Article+2-The+Changes+in+College+Recruiting

The Changes in College Recruiting By Enzo Cortet

Over the past couple decades, college sports have become increasingly popular among the America public. With this rising fame comes the increasing importance of having good school sports and attracting the best players in the country, a process also known as recruiting. This way of attracting and winning players over in order for them to come and play for your school, has adapted with the growing dependence on technology. It has gone from coach’s making personal visits to one’s house, to e-mails and digital videos being sent to players in order to increase their interest.

Many consider recruiting to be an art, as coaches must decide how to persuade players that their school is the school for them and that at their school they will achieve the greatest success. With so many tools at hand, such as phone calls, written letters, e-mails, recruit packages, and visits, coaches nowadays have the upper hand to when coaches had to recruit back in the 50’s and 60’s. Hopewell Valley High School students who answered the surveymonkey question also agree as 49 percent of the students said that college recruiting has gotten easier with technology whereas only 11 percent said no and 40 percent were unsure.

As a young female field hockey player attending Hopewell Valley Central High School during the 80’s, Helen Crowther was heavily recruited for her trade. “Back then I had a number of schools contacting me through written mail and phone calls telling me that I should go to their schools.” She also added “The biggest difference that I can see today about the college recruiting process is that coaches today do not care and value the player as much as they did back when I was in High School. I believe it is because nowadays college coaches can send out mass e-mails and packages to recruits that it is almost a numbers game now instead of a coach actually taking his time to write a letter or call the recruit themselves.”

With the advancements in technology coaches can afford to loose the attention of recruits. For example a coach may send out 100 e-mails stating their interest in the player. With some players responding and others choosing to ignore the coach can therefore make do with the players that responded and choose out of that group the players that he actually would like to join his team.

I myself have been the prime example of these tactics. With letters and e-mails of interest coming from various schools, I responded to most of them, only to get a follow up message from half the schools I responded to. These methods are used in the everyday life of recruitment as one most only single in on its main recruits in this competitive world of recruiting.

Though for highly recruited players life is much easier. Many colleges along the east coast have trailed Ryan Woods, a boy’s soccer player at HVCHS. “I mostly got my letters of interest in the forms of e-mails and letters after college coaches saw me play in tournaments. Soon after I began talking with different coaches, a number of them suggested that I visit the facilities and even stay over night with members of the soccer team. I visited and had meetings with the coaches of Elizabethtown, Rutgers, and Westchester University and they all stated their claim in why they wanted me.”

With players such as Ryan, the recruiting process is as easy as picking a school to go to. Although certain coaches show why and how much they care about the player by scheduling what one could say old-school methods of recruiting, others who use technology too much may be at a disadvantage.

Coaches that recruited before the technological revolution showed more care and eagerness to get the signature of their recruits. This only because their methods of recruiting were much more time consuming and that coaches had very little time to waste on recruits that were not priority players.

In all, the old methods of recruiting, meaning using less technology (e-mails, etc) took greater gamble on the recruits coming to their school but often proved to have a greater relationship from coach to player than the new methods of recruiting have.