Adamkiersey.weebly.com



Research Paper: RecruitingAdam KierseySiena Heights UniversityLDR 601-AB: LeadershipLarry Schroeder DATE \@ "MMMM d, yyyy" November 3, 2010In the higher levels of sports, such as, college and professional, being competitive and winning is everything and what helps a coach or manager keep his or her job. Professional sports teams work to be competitive and win through drafting players whom have completed there four years of eligibility or have been in college long enough and out of high school for the proper amount of years required for their sport. The only sport that does not require a player to be out of high school for a certain time is baseball. These college players get to their respected schools by being recruited while in high school by college teams. I am going to research the recruiting process that needs to take place for a successful college program. The key points that I am going to touch on are how to find athletes, what to look for in an athlete while scouting, process after scouting athlete, things to discuss with a recruit, and signing the recruit.There are two major ways to find players to recruit. The easiest way is by having a prospective recruit form on the school’s website, which are seen more at smaller colleges or universities. This form will allow the player to answer personal questions about himself, his high school, grade point average, act score, positions he plays, contact information, and what other schools that he is interested in. The recruit form can help find athletes, but is not the most effective way because some of the not so talented athletes can fill these out and a coach may not know the talent of the athlete just by looking at a piece of paper. The second and most effective way of finding potential recruits is by networking and getting to know high school and summer team coaches. Creating relationships with coaches will help a coach gain respect from these other programs (Coach Kolasinski). Once the respect is gained coaches are more willing to talk about your college program with their high school players. The more a player hears about your college and the sports programs the more they are going to be interested in your team. It is amazing to me on how powerful word of mouth can be when is comes to marketing a college sports program. Winning is something that gets looked at, but the more involved I am getting in the coaching aspect, the more I am seeing that if a team has a stable coaching staff with the willingness to working at bettering itself as a whole, the more interested an athlete gets in the school. As a high school coach, during their athlete's junior or senior year is when they should contact the college or university coaches that their athletes are considering. Calls from high school coaches may turn out to be the icing on the cake for the college coach’s interest in an athlete. College coaches know how much time a high school coach has spent with the prospect and their calls can give college coaches extra insight into the athletes and let them know what kind of role models they had during their early years of development (Hurley).When recruiting a student-athlete, the coaches look at several different aspects of the player. Something that has to be looked at first and foremost is how good of a student that athlete is. “When kids come in they have to always remember that they are student-athletes, with the student being first,” (Kolasinski). This saying is something that I heard over and over as a player when I was a member of the Siena Heights University baseball team and it has stuck with me. I used this quote while I coached at the high school level. When I make contact with a high school coach about one of his players, I ask what the player’s grade point average is and what his score was on the ACT. A player’s grades do not mean that the kid is a good athlete, but it does tell what kind of work ethic he or she has Grades are an essential factor in the college game, especially in the last few years with scholarships being taken away if the graduation rate slips to a certain percentage for schools. The pay of college coaches are sometimes tied in to the graduation rate, so that means it is even more important when it is affecting the bottom line. Grades in my opinion are vital during the recruiting process. I say this because if your grades are good, a lot more doors will open for you. If they are bad, more doors will shut for you than anything. Having strong grades (By this, I do mean GPA as well as ACT/SAT) can help you get academic scholarships that will pay for your education. While it doesn’t always mean it, having good grades does imply at times that you have strong character. And that is another essential factor in what college coaches will be looking for at the next level ("The five most," 2009).After a coach finds the grades of a student athlete we like to find the character of the athlete. Character is something that can make or break your chances at receiving a college scholarship. When college coaches are recruiting athletes, they are like private investigators while trying to find out as much information as possible about potential recruit. The coach will talk to the high school coach, any other coaches that they have, assistant coaches, teachers, administrators, and people in the community to get a feel for what type of person you are. If you are a trouble maker as a student, that honestly does hurt your chances of being a scholarship athlete. The coach does not want to recruit that trouble to their school so that player may be someone that they eventually walk away from. The coaches want to be able to recruit high quality kids that make it easy for them to sleep at night. They would prefer not to worry about who is in trouble at 3 AM on a Saturday night. But as shown by many Division I schools, ability does trump character ("The