ERIN LEWIS/YH

Recruiting reformats for the 21st century

• E-mail, the web, and other technologies make luring athletes a whole new ballgame.

Yet while most Bulldog fans tucked the football team away for the winter in their fall memories, Coach Siedlecki returned to his office to embark on the recruiting trail. To uncover the next Walland or Johnson among the thousands of high school prospects from across the nation requires the same hard work and perseverance that it took to go 9-1 and win the Ivy crown this year.

As Siedlecki and the other Yale coaches recruit their first class of the new millennium, they must combine traditional recruiting practices with the new technology at their disposal. Does technology make the recruiting process, which used to be composed of countless scouting trips and visits to recruits' homes, easier for the coaches?

Yale's men's soccer Coach Brian Tompkins has mixed feelings. "It actually increases the workload because of the volume of e-mails," Tompkins said with a laugh. Tompkins' response illustrates the important role that e-mail currently plays in the recruiting process.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) regulates the recruiting process with the ferocity and thoroughness of the New York Police Department under Rudy Giuliani. It limits the number of off-campus visits that the coaches can make to players, the number of player evaluations during the school year, and the number of paid visits that recruits can make to campus. These three are just a sampling of the restrictions in the NCAA rulebook, a document that matches the Internal Revenue Service tax code in its length, meticulousness, and threatening tone. Perhaps the two most important regulations are that coaches cannot call prospects until their senior year of high school, and can call only once a week during senior year. However, the NCAA places no restrictions on the number of e-mails that a coach can send to a high school junior or senior. Tompkins believes this exception opens a major route of communication.

"E-mail is our primary way of maintaining contact with players," Tompkins said. "It is easier for us to become more familiar with people." Women's soccer Coach Rudolph Meredith agrees wholeheartedly. "E-mail is our most important tool," he said. "It is a situation where we can contact players at an earlier stage and in a more in-depth way. E-mails are much quicker and more personal than generic written letters. I can e-mail a player twice a week, whereas I used to mail a letter to a recruit every month or two." Even baseball Coach John Stuper, a self-proclaimed technological neophyte, finds e-mail useful.

"You can be more diplomatic with e-mail than you can be on the phone if you don't have an interest in recruiting a player," he said. "E-mails are also less intrusive than phone calls. A player can read them whenever he wants." Stuper also echoed Tompkins' claim that e-mails dramatically increase the amount of recruits that contact him.

Videos, websites, and more

Another technological tool that provides the coaches with a larger selection of prospects is the online recruit form, which can be found on Yale's web site. The form serves as an unofficial resumé for the player and as a way for the coach to contact the recruit. The football form asks for a prospect's personal information (including e-mail address), non-athletic activities, academic information, athletic background, and interest level in Yale. The football program first used the online recruit form this year and Siedlecki estimated that he will have received 1,000 of them by the end of the recruiting year. Coaches value these forms because they go straight to the their computers and save the time and space that paper forms used to bring. Siedlecki feels the forms and e-mails have had a tremendous impact on the recruiting process. "Technology has created more volume," Siedlecki said. "The Ivy League has always dealt with a lot of volume, but technology has increased that even more."

Yet another prong of the new technology plank is the coaches' use of national recruiting services. The football program uses a service as its base for generating possible prospects. The company guarantees 75 percent coverage of high schools in all 50 states. Yale football has criteria that every potential recruit must have at least a 3.25 GPA and must be at least a Division II-caliber player. These requirements net 9,000 responses, and then Yale sends letters to the strongest. Of the players who respond, Siedlecki said that most are not qualified academically. Yale's high academic standards often make it difficult to secure enough qualified student-athletes for the team, but these services aid coaches by providing an extraordinary number of possible players.

A recent innovation, the online film viewing service, has created excitement in the coaching ranks. Tompkins said he uses a site called gametape.com to view videos of possible recruits. This site allows a player to submit a four-minute highlight film, either self-produced (for $200) or edited by the website (for $400). Coaches can easily access the film on their own computers. Some Yale coaches receive close to 1,000 videos per year. The new system, if implemented effectively, will save coaches space, time, and money. As of now, these web sites are limited. Gametape.com contains information on only a limited number of players and kcoach.com does not yet meet Siedlecki's expectations.

"I pulled up kcoach.com on my computer at home and watched a kid on slides, which doesn't help at all," he said. "But as technology improves, I guarantee that we will be watching our film on the Internet [in the future]."

Losing the personal touch

Does Siedlecki's prognostication mean that the long trips and visits to kids' homes are a thing of the past? Will coaches even need to see recruits in person or will they be able to select their team by watching the players on the web and contacting them through e-mail? James Jones, the first- year men's basketball coach, doesn't think so.

"We don't use much of that [technological] stuff," he said. Basketball recruiting may be somewhat different than other sports, though. Coaches are only allowed to be on the road in the off-season from July 8 to July 31. During this period, Jones and his staff travel around the country and attend basketball camps, often evaluating hundreds of players at a time.

"We really need to go these camps and see 500 players at one time, because in the Ivies, it is a numbers game," Jones said. "To get enough kids who qualify academically, we need to see a lot of kids at one time." Yet the NCAA is currently considering a proposal to reduce that recruiting period by five or 10 days. This would particularly hinder smaller programs like Yale that do not have the visibility that a Duke or Kansas has with high-school players.

Jones feels that he cannot evaluate the types of players that come to Yale without seeing them in person. "You cannot replace the traveling aspect of recruiting," he said. "You cannot take away in person evaluations and interviews. Even videotapes aren't enough. They do not tell about a player's intensity or how they handle certain game situations."

Most coaches agree that one cannot assess a player's overall ability by looking at statistics or videos. Videos do not always focus on a player for the entire game, and those omissions can hide valuable insights about a player's energy level, mental toughness, and leadership. Stuper needs to be able to evaluate the mechanics of hitters and pitchers because stats can be misleading. Stuper said that a prospect who hits .290 could be better than a .600 hitter because he could be playing in a more competitive league.

Tompkins emphasized another reason why he needs to meet a recruit—face-to-face conversations allow him to determine whether a player's personality fits with that of the coach and the rest of the team. "Nothing replaces face-to- face contact," Tompkins said. "That is how we keep them interested. How they relate to the coach will decide whether they come here."

Not for everyone

Clearly, coaches differ on the amount of technology they use to complement their traveling and visits. Siedlecki, who needs more players to fill his team, must rely on services and e-mails to make initial contact with recruits because he does not have the resources to scout every prospect in person. Jones, who only needs three to five players per year, has the luxury of seeing all of his recruits. Football also lends itself to film viewing more than some of the other sports.

Still, even the traditionalists who resist the inroads of technology understand its value in the process. Jones admitted that he may have to utilize recruiting services and e-mails if the NCAA decides to limit the recruiting window. Stuper likes the fact that the players can do research about his program before he talks with them.

What will the recruiting process look like in 2010? It is difficult to predict the changes that an industry may undergo, but in this case, tradition and technology may find that they have a symbiotic relationship. Research services and online recruit forms can provide coaches with a large list of prospects, and the Internet will allow them to see video of more players. E-mails should allow recruits and coaches to have more contact. But in the end, according to Stuper, the personal visits are what make a program successful. "It all comes down to hard work," he said. "Since recruiting is such an inexact science, you need to be able to see players and assess talent."

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