Recruiting - cont.
Those are tough numbers to swallow. Especially when you realize you are fighting for fractions of scholarships and you have spent thousands of dollars on personal training for many years.
For me personally, I am recruiting kids across 5 different age ranges for 5 different graduating classes. A lot of the time, I am unsure of my specific needs at that time. I do not want to tell a recruit I do not need him right now because in a week or two I may need that recruit. Our roster is constantly changing. It can be full one week and we have a spot open the next. Sometimes it will be full for months and then you have two openings. There are a lot of unknowns in the world of recruiting. With what you DON’T know and what the recruiter doesn’t know; recruiting is tough!
I do my best to be the most honest and upfront person possible. With so many unknowns in my world, I feel this is the best way for me to go about my job. I get a lot of emails every day. I get a lot of texts and phone calls every day. I get a lot of unsolicited emails every day. I do my best to look at every email and respond to the emails that are directed towards me. I understand that Player A was the best player in little league, Player A was the best player for his FR, JV, and Varsity teams, and the best player you have ever seen, but……that does not mean he can play for me or that we will need/want him. Like I said, nothing is personal. I look for certain things in players and every school/organization will have their own traits that they look for. If you do not match the traits I want, I am simply not going to recruit you. If we have five SS and you are the best SS around, I’m not going to recruit you because we already have five SS. Nothing is personal.
My job as a recruiter is to gather as much information as possible in my recruiting area. I need to identify and evaluate the best talent from my surrounding states. Evaluating talent includes but is not limited to stats, video, and coach’s evaluations. I will look to any resource when it comes to gathering information. I talk to high school coaches, high school counselors and even past travel coaches. It is not very difficult to evaluate talent. However, it is extremely difficult to evaluate character. When kids step onto our field, the greatest separator is character. Why? Because everyone is about the same. I need the kid that is not afraid to compete. I need the kid that I am not worried about in the classroom. I need the kid that is going to do the RIGHT things when nobody is looking. Because if you can do all of those things, you may have a chance to compete for us.
At the end of the day, my job is to bring the best possible talent into our program. It is like putting the pieces of the puzzle together. A puzzle that sometimes will not mature for 5 years but nevertheless a puzzle. I will use any information I gather to make an evaluation on a person. It is my job to gather information and see if that person will fit into our puzzle. A lot of times, I will show up to find reasons to not recruit a player. In my last article, I will tell you what you need to be doing to assist someone in my position.