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Coaches Corner – Recruiting
If you are a loyal reader to this site then you probably have experienced the recruiting process in one form or another. (Believe me, being a parent of a recruit is definitely experiencing the process!) Well, I have a niece going through this process now and it got me to thinking about how recruiting works from the coach perspective. Exactly how does it work and how does it differ between programs? Surely a larger public DIII college/university does things differently from a small private liberal arts college. I figured there were differences between a top volleyball program and a program fighting for conference tournament spots. Heck, there has to be differences experienced by the very high academic school and let’s not even get into the location of the school. I decided to reach out to a number of coaches who have foolishly said they follow the site and even a couple I’ve never encountered to see what stories and information I could dig up. This article is the result of that effort.
I started with Juniata because don’t all things these past few years in DIII volleyball start with the Eagles? I really wanted to see what the defending champions did as a baseline before reaching out to the other coaches. Associate Head Coach Casey Dale was nice enough to respond. (In my email to coaches I mentioned a number of different ways I thought programs found players.)
“We have a mixture of everything. There are certainly players that reach out to us and we have to decipher if they are a good fit or not and sometimes, we see video of them and want to see them play live to make sure they are a good fit.”
One area I was really curious about is do programs find players when looking specifically at other players. Casey touched on this, “In addition, when we see these players play live, we hope this leads to other players that could be a good fit. My goal when I go to a club tournament is to see almost all or most teams in the 17’s and 16’s divisions. If I have time to see any 18’s who are uncommitted and we are still looking for a player or two, then I will watch some of those teams as well.”
I’m not sure Casey is being very helpful here as I believe his approach is to just watch every U16 to U18 player in the nation! Well, that’s one way to win a championship or two or three.
I was also curious about the importance of team camps. Casey said, “We invite a lot of people we are talking with to our camp over the summer as well, and that is a great opportunity for us to work with them directly.”
I later asked if this was mandatory and he replied, “If we have already seen them play before the camp and feel comfortable enough to say we want them, we will do that. If we have not seen them a lot or enough and are unsure and they come to the camp, that will help with the decision.”
Good stuff from Juniata but what I get from this is that (with apologies to Ted Lasso and I’m cleaning this up) Casey Dale, he’s here, he’s there, he’s every freaking where in his pursuit for players.
Juniata’s Head Coach Heather Pavlik chimed in a little later and made this point, “We generally get our players through going out to all of the major club tournaments and contacting them first. Occasionally we get someone good contacting us first but most of the time it is the other way around especially because our players come from all areas of the country.”
As you’ll read in a bit, I think every program has this approach but it just cuts differently with me when the three-time defending champion reaches out to you and says they are interested. There is a sense of gravitas to that initial communication from Juniata.
The first coach I actually mentioned this story idea to was Leah Bernier (Gettysburg Head Coach). She had crossed paths with my niece at the Triple Crown Event (Kansas City) although I knew my niece hadn’t sent out any emails at that time. My niece had attended a showcase event prior to the tournament and that’s where Leah spotted her. Leah mentioned, “Triple Crown is one of the few showcases that I feel like I can get actually find good talent. Most of the time we fish kids from watching their teammates that have contacted us or just seeing them do something amazing as we walk by! Or just standing in one spot and rotating between courts in the division that suits our level.”
I found this remarkable because I remember my daughter’s recruiting days. As a parent, it was life or death whether she played or not a particular match and our greatest fear was that she would have to rotate out when a coach walked by the court. I don’t think we ever did a showcase but here we see an example that they can be very beneficial.
Leah went on to say, “We do cast a wide net so the odds that most of this pans out are pretty low but we have to shoot our shot! It’s becoming a little bit easier and more kids are responding now that I can tell them we are a top 25 program though!”
Another great piece of insight here. Gettysburg is definitely a program on the rise having made the NCAA Tournament these past two years and they are seeing their reputation carrying down to the recruit level. Let’s face it, before their recent success, if someone said “What is Gettysburg known for?”, we would all instantly say the Carlisle Sports Emporium, which is just down the road from Gettysburg. (A little civil war humor for you. Too soon?)
I did want to pull in a larger public college/university and I heard back from a couple of coaches. There can be some animosity behind the scenes with these schools because it can be a tad unfair for a 14,000-student public institution competing against a 1,000-student private institution. But, is the recruiting process different for these public schools and do they get an advantage here?
UW-Oshkosh Head Coach Jon Ellmann responded. (By the way, Jon always tells me I’m his favorite DIII blogger/writer. There just isn’t anyone close. I hope Ricky doesn’t find out.) “As a larger public school, we do get a fair number of Potential Student Athletes (PSAs) reaching out to us. Although there is volume there, not many of those emails equate to roster spots. Some however surely may!”
