Recruiting 101.

It’s a Thursday afternoon and I am sitting at the airport waiting for my next flight to board. I am on my way to my first weekend of recruiting. This past week has been filled with emotions. It began sitting in my head coach’s office and watching the brackets for the national tournament be announced live on Facebook. For days we were in the dark after we lost our semifinal match, as we were told we would either be the first team out, or the last team to get in. Whether or not that was true, we knew that it would be a close call as only 45 teams would get in and we were right on the cusp. Unfortunately, we did not make it this year.

In the next breath, we began looking at the upcoming tournaments we would attend as a staff to strengthen our squad for next season. Recruiting is something that is entirely new to me. It is difficult for me to have complete buy in for it because I am recruiting players that if they came to the school, I might only work with them for one year, or maybe not at all. It is difficult to know what to say only being at a small school in a small town for a few months. It’s also difficult because I am asking them to invest in the program for four years, while I may not be there to see their commitment through and help them along their journey.

What I also realized is that there is a lot more to recruiting than merely showing up to the tournament as a coach. There is actually a lot of behind the scenes planning that takes place, such as making an ecel spreadsheet with a schedule that makes sense. It is important to consider factors such as which is the best bracket, then what fields are you able to see the most players at (some of the larger tournaments have multiple sites oftentimes far away from one another), and then fitting in players who email you specifically to watch their games and whom you liked whatever information they sent you. Maybe some of the bigger name schools can just show up because they already have players who are on their radar and have specifically made contact with them. However, as a small no-name school in the middle of nowhere, I realize we have to cast a much larger net. What is overwhelming to me when I actually sat back to do the math, calculating three days of games, I will be watching 8 teams every hour, which means I am watching potentially 123 athletes per hour, times ten hours of games, that total adds to 1,230 players a day, which is well over 2,000 athletes in one tournament. I’m told that once I know what I am looking for, things get a lot easier. I do believe that. But how is it even possible to watch this many athletes, knowing you’re only seeing a small snapshot of them and being willing to invest X amount of money in scholarships because of that one thing you saw them do?

I’ve decided to reframe recruiting to a positive experience of learning how to ask or gauge what people want and need. I think that there are a lot of transferable skills that I can take away from this experience even if I do not remain in college soccer or have to recruit in the future. In the meantime, wish me luck and I’d love to hear any tips you all have!