# ANTWAN WEATHERS ARRIVES: ILLINOIS’ #2 RANKED PLAYER IN THE CLASS OF 2031
Starts Up Front | National & Global Recruiting Board
Illinois State Rankings — Class of 2031 | Defensive Line
The Announcement
The Starts Up Front National & Global Recruiting Board has named **Antwan Weathers** the **#2 ranked player in the state of Illinois** for the Class of 2031.
He is an eighth grader. He is a defensive lineman. And he has already forced the state to pay attention.
That combination is exactly why this board exists.
Why This Ranking Matters?
Most recruiting platforms find linemen late. They chase skill positions, count touchdowns, and reach the trenches only after a player has already been discovered by someone else.
Starts Up Front was built to reverse that order.
The NGRB is the world’s first national and global recruiting board created exclusively for offensive linemen, defensive linemen, and edge rushers. Every ranking on this board is produced through the SUF proprietary trench evaluation system, applied by our evaluation staff and reviewed before publication.
Placement is earned, verified, and defensible. It is not bought, campaigned for, or handed out on reputation.
Antwan Weathers did not get here through hype. He got here through the same evaluation standard applied to every trench athlete on this board, in every state, in every class.
The Player
Weathers plays defensive line for the **SUF Shockers**, the Illinois-based youth travel program competing in the AYF Conference out of the Plainfield and Bolingbrook corridor.
What separates him is not size alone. Plenty of eighth graders are big. Very few are functional at that size.
Weathers play with a low pad level, heavy hands, and a natural anchor. He absorbs double teams without losing ground and resets the line of scrimmage instead of getting washed out of it. Offenses that try to run at him are forced to run somewhere else. That is the single most valuable skill a young defensive lineman can own, and it is the hardest one to teach.
The frame suggests he is nowhere near finished. The film suggests he already understands leverage.
The Verified Profile.
Name: Antwan Weathers
Position: Defensive Line
Class: 2031
Grade: 8th
State: Illinois
Program: SUF Shockers
NGRB Illinois Ranking:2
Verified measurables, testing results, and NGRB film grade on file with the Starts Up Front evaluation staff.
What Comes Next?
A ranking is a checkpoint, not a finish line.
The Class of 2031 will be evaluated, re-evaluated, and re-ranked every cycle. Weathers now carries a target, and the athletes behind him in Illinois will be measuring themselves against his number.
The development path from here runs through three things:
Hand technique: Dominant young linemen win with size. Dominant college linemen win with hands. The transition starts now.
Verified testing. Numbers travel further than reputation. Combine and camp data raise a profile faster than anything else at this stage.
Consistent film. One highlight reel gets attention. Three seasons of clean, physical, disciplined film gets offers.
Weathers will have access to all three through the SUF camp circuit and the NGRB evaluation pipeline.
The Bigger Picture.
Every athlete ranked on this board represents the founding belief behind Starts Up Front: linemen are the most undervalued, under-recruited, and under-documented athletes in football.
We do not treat the trenches as a secondary category. We treat them as the entire game.
Antwan Weathers is proof. In eighth grade, he holds a verified state ranking that would have been invisible on any other platform for another four years.
He is not a prospect waiting to be found. He has already been found.
CONTROL THE TRENCHES. CONTROL THE GAME.
Starts Up Front National & Global Recruiting Board™ | startsupfrontrecruitingboard.com
Rankings produced and verified by the Starts Up Front evaluation staff.
