Exhausting all options: How to recruit when you can’t recruit
Jeff Mountain does most of his recruiting in the summer for W&J baseball.
Brett Shimek
Mike Conte
Daniel Caulfield
It’s an interesting dilemma.
How do you recruit high school athletes from the spring sports if they don’t have a spring sports season?
That’s what college coaches and recruiters are trying to figure out all across the country after the coronavirus threatens to shut down all spring activities, including baseball, softball and track.
Every coach has a different way of handling recruiting, many of them depending on their assistant coaches to do much of the legwork and computer work required.
Because the virus forced the shutdown of colleges and high schools, making a trip to see what a college campus looks like is almost out of the question for many recruits.
Meanwhile, college coaches are trying to be innovative in handling the recruiting situation.
The interesting part is there is no one way to handle it.
If the PIAA eliminates the high school spring sports season, it won’t affect the baseball team at Washington & Jefferson College as much as it might another program. That’s because head coach Jeff Mountain has done a lot of his recruiting already. He really dives into it during the summer months, when camps and tournaments are held.
“For us, the real impact would be if we couldn’t get out in the summer,” said Mountain. “That’s more of our time, baseball time. One of our assistants, Nic Rush, is relentless. He’s at the tournaments. All our assistants do a great job. It’s hard for us to get to a lot of high school games because we’re playing. If this stretches out into the summer, we might have to depend more on the high school coaches and the summer coaches who are familiar with our program. We might have to recruit them blindly.”
Players can always recruit themselves by sending out videos of themselves in games. But Mountain is cautious about going that route.
“We’ve recruited guys that way but it’s been our experience that many of them don’t work out,” said Mountain. “We want to recruit as many of them we can see.”
Mountain, who has been at W&J for 17 seasons, said he gets most of his players out of Western Pennsylvania schools. He uses the spring sports to showcase his team to possible future players by inviting them to the games, which are played next to Wild Things Park in North Franklin Township.
The Presidents play in the Presidents Athletic Conference and have been a very successful program. That makes W&J an attractive place for players with NCAA Division III talent.
Mountain does not have scholarship money to give out in the recruiting process, but he does have the ability to offer financial aid that lowers the cost of coming to W&J.
The NCAA granted college seniors another year of eligibility but that is not a tempting option in the lower NCAA divisions.
“Most of our seniors already have jobs waiting for them,” Mountain said. “It’s a no-brainer for them.”
The process
For high school players, this is a time of frustration and disappointment.
Jimmy Sadler, a junior shortstop for Chartiers-Houston, is relieved he did not get caught in this web of confusion over recruiting. He committed to West Virginia in January of 2019.
“It was my dream school ever since I was old enough to know what it was,” said Sadler. “As soon as I got the offer, I committed. Everything fit.”
Some of Sadler’s friends had not made up their minds and the possibility of losing the season would be a major hurdle.
“Maybe that could ruin their chances,” Sadler said. “If they have only one or two offers, it might push them into summer ball.
“I worked hard all offseason for this, and so did everyone else. If we don’t play, that would hurt.”
At Waynesburg University, softball coach Brett Shimek spends most of his recruiting time in the Western Pennsylvania area. But the tentacles do reach the northern part of West Virginia and Columbus, Ohio, a hotbed for softball.
“We go to tournaments (in the offseason), talk to the coaches and definitely scout,” said Shimek, who coaches in the summer with Dan and Tricia Alderson for the last six years. Having those connections have definitely helped us.”
Shimek takes advantage of every recruiting tool available, and one of the more helpful events for the recruiting process occurs in the summer, when the program hosts a tournament.
At these events, Shimek and his assistant coaches can get an up-close-and-personal view of some of the talent in the area. Passing the eyeball test is important as far as Shimek is concerned
Many schools are becoming more high-tech and Waynesburg is one of them. The school offers a virtual tour of the campus on its website. Shimek couples that with creating strong relationships with the areas high school coaches, which are invaluable during the evaluation process.
“I feel horrible for all the seniors out there, high school and college,” said Shimek, a graduate of Waynesburg High School. “It makes it hard to recruit when you can’t go to games. Ultimately, I feel relationships are very important. Our recruits for 2020-2021, I stay in touch and make sure everything is OK. We answer any questions they have.”
Getting help
At California University, Daniel Caulfield has an advantage in recruiting that only a few other track and field or cross-country coaches can brag about in NCAA Division II. The WPIAL holds its annual cross country championships on the Vulcans’ home course, exposing hundreds of athletes to California’s 3.1-mile test at Roadman Park as well as offering a glimpse of the campus, which lies about one mile away from the cross country course.
“That’s definitely a benefit for us, but not just the track kids and cross country kids, but for kids in general,” he said. “To me, it’s one of the nicest campus in the state system.”
Under these circumstances, he uses the internet to find recruits.
“There are some great running websites and MileSplit is one of them,” said Caufield, the two-timePSAC Women’s Cross Country Coach of the Year who is in his seventh season as the head coach. “Pretty much all kids in Pennsylvania, if they compete in track and field, have a profile that is updated after running an event.
“The downside is you can’t go to the high school, you can’t send letters. So you try to find them on things like Instagram or Snapchat and messaging them that way.”
Caufield said the program holds fundraisers with an cross country camp the main event in August.
Because the roster is well over 100 athletes when you combine track and field and cross-country, Caulfield certainly has his work cut out for him during the recruiting process. He also depends on his assistant coaches, Sandy Estep, Brady Wert and Tori Paterra-Pomillio, and said he finds their work invaluable in keeping the programs competitive.
“Unlike other sports, in track and cross country you get to run against the best in the country if you are good enough,” said Caulfield. “If you are a good football player, you won’t be playing in the Orange Bowl unless you are at a Division I school. But we’ve had kids on our team run in the Senior Nationals and the Olympic Trials because times don’t lie.”
Like Caulfield, head baseball coach Mike Conte can offer scholarship money. Normally, programs divide the scholarship money up in order to provide as many athletes as possible with a small amount.
Conte said there are some very good high school programs in the area and there is a great challenge in recruiting.
“I think the days ahead are going to be a challenge in every venue,” said Conte, who has been baseball coach at Cal for 24 seasons. “I think we are presented with new things each day. We work hard to collect all pertinent information on players. It is quintessential to use every avenue in recruitment.”