So, yes, it seems that a larger school equates to having the fish come to them as opposed to Gettysburg casting a wide net. Another key difference was that Jon said he wasn’t a big fan of the skills camp hosted by other entities. He didn’t feel like they provide enough exposure for the athletes to really identify whether they are a good fit or not.
Jon then touched on something that the previous coaches also mentioned, “Once a player reaches out to us and their film is good enough to get them into our group boards/rankings, then it’s our responsibility to see them play live a multitude of times. While watching recruits that we have previously communicated with, we often times see additional/new uncommitted student-athletes that we may reach out to following the event that then get folded into the process.”
I find it a bit fascinating that each coach has mentioned that they will find players while watching other (tagged) players. From a PSA perspective, it obviously helps playing with other good players that have college aspirations.
Kean Head Coach Don Perkins is always good for a long email/discussion and he did not disappoint with this topic. I think I may have to just start publishing his emails as standalone articles! They are always entertaining and informative. Kean University is another large (to DIII) public university located in Union, New Jersey, which is about a 30-minute train ride from New York City. Don started off with, “You asked about where we get players…honestly it ebbs and flows. There are recruits that e-mail us, and it’s always easier to sign them, but I laugh when I hear about coaches that only recruit players who e-mail them. Currently a little over 60% of incoming e-mails are defensive specialists so we would have the shortest team in the country!” (I’m a huge fan of the “…” in all correspondences, by the way.)
Don went on (maybe on page 28 of the email) about how Kean University isn’t really well known outside of the state but as the program has gotten better, “The volume and talent level of players contacting us has gotten higher – the bottom is the same but the top end has improved over time, but in getting the program to this point we needed to land players who never heard of us or had no [initial] interest in us.”
A couple of fun things in these last two quotes. First, it has to be really tough on the DS to find a college. If you are a PSA DS, it sounds like the earlier the better to get your name out there. (Although, I also know that the DS is often the last position a coach will commit to during their recruiting year.) We haven’t really talked about location specifically, yet, but Don mentions it here. Like UW-Oshkosh, they get a lot of inquiries but not a lot from outside of the state. For this reason, Kean also needs to cast that net.
We have talked about skills camps and Don weighs in here, “At one point we had a pretty good thing going with a college prep camp with coaches from a dozen colleges that attracted players from all over the country. We also had position clinics, and I went to the CollEDGE Camp and found a player we really liked… About half our roster we found through camps/clinics – a couple came to the camp as recruits but most became recruits after attending the camps. Then the camp landscape changed – for-profit college prospect clinics boomed and our college prep camp withered, and then the pandemic so things changed. Since ’21 it’s been split between players we found, and those that have written to us.”
I really wanted to include Schreiner University and Head Coach Jeremiah “Bullfrog” Tiffin for a number of reasons. First, most people aren’t going to know much about Schreiner and they haven’t had a lot of success in the very tough SCAC where you have to battle Trinity and Southwestern twice a season (although not anymore with their move to the SAA). But Schreiner is a program that has started to rise up with the hiring of Bullfrog. (By the way, Schreiner sits in the Hill Country of Texas in a pretty location about an hour north of San Antonio.) Bullfrog (yes, I want that nickname to stick) kind of walked me through the players he has recruited the last 4-years. One thing he mentioned was that he started late in 2022 and really couldn’t recruit that class. This is a common story I get from coaches when schools hire close to the start of the season (looking at you University of Dallas). It’s a huge disadvantage and it amazes me that Athletic Directors would do this. Bullfrog mentioned that he leaned on multiple club programs for assistance that first year. One thing I try to tell people with kids in the club program is not to rely on the club for their recruitment. But, here’s a case where it’s probably wise to let your club know if your PSA is still looking late in the process.
For the 2023 recruits, Bullfrog said two were from an email and then watching video, two were from coaching connections who had reached out because the PSAs had family in the area, one was a local player that wanted to stay close to home and the last was someone Bullfrog saw at a club tournament. With his 2024 class (and 2025) he’s seeing more recruits from his showcase camp or other skill camps. It does seem like the showcase camps are more important for the smaller schools than the bigger programs. I’ll also point out that both Don and Bullfrog mentioned cases where a PSA just came up and introduced themselves after a match and that started the recruitment process. Leason here is don’t be shy!