five most," 2009). When reading this I sat back and thought about how true it is about being a coach and not wanting to have to worry about what your players are doing at night and if they are getting in trouble because this is something that we have gone through this year. Work ethic is a belief in the moral benefit and importance of work and its inherent ability to strengthen character (). Coaches want to have kids that are prepared to work hard to get better everyday in the classroom and on the field. Here is an example of a coach talking about a recruit and his work ethic:A good story I heard once regarding work ethic came from a Division I basketball coach. We were talking about why they offered a certain athlete a scholarship. This basketball player was from about as small of a school as they come but he was a talented and had some major size. The college coach knew he was good but what was the tipping point to offer the scholarship? It was when talking with people around the school he heard that the athlete came in every morning at 5 AM to lift weights. As a high school athlete with other priorities in your life, coming in every day that early really shows something about the type of person you are and how bad you want to succeed. Who wouldn’t have wanted to get an extra hour of sleep and not worry about being sore the next day? That work ethic helped this player be a three year starter at the school and eventually named All Conference in the Big 12. Not bad considering his level of high school was the smallest in a state that is not considered a basketball powerhouse ("The five most," 2009).After looking at these characteristics of an athlete, a coach finally gets to looking at a player’s ability to play the game. It doesn’t matter what level or what sport, but the number one thing that a college coach looks for in a potential athlete is their ability in that sport. College coaches are getting paid thousands and sometimes millions of dollars to do their job and they must recruit the best athletes they can to remain in that position. There is no doubt that this ability trumps every other thing on this list. Why do you think people with questionable character and bad grades still end up at some of the best schools in the country? It is because they can flat out play and have what it takes to be successful at that level. Many college coaches are often willing to take a risk on an athlete if they can play ("The five most," 2009).An example of areas of ability for me to look for in a baseball player during the recruiting process are the players hitting, fielding, throwing, and pitching if he is a pitcher. I cannot recruit a player that does not have the arm strength to throw a ball two hundred feet on a line. If a player can do this, then I know he can make a throw at any infield position across the diamond to first base or if he is an outfielder, I know he can make the throw on a line to the cutoff guy or one of the bases. Hitting is important because one, a player has to have the ability to hit a baseball with some authority and two, as a coach we have to see if we feel that athlete is somebody that hits within our program philosophy or that we can teach to with our way. We have a particular way that we want our players to field a ball no matter if they are an infielder or an outfielder. We want them to be able to get behind the ball and then come through it to get their momentum going toward their target they are going to throw to. This also means that they have to have the proper foot work or the ability and athleticism to be taught our programs way. Pitchers that I look to recruit and watch have to be able to locate their pitches for strikes and have more than one pitch that they can throw consistently for a strike. At the college level, one pitch is not going to allow a pitcher to be very successful. I like to recruit pitchers that throw harder because it is tough to get by at this level throwing pitching in the 70’s. Pitchers also have to have good pitching mechanics or throwing motion. I can help a pitcher change some of the mechanic issues, so like with everything else, I need to make sure that he is coachable and willing to change or clean up some of his mechanics. During the process of watching the player’s ability, coaches are also evaluating the player to see if he or she is a fit for their program. Coaches are always evaluating even when talking to a recruit (Kolasinski). A coach’s evaluation can be wrong about an athlete because he may have seen the player on a good day or even a bad day, but that is part of the process of recruiting. As part of a coaching staff, we hope this never happens, but we know that it does sometimes. Part of the evaluation process of a player is looking over notes that a coach takes on the player. Some notes that a coach may write down are the player’s sixty yard dash time, the kind of hitter he is, or the kind of pitcher the young man is. Coaches will also write down where the player hit the ball and how many times he was on base.When the evaluation is done on the player the coach has to decide if they are going to call him or her. In first contact with the player a coach needs to know if that player wants to play for their team at their school. The student should show a clear interest in playing in the coach’s program, specifically, at their college or university. They have to want to come to this institution because the coaches don't want players to transfer to another school after playing only one season. Yes, coaches do lose some players every year to the professional draft but that comes with the territory. The ability to qualify for the professional draft at any time is one of the main reasons that coaches are able to attract the high level of talented players (Riedling, 2008).After talking to a player and making sure that they are interested in coming to institution, the