“We’ve had five straight years with a first- or second-round pick in the program,” Gophers coach P.J. Fleck said. “There’s going to be another one this year.”
Ersery, the oldest of Charles’ five children, liked a different sport before his uncle, Bill Dudley, convinced him to tag along to football practice one day. Ersery sat in the weight room waiting for Dudley, who is a year older than his nephew. That’s when William Perkins, former head coach at Ruskin, first approached Ersery.
“That’s always been one of our rules,” Perkins said, “you can’t sit down in the weight room. … We had a conversation, ‘Well, why aren’t you playing football?’ He says he’s not really a football player. He’s a basketball guy.”
Perkins invited Ersery to join the team’s after-school weightlifting program.
“From there,” Perkins said, “he continued to come.”
By the following year, as a sophomore, Ersery was a starting offensive tackle and defensive end. By the time he was a junior, Ersery was ascending into a college prospect while making the state tournament in wrestling as a heavyweight and placing fourth in shot put at the state track and field meet; the wrestling and throwing coaches were on the football staff.