Just down the road from Schriner is Trinity and we have another input from a top program thanks to Head Coach Julie Jenkins. Because the Tigers are a top volleyball program, it’s not surprising when Julie wrote, “Many have reached out to us. It’s easy to overlook a recruit who has emailed because of the volume of emails that we all get. So, it’s key to pay attention to each and every email and quickly decide if you should pursue them after viewing their video. The VAST majority of recruits emailing are not recruits we’d pursue. So, it’s tedious.” Julie goes on to say that they do find recruits that don’t email them by watching a different recruit or having a good relationship with a recruiting service. She wasn’t the first coach to mention recruiting services and it wasn’t something I mentioned in my email to the coaches but it appears that this is a viable path for PSAs. What was interesting from this was that the coaches that mentioned a recruiting service specifically talked about their relationships with those coordinators and the fact that they know only to send them good matches for their school and program. I would think if you are a PSA trying to figure out which service to use, that questions about their relationships with programs you are interested in would be informative.
One more thing from Julie was that she mentioned the transfer portal as a means to improve a recruiting class. I wrote about the transfer portal back in 2023 if you want to revisit that article.
Switching over to the Northwest Conference (NWC) and pulling in Whitman into this discussion courtesy of Head Coach Matt Helm. I really was interested in getting input from the NWC because they are a conference on an island that needs to fly whenever they go out-of-conference. All of the schools in the NWC seem to recruit Hawaii really well but how do they get recruits from other areas of the country? Matt responded, “Short answer to your questions is all of it. We evaluate those who reach out to us, we are contacted and or contact club coaches who know our programs to see who would be a good fit. We do come across players who catch our eye while watching others who have contacted us. We go out and attend camps and evaluate talent. Prospects also attend camps that we host on campus.”
I don’t want to get into trouble here with the other NWC coaches, but I think Whitman has some of the toughest admittance standards in the conference and their academic reputation is something that works in Whitman’s favor. What can hurt is the location as they are situated in Walla Walla, Washington, which sits on the Oregon border towards the center of the state. (They are almost 3 hours from their closest DIII opponent in Whitworth.)
I feel like I’m a little all over the place but I touched on academics and we must dive into that topic a little more. I did reach out to a number of coaches from very selective schools. These schools have an admittance rate of less than 20% and in one case less than 10%. First thing, and every coach in the nation across all levels will agree on this, academics is probably the most important aspect for a PSA that allows them to consider the most schools/programs. PSAs with questionable academics automatically limit their potential fits. This is even more true in the DIII world.
For very selective schools, the recruiting calendar has to be condensed because most applicants are admitted through Early Decision (ED). That means for these schools their 2025 class has been done for a few months now. Getting recruits admitted through the regular decision process is very rare and often doesn’t happen for some schools. These selective schools will use what is called a pre-read that typically happens in the summer prior to the PSA’s senior high school year. The pre-read let’s the PSA and coach know the likelihood of their chances of admittance. One question that comes up with these types of schools is whether a coach can circumvent the admittance process and get their recruits into the school. The short answer is no and there is definitely no way a PSA can avoid the normal admit procedures. One thing to remember, however, is that a pre-read is typically needed for PSAs so the admissions people know these are students that are wanting to play for one of their programs. Does that help? I don’t know but I would think it doesn’t hurt. In some schools, a coach can advocate for a recruit but, at best, this might only help in a close decision.
You can see how intrusive the admit process is for the selective schools when it comes to building a volleyball team but the pre-read system helps. In talking with Valerie Townsend (Pomona-Pitzer Head Coach), she highlighted this, “About 10 years ago, I had no way of getting any early reads and had to submit a list to each institution of my recruits that could be from 10-20 recruits long in hopes to get 2-3 athletes. It was a coin toss.” Yikes!
The selective nature of their admit process also impacts the way they find players. They can’t use the Casey Dale method, which every school discussed before these uses, because the odds are most everyone they are watching would not be admitted into their school. They primarily rely on incoming emails because those PSAs are familiar with the school and know what they are looking for academically. High-academic showcases were also mentioned as are recruiting services where the coordinators are familiar with the academic requirements. This means that these schools are not casting the wide net or wandering the club tournaments looking for that special player. You also have to remember that these coaches also want to see their potential recruits live so that must occur no later than their U17 club season. Another tool that is mostly unavailable to these schools is the transfer portal. Getting transfers through their admit process is a dicey affair and impossible for some programs.
