They came from as far away as Fort Walton Beach and Homestead, Jacksonville and Orlando as the final weekend before spring practice was a two-day football fest at Cardinal Gibbons High.

On Saturday, over 300 prospects showed up to test and play football. On Sunday, 50 kicking, punting and long snapping prospects attended the special teams portion of the event with coach Tim Conrad getting athletes ready to attract college scholarships.

With the NFL Draft serving as the perfect backdrop of where many of these young football players wanted to be some day, the first ever Elite Scouting Services Combine came to Fort Lauderdale with a unique approach of getting players exposure, parents involved and promoting the event and the players via 790 The Ticket, which held a two-hour broadcast with Bruce Warner and former Miami Hurricane Gerard Daphnis and included several of the events' players and coaches.

"What we did when getting this together was to make it different than the rest of the combines, and give the parents and family members something they could be huge part of," said ESS President Charles Fishbein. "With an economy that is really tough on all of us, we understand that colleges will be pressed to spend as much money on recruiting as they have in the past. They need help, and we certainly want to give them as much as we can."

With cameras rolling, pens writing and eyes on every prospect in attendance, parents had the unique opportunity to be involved in every step of the combine, which began with a morning registration and culminated with football drills in the afternoon. In between, the athletes were tested and timed, and the parents were impressed.

"I have taken my two sons to Nike Camps and other events the past few years and I have never, ever felt as comfortable about anything as I was with this event," said single parent Sara Morley of Cooper City. "We had the chance to walk around to every part of the field and see for ourselves what our kids were doing. If this is the combine of the future, count me in every year."

While most events publicize times and other testing information on the internet, the purpose of the Elite Scouting Services event was to take everything from the combine and send it all to colleges across the country. That gives all the schools a huge jump on the present as well as the future, which showcased rising seniors, juniors, sophomores and even freshmen. Not one time or measurement was released for publication.

"Having been involved in so many combines through the years, the one thing that has always bothered me is when athletes leave and they are not happy with a test result or a measurement," Fishbein said. "In this day of the powerful internet, all the hard work that a coach puts into developing an athlete can be wiped away in seconds if negative information gets out."

The host school Cardinal Gibbons led the way with the most attendees, including highy-regarded receiver Shawn Corker, but the Chiefs were not alone. St. Thomas (Gio Bernard, Connor Armstrong, Charlie Cormier, Jake Ruddock, Edmund Mussa, Benjamin Hopfinger, Michael Palardy, Nolan Bieck, Matthew Wilkinson, Hunter Coddington, Matthew D'Attile, Jonathan Morin, Frederick Sutton, Reed Webster and Vinnie Mauro), McArthur (Christopher Glaze, Mikhail Francis, Stephen Montgomery, Denzell McCullum, Jovan Murphy, Javon Smith, Arthur Fair and Raymond Abel) and  Hollywood Hills (Tony Grimes, Anthony Yerou, Reginald McKnight, Ronald Vargas, Caleb Vincent, Jess Goins, De'Andric Gray, Jonathan Duverglas, Justin Bosley, Michael Bloom, Matthew Bloom, Jamal Cook, Miles Harrelson, Joshua Phipps and Clarence Murphy) also gave the combine a numbers boost. Key athletes from Northeast (Harold De La Rosa, Santiago Pierre, Evan Krivjanik, Richard Perez, Greg Williams,  and Dennis Aaron), Cooper City (Corey Davis, Steven Sarbey, Jake Sera, Gregory Roy, Daniel Mervos, Myles Notkin, Oscar Oridales, Devonte Anderson and Nicholas Allen), South Plantation (Robbie Anderson, Khari Burke and Constantin Baptiste) and Stranahan (Jerry Bellot and David Myrthil) also came out with plenty of talented kids. As did Nova with quality athlete Arione Scott.

"Having been on the baseball field this spring, it's good to get back into football," said Mauro, who was a huge part of the Raiders' national championship run. "I haven't got any football related things this spring, but the ESS combine was something that really got me thinking about football again."

Other BCAA schools that attended the event included Cypress Bay (Joe McNamara, Alejandro Belmonte and Derek Soven), Miramar (Stephen Bissett, Keondrick Lyn, Mahlik Hunter, Andre Hibbert, Kevo Gonzalez, Rashad Gholston and Christopher Coleman), Douglas (Corey Goldstein and Justin Birkenholz) and Plantation (Michael Anderson). South Broward showed up with Djwany  Mera, Jermaine Dumeng, Dakota Liles, Bryan Parnes and Trevaughn Faircloth. So did Dillard with Wayne Lyons, Brandon Howard and Conrad Johnson, Pompano with Chase McCallum.

In addition to Corker, Cardinal Gibbons also had Drew Zloch, Danny Adams, Alex Borgert, Jeffrey Brennan, Jack Crittenberger, Akil Daniels, Chris Rapka, Daniel Ring, Nick Rios, Michael Romanelli, Frank D'Annunzio, Denzel Wimberly, Audrey Woodson, John Mahoney, Victor Manuel, Michael Short, Ryan Singh, Garrett Smith, C.J. Hart, Keeland Wilks, Nico Whigham, Jerrel Watson, and Joshua, Jack and Jeffrey St. Thomas.

Fort Lauderdale was there with John Dieurestil, Garrett Gross and Donovan Fort. So was Everglades with Johnathan Gonell. Western came to the event as well with Tevin Allen and Ryan Nelson, and a much-improved Taravella was there with David D'Attilo, Brandon Steg and Shawn Weathers.

You can reach Larry Blustein via e-mail at FloridaKids1@hotmail.com. He can also be heard every Thursday night (9-10) on the Miami Dolphins High School Gridiron Report on WQAM (560 AM).