coach needs to find out what educational program the athlete has an interest in. If the college or university does not have the program of interest a coach might have to break off contact with that particular athlete. This is tough to do, but sometimes has to be done because a student-athlete knows what they want to do in their future and are not willing to move away from that desire.The next step is to setup a campus visit for the player. During this visit the player will talk with the coach and then talk with an admissions recruiter to talk about their educational plans and program. Once the recruit is done with admissions they will meet with the coach again and if it is an NAIA school, the player can practice with the team on that day in a practice. Setting up a visit is important because coaches want the athlete to see the campus and meet some of the people that will be involved in their educational life if they choose to come to that school.While on the visit, a coach will talk to the recruit about where they might fit in the program. This can change once practices start and the role can increase or even diminish, depending on how well the athlete performs. I know when I started my college playing career, I wanted to have an idea where I fit in and how I was going to be used. I knew this could change either for the better or the worse, but I wanted to have an idea of where I was starting at.The last issue that coaches talk to potential players about is the possibility of receiving an athletic scholarship. Some schools have a limited amount of scholarship money that can be given to an athlete for an athletic scholarship, depending on the division of the school and what affiliation they are with, such as NAIA or NCAA. The coach has to watch the player closely and rely on their notes about the player to come up with an amount that they think the athlete is worth. This part can be difficult as well because some institutions have an average amount of scholarship per player. Just for the use of an example, this means that we here at Siena Heights might have to have a player average of $3,000 per player. This would not mean that we have to offer every player that amount, but we have to have the team average be $3,000. Some coaches have to get creative when getting money for their recruits because they may not be able to give out athletic scholarship money, which is the case for NCAA Division III colleges.Signing a recruit is actually an easy process, but has some paperwork involved. The first thing that is done by the coach is give a verbal offer to the athlete. We feel most of the time that it is a good idea to give the recruit an offer upfront, especially if it is a highly regarded recruit. The coach will then take that offer to the admissions department to have it put into an early estimation financial aide package. This form tells the recruit and estimation of how much athletic money they will receive, how much academic money they qualify for, and how much federal student loan money they are eligible for. This form then gets sent to them at home. If possible, it is great to get a verbal commitment from the athlete before the national signing day. A verbal commitment will keep other schools away from that athlete, as long as the other schools are following the NAIA or NCAA regulations. There are schools on occasion that are unethical and won’t stop calling an athlete until they sign the letter of intent. Recruiting can be more difficult for the untraditional sports such as men’s volleyball that has started in the last couple years here at Siena Heights University. In talking to Nick Clark, the men’s volleyball graduate assistant, recruiting is very difficult for them because there is no high school, men’s volleyball teams in Michigan. They have to either do a lot of traveling to go see players or really rely on highlight videos sent to them or that they see on YouTube of players (Clark). For the common sports, such as basketball, baseball, football, track, women’s volleyball and softball, we have it easy in the fact that all these sports are played in our backyard. We do travel to see recruits and find better talent than what is in our area sometimes, but we always have our area to recruit from where as men’s volleyball does not.Use work ethic in a SentenceRecruiting is how college coaches make their living. They get paid to coach the teams, but they earn their money and program stability through recruiting the best athletes they can for their program. I have been a part of the recruiting process as a player and now as a coach. I see how much work has to go into it and the dedication that it takes from the college coaches not only to run their team, but run the roads and phones to find the best athletes possible. As a coach, we are to find players that are better than what we already have to make our program better. This doesn’t make for much of a personal life at times for a coach, but we know what we are getting ourselves into and have to always remember that we are the ones that signed ourselves up for the job, not anybody else. Recruiting is a long hard process, but it is something that has to be done to be a successful coach and more importantly a successful program.Work SitedJohn Kolasinski- Siena Heights University Head Baseball Coach, Erin. "The recruitment process for athlete, coach and parents." Coach and Athletic Director 68.10 (1999): 67+. General OneFile. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. five most important attributes college coaches look for in potential athletes. (2009, January 13). Retrieved from Riedling, J. (2008, September 15). College baseball recruiting - an interview with a junior college baseball team coach. Retrieved from Nick Clark-Siena Heights University Men’s volleyball graduate assistant.See images of work ethic ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download