Just to finish out this portion of the article, I want to confess that I buried an interesting tidbit until know. For this article, I actually reached out to (ugh) New England schools. Bates College Head Coach Emily Hayes responded and helped with this portion. I actually talked on the phone with her so the only quote I know is 100% accurate from her was, “…Hope sucks.” Wow! That’s from a Hope alumna! (Let’s not worry about what the “…” represents.) Oh, I had one more! Emily also said that although they don’t require their PSAs to go through their first Early Decision, she estimated “that 99.5% go through the ED1 process.” So, yeah, ED is important with these types of schools.
The lesson here is that the more selective the school, the earlier the PSA needs to start their efforts.
I wrote a lot about where coaches find players and the summary is (mostly) everywhere. I also was curious about the process once a PSA has been identified. Back to Jon Ellmann as he had a nice write-up of his process, “A call would be a step we take when we want to start learning more about what the player is like as a human. Additionally, we want to give them an opportunity to learn more about what we have to offer from a personal/social, academic, and volleyball perspective. If the call goes well and they are high enough up our ranked list for the class and position, we will offer a single day unofficial visit. If that goes well, we may have a follow-up official overnight visit. We may also skip the single day visit and go right to the overnight if there is a reason to do so – Usually travel distance. We don’t make an offer until all visits have concluded to ensure that from a personal/social standpoint that it’s a good fit.”
It should be pointed out that Oshkosh does host a camp series but it’s not a requirement to get recruited although they do identify a few PSAs through that process.
Don added, “As for visits, yes, every player has visited campus with the exception of the class of ’21 during the pandemic, when none of them came before orientation. Still, all 3 recruits made it 4 years here and will graduate this spring.”
Bullfrog concurs on the visits, “All came and took visits at some point, including our player from Oregon. I try and talk to them at least once every two weeks but preferably every week during the process.”
From Heather, “Visits are a must for us. We have a small school in a small rural town so we need to make sure that it is the right fit for those who come to us and we also understand that this environment is not for everyone.”
Julie was also on board, “Yes, for sure they visited and most more than once.” Trinity also does a camp and, in this case, they are very important to attend. More from Julie, “Yes, they came to our College Prospect Camp. Our camp is basically the final step in our recruiting process. And it’s an important step. We can see their work ethic and personality up close and vice versa.”
Every coach that talked about their camps agreed that seeing and working with a PSA is a big deal, even if not required for recruitment. It’s huge for the PSA, too, in that they see how the coach works and get to experience the campus first hand. Back to my daughter’s recruiting days and she attended two camps (Franklin & Marshall and Trinity). Both were excellent experiences but the time and cost commitment for the player and family can be prohibitive. I would say that the camps are important but should be limited to the PSA’s final choice or choices.
So, the visit. Yes, it’s important and remembering back from my daughter’s recruitment (again), it would eliminate a college or really excite her. I’ve told the story of her doing an overnight and being taken as a 17-year-old to a frat party and being offered alcohol by the team. This can be a plus for some (I guess) but it pretty much eliminated the school at that instance for her. On the flip side, her overnight to Southwestern involved bowling and discussions about Harry Potter. We were done looking the next morning. From a PSA perspective, it’s just so important if the family has the funds to make it happen. The school is priority number one. A PSA should never attend a school that they wouldn’t attend without volleyball. The coach is important but you have to remember that you have no control where they coach might be in 2 or 3 years. The PSA also can’t control their injuries and the impact they could have. I really stress the importance of the team and that chemistry because that chemistry will most likely carry through her 4-years there. It’s a product of the team leadership and the coaching staff. The last point I like to make is that in all likelihood, her teammates are most likely going to be in her wedding. That’s how important the team and that chemistry is going to be.
Alright, I need to find a way out of this article. I think what I discovered is that I really didn’t realize that these programs are always searching for players and aren’t limited by the PSAs that contact them. There is value in everything from emails, showcases, team camps, recruiting services, playing with great club players and even making that amazing diving pancake at the feet of a coach that just happens to be walking by the court. The larger public universities do gain an advantage with their volume of incoming emails but they also have to work through them, which is a chore when most won’t pan out. The selective schools really work off a different recruitment calendar and PSAs wanting that experience need to start as early as possible reaching out. I wish I could have come out of this saying don’t bother with showcases or don’t bother with recruiting services but everything has some value to it and it’s up to the PSA to determine if it has enough value for their specific search.
I guess the final thing I want to touch on is that this is a very negative process. Not in the sense that it’s a nightmare to go through but a process where a PSA is only going to say “yes” to one coach. As Julie noted, “Get used to getting a lot of NOs and cast your net wide.” She was talking about her experience as a coach but it’s the same for the PSA. In the end, through all of the negative there is a tremendous reward for that one “yes” when it’s the right coach and the right team and, most importantly, the right school.
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