By Jared Fields, Sports Editor
Jessica Johnson earned a spot on the ACU softball team without ever trying out in front of a Wildcat coach. Instead, like many players on the roster, Johnson gained attention from Wildcat coaches from video clips on a Web site.
Johnson said she wanted to play college softball but was running out of options her senior year of high school.
“They were going to fly out here for tryouts,” head coach Chantiel Wilson said. “I told them to save their money and send a video.”
The video, which included some defensive clips and at-bats, convinced the coaches Johnson was worthy of a spot on the team.
“Putting my video online was the greatest thing that could happen to me,” Johnson said. “It makes it easier for some people to get recruited.”
Sending a video to a coach is nothing new, but the ways prospective college athletes and coaches interact has drastically changed over the years. The Internet and other developing technologies give coaches and recruits far more opportunities to find one another.
Traditional Recruiting
Don D. Hood said he doesn’t think recruiting methods have changed, but what it takes to attract athletes has changed. Hood, ACU’s head track and field coach, grew up around the sport. His dad, Don, coached the Wildcats in the ’80s, and Don D. has seen the change in recruiting through the years.
“When I was I college watching my dad, it was just a phone call,” Don D. said.
In the competitive recruiting world, “just a phone call” doesn’t get the results for coaches it once did.
“He might go visit their house, but you didn’t have to fly them in and wine-’em and dine-’em,” Don D. said.
Now recruits look at how nice locker rooms, residence halls, cafeterias and, most importantly, equipment is in the program.
“Now it’s more than just recruiting, you almost have to buy them,” Don D. said. “I don’t mean illegally, you just have to show them that you’ll get more stuff, whereas before it was, ‘how good of a coach are you and what kind of an education am I going to get.'”
For Don D., staying ahead of the competition in recruiting involves many aspects of his job outside of technology, like scoping out a wide range of possible recruits in the U.S and internationally.
“Here, there are so many connections,” Don D. said. “You’ve got missionaries in Kenya that are calling. I’ve got friends all over. I’ve got friends at D-I colleges where if they can’t get a kid, they’ll call me instantly.”
Don D. also sends out about 300 questionnaires a year and receives about 150 back; he receives an additional three or four completed questionnaires online a day and calls coaches about other athletes he’s interested in recruiting. In one year Don D. said he hears from up to 1,500 people.
Head football coach Chris Thomsen said he looks at about 1,200 players a year. Thomsen keeps a database on his computer of players the coaching staff wants to pursue. Of the 145 players in Thomsen’s database, he said just seven or eight players will end up as a Wildcat.
Like any other sport, Thomsen and his staff have to evaluate many players.
Thomsen says his process is similar to most schools. He subscribes to a service called Texas Films that gives him access to game film of every 4A and 5A school in Texas.
When Thomsen sees a player he likes, he follows up by contacting coaches and teachers to find out more about the player.
Compared to head women’s basketball coach Shawna Lavender, Thomsen’s recruiting methods are more traditional. But, Lavender said the “old-fashioned” way is still the best.
“And that’s never going to change,” she said.Downside of TechnologyThe abundance of information online gives coaches a chance to follow their sport on a more nationwide scale than ever before. It also gives players the opportunity to be seen by more than just area schools.
Assistant softball coach Casey Wilson is in charge of most of the recruiting efforts for the team. Casey said 10 years ago to learn about a player coaches had to rely mainly on phone calls and mail. Now he says there are too many players.
Coach Lavender knows to take the good and the bad with technology benefits.
“Now with the mass e-mails and mass resumes that come out through the Internet, I think we get a lot more hits,” Lavender said. “I think we get more information from kids that don’t even know it’s coming to us.
“I guess it’s a catch-22. You get a lot of good ones, but then you get a lot more information from the kids where they’re sending it to 700,000 coaches.”
Whether sorting through video or stacks of paper, coaches have to sort through the information one way or another.
Chantiel Wilson sees things the same as Lavender.
“I think a negative to technology is that there are some players who will draft up a form letter and send it to as many coaches as possible,” Chantiel Wilson said.
Then coaches aren’t getting players with a genuine interest in playing at ACU, but players who just want any type of scholarship, she said. The accessibility of coaches has caused some problems for recruiters.
“I have got letters addressed to other coaches,” Chantiel said. “Like – Coach Candrea.”
Don D. gets calls from parents and coaches who say their kid is going to be a star.
“Then you get a video of them and you think, ‘oh man, there’s no way,'” he said. “You can’t keep up with all the people you get in, so you have to make quick judgments a lot of times.”
New Technology
Recruits who have grown up in the computer age are more technology savvy than ever before, and coaches find themselves competing to stay with the times. Along with Web sites, text messaging and instant messaging are also changing the way some coaches approach recruits.
Lavender is one coach willing to adapt to the times.
“The text messaging, the IM and all that kind of stuff, that’s what kids do now so you have to be able to do it,” Lavender said. “You have to be able to learn how to do those things. I think that’s been a huge change.”
The NCAA limits the number of phone calls coaches are allowed to make to a recruit. Most coaches only get one call per week, but they can e-mail juniors and seniors as much as they want. The access to instant communication soothes the need coaches feel to stay in contact with a recruit.
“Just the instant ‘hey, how’d your game go tonight’ makes it a lot quicker to communicate than it was before,” Lavender said.
Coaches also have access to more players on Web sites devoted to certain sports. Some sites update game scores and stats to be seen nationwide by anyone. This helps coaches track a player throughout a season or in out-of-season leagues.
“I wouldn’t say that I found players through the Internet, but there are a lot that I followed through the Internet,” Lavender said.
The price of technology has come with a learning curve for those who haven’t been around computers all their lives. Whether coaches are fresh out of college or on the brink of retirement, time has to be put into learning something new.
“It takes me 30 minutes to type out a small text message, and they text me back in like two seconds,” Lavender said.
Not all coaches are taking the time to get into all of the messaging. Chantiel Wilson said she doesn’t have the time to instant message. Other coaches don’t even consider it.
However, for Lavender something like e-mail or instant messaging provides an effective and legal way to stay in contact with a prospective player on a daily basis when schools with bigger budgets will send a recruit something every day to attract top-talent. From a cost perspective, sending e-mails are more budget-friendly than sending packets through the mail every day.
“We recruited some kids against D-I schools, and I told them right up front ‘I’m not going to be sending you something every single day, but we want you here,'” Lavender said.
Despite the growth in technology, Lavender said older coaches have an even tougher time adjusting to the technology and keeping pace with other coaches. Coaches that don’t know how to use the Internet continue to sift through paper and make phone calls.
“I know coaches that have been in it for 15-20 years, and they have no clue,” Lavender said. “Some of the coaches I’ve talked to just had to learn how to do it.” Getting ResultsJessica Johnson is a success story. No matter how much technology helps or hinders coaches’ recruiting styles, Johnson is batting near .500 this season and is at the top of most offensive categories.
But she said the outcome would have been different if she not had a computer.
“If it wouldn’t have been for a computer, I would either be at a junior college or not playing at all,” Johnson said. “Would I be playing at ACU? Probably not.”
