball harder than that. I need you to work me,’” said McRae. “From that play on, I knew it was going to be on this year.”

It was.

“He’s a big, old gangly kid,” said McRae. “He’s one of the most hard-working, focused kids that I’ve ever been around. He’s very serious when he’s out there on the field. He’s got a workman’s mentality about him, which you love with o-line guys.”

Fillip also brings that attitude to the classroom.

“He’s a high-academic guy,” his coach said. “His ACT score is way up there, his SAT score is way up there. He’s an over-qualifier if you want to say it like that. He’s a really, really sharp kid.

“He’s that kid who if I never to need to get a hold of him during class, I’ll shoot some kids a text a kid, but I know not to shoot Frank a text because he’s that kid who turns his cellphone off and puts it away when he gets into class. In this day and age, that’s another rarity.”

Fillip made a commitment to Colorado during the summer, but schools continued to push as they saw more and more of his senior film while others didn’t look back.

“A lot of colleges missed on that because some of them didn’t go back and look at his senior film periodically because they may have already been locked in on some linemen, so Frank was in that unknown area,” McRae said. “He did have some offers from some great places.”

McRae knew Fillip would be spotted by a major, major program at some point.

“I told his mom and dad and him, ‘It’s not over big fella,’” the coach said. “‘There’s going to be somebody that is going to come at you before Signing Day. I don’t know who it is, but I know it’s going to be a nationally-recognized name of some sort.’”

Last week, Notre Dame came calling and Fillip took an official visit to South Bend this past weekend.

Clear Lake had its football banquet while Fillip was wrapping up his trip to Notre Dame, so many of his awards were accepted in absentia, but while he was trying to sort through his own major decision, he was worried about who else was honored.

“He’s the kind of kid who wasn’t concerned with what he won, he was concerned with who got best defensive lineman, best back, MVP,” McRae said. “He’s totally, totally unselfish.”