The Collegian

Issue date: 1/31/08 Section: Sports

For a college coach, there are two seasons. Both equally competitive and vital, it is a coach's job to balance each. If he or she's lucky, the two seasons won't conflict, but for most, when the team's season is complete, the season of recruitment has already begun. And this year recruitment is earlier than ever.

"We're done for next year, but we still have a full recruiting schedule," said head volleyball coach Chris Gravel as he pointed out 3,000 recruitment letters on his desk.

In order to remain focused on the team, coaches concentrate much of their recruiting energy when the competitive season is finished. This has become more challenging because Division I coaches are requiring high school athletes to commit earlier than ever.

Between last February and this past summer, Gravel selected five recruits for fall 2008. Gravel said this was difficult because he has not even met the incoming freshman.
"It's Division I driven," Claudette Charney, head women's basketball coach, said.
As the smallest Division II school, Hillsdale coaches need to recruit as soon as the Division I schools.

Hillsdale's growing athletic reputation has made this challenge easier.

"We can beat half of the programs in Division I," Gravel said. "We do it every year."

Senior Mark Nicolet, football team co-captain, said Hillsdale football recruits no longer question whether Hillsdale is a top team.

"After this season, we don't have to convince the recruits we will be a good football team, we can tell them that we are good and will continue to build upon that tradition," he said.

Nevertheless, Hillsdale coaches pour their time and energy into getting the best recruits available.

Due to the number of senior athletes, this year has been a busy recruiting season for many coaches.

"In the last two years we're graduating ten players, which is pretty high for us," Gravel said. "Other coaches said that we wouldn't be very good, but we were."

This year's higher number of recruits placed more importance on scouting than before.
"It can be a challenge to separate who you should watch and who you shouldn't," head softball coach Jamie Meyers said.

To make this unique challenge easier, Hillsdale coaches have three priorities that serve as a guide at tournaments. Every coach listed the same criteria: academics, athleticism and attitude.

"You may lack height, but if you don't have these [qualities] then we don't recruit you," said John Tharp, head coach of the men's basketball team. "We observe on visits how [high school athletes] treat their mom - that's important to us."

Gravel said sometimes he does not wear his Hillsdale College coaching uniform so he can observe how a player usually talks and interacts with his coach, teammates and parents.

Hillsdale coaches scout far and near to keep the college's athletic program competitively strong.

"This is the first time in a long time that the local area has had so many good athletes . . . especially on the female side of things," Charney said.

Three out of the six incoming women's basketball recruits live locally.

With a very successful season behind them, both athletically and recruitment-wise, Hillsdale coaching staff looks forward to an even better season ahead.

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