The call: Tough to receive, tough to make

Recruiting can be an awkward thing. It’s a delicate dance between high school student-athlete, still not too far removed from being a child; their parents, under pressure to send their kids to the best possible institution of higher learning without bankrupting their family’s finances; and a college coach, under pressure to make his or her team better, oftentimes on a limited budget.

Through the years, my recruiting philosophy has evolved. I will not bore you with the nitty gritty details of evaluating talent. I have had a lot of advice in that area – some of it terribly misguided but much of it extremely helpful in shaping my thoughts. Rather, I’ll focus on the big picture, and that is this: I am not a natural salesman. I say what’s on my mind. I do not “spin” my comments and thoughts to recruits. As a result, I take an approach that I learned from my days as a full-time journalist, a term that we called WYSIWYG (pronounced: Wizzy-Wig): What You See Is What You Get.

I believe Marist is a great place. The people that inhabit the college in general, and the athletes in our program specifically, are wonderful people. And so, in my recruiting, I present what we have – and what we don’t have – in a straightforward manner. What we have is Marist, a beautiful campus and a fantastic community of higher learning. What we don’t have, unfortunately, is plentiful too: on-campus athletic facilities for our athletes, and competitive athletic aid allocation to go up against the schools with which we compete on a regular basis. Again, we present it all in a positive but relatively neutral manner. And then let the chips fall where they may. Oftentimes, those chips fall off the table, and such was the case last night.

A lot of the time in recruiting is spent on the phone. Mostly, it’s the coaches calling the athletes. But sometimes the athletes need to call the coaches. Sometimes, it is a simple return phone call. And at times, the athlete-to-coach call is placed with the purpose of telling the coach that he or she won’t be attending your college. Thanks for everything, but I’m going elsewhere. I have been on the receiving end of this call many, many times and it’s never easy. But I look to the student-athlete with empathy. It’s not easy for him or her to make that call, and it takes a lot of class and maturity to make that call in just the right tone. Again, I have received a few of these calls already this recruiting cycle, the most recently being last night. Without fail, the student-athlete has been gracious and cordial in relaying what was a difficult decision.

Through the years, there have been many athletes who did not have the courage to make the call. They would e-mail me their decision (that is acceptable), or worse they would just stop returning calls and e-mails and try not to deal with it. From the coach’s perspective, that can be viewed as somewhat rude. And make no mistake, through the years I have felt disrespected by the behavior of recruits. But again, put yourself in the kid’s shoes. Have a little empathy. Here’s 17-year-old kid, having to tell a grown-up coach that all the time spent on the phone, in person and via e-mail has resulted in that kid going to another school. If you are that 17-year-old kid, you’d be hesitant to reach out to perhaps a gruff and high-pressure coach as well.

And so, while the call last night was disappointing, I wish the student-athlete well and I will applaud his successes at the rival school he has chosen to attend. He handled himself with maturity and class, which is all we can hope for and expect. The next few weeks and months will be filled with similar calls, both negative and positive, as we attempt to build the future of our team and our program.