Blogs : John Wise

Recruiting for the Shockers

Warning: the following blog contains very little humor, for those of you looking for humor today I would recommend checking out the following website: http://www.milkandcookies.com/keywords/willferrell/

The biggest thing that most athletes don’t realize when they’re in college is the work that goes on behind the scenes to try to assemble a well-rounded track and field program.  Luckily I have worked for Steve Rainbolt for several years and have learned from one of the best as to how it is done.

Recruiting is the lifeblood of building and maintaining a strong college track and field program.  I was once told and have found the following statement to be true:  A good recruiter will beat a good coach nine times out of 10.  What we strive to do at Wichita State is be great recruiters AND great coaches.  Its tough to do both well and usually coaches are better at one or the other.  Great athletes make coaches look a lot better than they really are and less than great athletes have the same effect the other way.

There are two ways to be successful at recruiting.  #1 – Work for a school like Oregon, Ohio State, UCLA or Florida where you can pick from some of the top kids in the country and have a good chance at getting them with some effort or #2 – Work your butt off 7 days a week from morning to evening because your school doesn’t have the reputation of some of the aforementioned places.

At Wichita State, we are the latter.  Our reputation has been getting better with the continued improvement of our program as well as our athletic department gaining more recognition across the country (Basketball ranked #10 in the AP this week baby!).  But even with those things going well, we just aren’t able to get in on some of the top recruits in the country every year.  Believe me we try!

First of all we have to be patient and know that we aren’t going to sign a lot in the early signing period.  We may get lucky and snatch one here and there but for the most part we are looking for commitments as the outdoor season approaches.  It is not uncommon for us to sign kids after their state track meet, although we’d rather not do it that way.

How do we try to organize our recruiting?

We designate a recruiting coordinator (me) who is basically in charge of organizing everything.  There is a lot to do from mailings, depth charts, sending and receiving questionnaires, packets, making calls to high schools, receiving calls from God knows who, putting in paperwork and organizing recruiting visits … the list can go on forever.  Each of our coaches recruit in their event areas and we try to fill the holes in our team looking ahead two years at a time.

At this time of the year most of the activities involve recruiting visits and making recruiting calls.  Some schools have large recruiting weekends centered around home football games where they may bring in dozens of recruits.  We don’t generally do that very often (its tough when you don’t have a football team).  We may have 3-4 on a single day but we feel like we have to give special attention to each and every recruit in order to have a chance with them, especially when we’re recruiting against our Big 12 rivals in the Midwest.

I could tell you that there is some big secret we hold, but to tell you the truth the only secret to getting it done is to make lots of phone calls and talking truthfully about your program to your recruits.  Someone once told me that for every 10 kids you call you will get one to come to your school.  Hopefully we do a little better than that at WSU but it does give an insight as to how competitive the world of college recruiting can be.  There is so much that goes on that I could write a blog solely about our recruiting every week.

The worst thing that happens, and it happens quite often, is when you get a commitment from a recruit and then at the last second they change their mind.  It’s hard not to think about all of the time you spent getting to know this person and then all of a sudden it’s over.  It’s not much different than the feeling of getting dumped by your girlfriend out of the blue.  Not that I would know anything about that. :)  But that goes with the territory, you win some, you lose some.

A week or so ago I had five straight days of recruits on campus.  It was a lot of hard work and a lot of organization.  It was also a lot of free meals!

Now, trying to coach them when they get here is a whole other job.

Thanks

11:11 PM, December 5, 2006 .. Posted by Anonymous

It is great to hear another coach going through the same struggles I am going through. Its nice to hear that I am not the only one making 4 hours of calls tonight. Keep up the good work