Recruiting

Monday, March 17, gave me my first experience as a basketball recruiter at Methodist University. I got the pleasure of eating lunch with two recruits and parents from Sanford, NC. Recruiting isn't hard, but the hardest thing about face to face recruiting is trying to get a feel for what type of personalities the recruits have. Lunch took about a hour and honestly it was more like the recruits and parents where trying to feel me and the school out. I just asked a lot of questions to provoke any conversation or questions that they might have. Being that it was there first official visit to Methodist I think that they might have been a little overwhelmed by the whole process. After lunch I walked them to the gym to meet with Assistant Coach Ryerson. He took it from there taking them on a personal tour of the locker room and facilities used by the basketball program. The tour ended with a meeting with Head Coach David Smith and by about 2:30 there tour was over. I learned a lot from my experience and I really look forward to my next recruiting adventure.

Saturday, March 22, Coach Ryerson and I took a road trip to Guilford College in Greensboro, NC. Guilford College held its annual Prep All-Star Basketball Camp which consisted of players from the NC region. Some players came from places as far as Maryland just to get their name out there to coaches. We got to Guilford at 12 p.m. just on time for the first 3 games to begin. Coach Ryerson normally attends this event by himself, but with me tagging along we were able to get double the work done in half the time it normally takes him to evaluate players at this event. I learned a lot from Coach Ryerson at this event. He showed me how to categorize players and evaluate them successfully for recruiting purposes. This event was not just for Senior athletes there were players from all grades (9-12) and of course we couldn't do too much with the non-seniors, but it still gave us a chance to add stand-out players to our database. There was a decent turn out with well over 100 players in attendance. The MU program has had some success at this event even though it is a very competitive recruiting spot. It was a very fun experience and interacting with other coaches might have been the best thing about it. I was inside the "coaches circle" were networking is essential and business deals happen. Coaching is a very social job and I've learned that if you don't interact with your peers it's harder to advance in the coaching world.