When Dawson Merritt was growing up, he never thought his best sport would be football. The standout linebacker from Blue Valley was focused on playing basketball through his youth and going into high school.

“I was a basketball guy growing up, so I never even really thought I was going to be playing football,” Merritt said. “My first year of football was my freshman year of high school.”

Merritt’s game developed after his first season as a freshman and the next year he found himself starting on varsity. When he started his football career he looked to his father for some extra coaching. And that is not a bad place to get advice.

Dave Merritt is the cornerbacks coach for the Kansas City Chiefs and a coaching veteran of over 20 years in the NFL.

“My dad kind of thought I was just kind of playing around with it because my freshman year, I wasn’t very good,” he said. “My sophomore year, I was a starter on varsity. That’s when I’d say I got a lot better, but I still wasn’t very good. And then this year, I obviously made a huge jump.”

Merritt said his father makes it out to a practice when time allows and started to help a lot more his junior season.

“This year was the first year he kind of really started to help me out,” Merritt said. “And just even the little things he would say, like how to take on a block, what to do when the tackle does this, what to do when a receiver does this.

“It’s just all the little things that he knows has helped me and help my teammates out. He’s come to a decent amount of our practices as well and just kind of likes to help out.”

The four-star linebacker saw his recruiting skyrocket last fall. He received over 15 offers from Power Five schools and the recruiting has yet to slow down. His latest offers have come from schools including Alabama, Florida State, Michigan and others.

Merritt has taken unofficial visits to Kansas and plans to return to Lawrence on Tuesday for the basketball game against Kansas State. Members of the KU coaching staff made stops at Blue Valley in the early evaluation period.

Head coach Lance Leipold visited the school and linebackers Chris Simpson has been involved in the recruiting.

“It’s been really fun getting to know him,” Merritt said of Simpson. “The part that I love about our relationship is the fact that we don’t always talk about football. We talk about anything. I mean, we have a pretty good relationship. We talk a couple of times a week.”

Merritt plans to narrow his list of schools to 10 soon. Two of his official visits are set to Oklahoma and Nebraska with more to come. This spring he said he will visit Ole Miss, Alabama, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.

“There are things I am looking for in a school,” Merritt said. “One is stability in a head coach. I want to play for a coach who I know in my heart that he’ll be there for three or four years. I want to play for a position coach who’s going to develop me on and off the field as a human being as well.

He continued: “Another thing I’d say is I want to play for a winning program. I want to play for a team who is definitely going to be in the Top 25 and winning games. I want a chance at a national championship. I want to be able to go to a school where I enjoy the city, where even if I wasn’t playing football, I would love to live there.”