Traverse City West quarterback Brayden Tillman draws early college interest

Traverse City West is heading into the next two football seasons with a sophomore quarterback already on college radars, and the attention around Brayden Tillman is growing faster than his high school career has unfolded. Tillman, a 2028 prospect listed at about 6-foot-4 and 170 to 180 pounds, has offers from Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Kent State and Bowling Green, with visits to Michigan and Michigan State already on his résumé.

That recruiting run gives the Titans a rare kind of visibility for a player who still has weeks left in his sophomore year. The timeline attached to Tillman’s recruitment shows how quickly it accelerated: Eastern Michigan offered him and hosted him for a visit Jan. 24, 2026, then he visited Michigan on March 21, Wisconsin on April 11 and Michigan State on April 18. Bowling Green, Kent State and Western Michigan all added offers on May 11. He also has had visits scheduled or completed to Purdue and Nebraska, signaling that interest has reached beyond the Mid-American Conference and into Big Ten country.

For Traverse City West, the bigger story is what Tillman’s rise says about the program now being built in Garfield Township. The Titans play in the Saginaw Valley League, finished 5-5 in 2025 and are coached by James Wagner, who was hired in 2022 after coaching at Summit High School in Colorado. West serves roughly 1,400 to 1,500 students, which places Tillman’s profile inside one of the region’s larger and more established school settings rather than a small outlier program.

Tillman is also a three-sport athlete, which makes the next stretch of his development more complicated than a typical recruiting cycle. He still has two high school seasons left, yet his calendar is already filling with college visits and the kind of attention that usually arrives much later for most quarterbacks. That means Traverse City West will spend the next two years managing not only game plans and league play, but also the public spotlight that comes with one of its own becoming a priority target for Division I staffs.

For West fans, the immediate stakes are clear. Tillman’s recruitment is not just a personal milestone; it is a sign that the Titans are producing a player with the size, arm profile and early projection major programs want to evaluate before his junior season even begins. If the attention keeps building, Traverse City West’s upcoming football seasons will be watched far beyond Grand Traverse County.