The thrill of the chase: recruiting Yale's stars

For Tim,* a 6'7" basketball forward, dedication was never a problem. He knew he wanted to be good. He knew he was going to play basketball in college, and he knew that the way to do it was to "play, play, play."

Puffed up with pride at the prospect of playing with the big boys, the freshman recruit-to-be spends his days at the gym, going through drills, dealing with the pressures of high school and the pressures of his talent. There's no real competition most of the time—"Practice would get really boring because it really wasn't challenging for me," Tim said. "So my coaches made me run all the time." But the goal is always in plain sight, a reminder that the real thing lurks just over the horizon.

Talent and desire

Tim's story is typical. He began playing basketball in recreational leagues when he was eight years old at the suggestion of his mother, Sheila, who thought it would be "good for her boys to be involved in sports." Along with his two brothers, Tim spent his early years in Detroit, scrambling around the court pretending to be Michael Jordan. The teams he played with became more and more organized and competitive, and he began to see a difference between himself and his teammates.

"I knew I was talented from the beginning," he said. "But that didn't mean I was necessarily better than the other kids, I think my coaches saw that I had the potential to really succeed, so they took extra time to help me out and encourage me. "Then, eventually, I began just getting the game. It wasn't always easy for me physically, but I understood the plays. It just comes naturally to me."

His coaches saw plenty of potential. When he was 12 years old, Tim's coach told his parents that he had never been more sure that one of his players would play at a Division I school. His mother smiled, shrugged her shoulders and let Tim do his own thing. Pleased as she was at the thought of her son rising to the top, "she never made me do anything I didn't want to. There was absolutely no pressure from my parents for me to play." But Tim didn't need any prodding. By eighth grade, he was spending all his free time on the basketball court, in county and recreational leagues.

Tim enrolled in a private, athletically competitive high school. He spent four years as a varsity starter and three years as captain. "My coach chose the captains every year, and I always ended up co-captaining with a senior. I really didn't feel it as an extra responsibility. I was just playing the best I could and whatever happened was a result of that."

A basketball coach yet again saw and felt something special in the shy underclassman when he placed Tim at the helm of a traditionally winning team with five returning seniors. But the quiet leadership and confidence that he exuded on and off the court helped lead his team to two state titles, three conference titles and an undefeated regular season this year. He is proud of his numerous all-state, all-county and all-conference titles, but he is even prouder of his team and the level of play they have maintained over the past seasons. "My favorite thing about high school ball has to be that we were winners," he said. "Winning is the most important thing."

The sales pitch

Between the championships and practices, SATs and proms, Tim was dealing with a flood of unofficial recruitment letters and phone calls. While college coaches are not allowed by National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules to recruit high school players until the summer before their senior year, most athletes seriously considering a college athletic career get sucked into the process as early as their freshman or sophomore year. As a junior, Tim was receiving 50 to 60 phone calls per week from interested coaches.

"It was such a rush at first and I really liked the attention," he recalled, "but it got old really fast. They all wanted to know if I was coming to their school, always pressing for a commitment."

Coaches promise the world to a talented player—everything from Nike gear to future starting salaries are thrown into the conversation. "Every coach told me the same thing," Tim said. "They said that I was going to start my freshman year, that I was going to play more on their team than I would play anywhere else, that their kids were better than any other kids were. Every coach told me about an endorsement they just got —`we got 20 pairs of shoes from Nike'—and all the Ivy League coaches told me about how much money I was going to get from my first job when I graduated."

What was important to Tim? "Not the shoe deals," he laughed. But like a typical pre-frosh, he did consider the size and location of the school, the academic program and the atmosphere. "I visited two schools on an official recruitment visit and about five other schools unofficially. I was looking for something not too big and not too small. A place that just feels right," he said, stumbling for the right words.

He is a typical high school student—he doesn't know what he wants in a school, much less what he wants to do with his life. But he does know that he wants to play basketball. And unlike a typical high school student, almost every basketball program in the country wants him.

He has essentially decided where he wants to spend the next four years. His parents wanted him to go to an Ivy League school, and although he felt no pressure from them, his choice reflects their stress on education. He has received a "likely to be admitted" letter from his institution of choice.

NCAA rigamarole

Dealing with a recruit for an NCAA athletic program is like walking on eggshells. Even now, when his future is all but set in Ivy granite, a conversation with Tim is like trying to speak about basketball without talking about the ball. The rigid NCAA regulations do not allow recruits to disclose to the media their final choice until after the Sat., Apr. 1, admission date. They are not even allowed to acknowledge which schools they are considering matriculating to.

For coaches, the recruitment process is a massive headache. "We have to convince kids that we're going to win a championship. Of course, before that we have to find the kids who are going to help us win that championship," Yale assistant men's basketball coach Curtis Wilson said. "And then we have to fight for the financial aid to get them here."

Because Ivy League schools do not give out athletic scholarships, they lose a large portion of their potential athletes to big Division I schools such as Duke and the University of Virginia, who have good academic programs in addition to powerful athletics and the scholarships that clinch the deal. "We have to convince them that they'll do better in the long run if they come here," Wilson said. "Obviously those schools can't compete with Yale academically. And the salaries our kids are going to be earning with their Yale diploma are going to be worth the tuition their parents will pay now. But all these kids are looking for the short-term payoffs." Tim's family is not wealthy— "I delivered papers to put him through high school," Sheila said—but for them, a good education may be worth the Ivy League tuition.

For now, between filling out the remaining paperwork, finishing high school and keeping his feet on the ground, Tim has to deal with the media. Like all recruits, he's heard stories about players violating obscure NCAA rules and getting disqualified from college basketball at the last minute.

Still, common sense has brought Tim this far. And doing the right thing, like playing basketball, seems to come naturally.

Graphic by Shawn Cheng.
*Name has been changed to protect NCAA eligibility.

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