Football recruiting at the college level.

The recruitment of student athletes at the NAIA levels requires much more than just a high school visit and a few recruiting weekends. You just cannot show up with your school name on your shirt and expect the recruit to begin begging to come to your school. You have to be creative through phone calls and mail flow.

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At Bethany College, we are very fortunate to have a lot of tradition bases that the previous coach, Ted Kessinger, built here in his 28 years. We are blessed to have a full-contact summer camp that allows many of the state's top players to come in and show us their skills.

We have also had a lot of Division I and II talent, as well as NAIA/D III types. The camp puts over 300 young men on our campus every summer. That's how our recruiting process begins.

Having some 300 names in a database is a great way to start. We include every high school in our state, plus the other states that we feel are important. Every recruit will get a prospect letter from our recruiting coordinator, Steve Tapley. Once he gets the information back, he enters the names in the database.

We then start an intense mail-flow system through the next four months of the student-athlete's season. Our head coach mails out at least 50 handwritten letters a week. The handwriting adds a personal touch to the letters. E-mail is also important. We put all such respondents in our database and send each a note once a week.

Our recruiting coordinator creates a master calendar in early June for our mail-flow. By June 20, just before we open camp, we will look back at our "juniors to be" listings--sent to us by their high school coaches the year before.

We send a letter to the top junior prospects (fall seniors) and let them know we are going to be watching them. We then start our "Friday Night Lights Program." All of my coaches participate. Each is sent to a different high school game every Friday night and stays for at least a half.

In August we also send a letter to the top 30 athletes who rejected us the year before. Note: It's important to maintain a relationship with the ones that got away, because you never know when they may want to return. We keep a database on them for two years.

We also start the mail-flow system to our Junior College prospects. Most JUCO kids will wait to hear from the NCAA schools before making decisions. If you stay on top of them, you may have a chance later on.

We also have two home games to which we will invite players. They will participate in campus activities and learn about our program. Homecoming seems to be the best time for one of these events. We make sure that the visitors are met by a panel of alumni, current players, and admissions and academic counselors.

In late November, I will send out around 300 Christmas cards to all top recruits from JUCO and high schools and wish them the best for the New Year.

In January, I will mail a "Why select Bethany letter" listing all the successes of our school and conference. We will stop our mail-flow early in the month and concentrate solely on the phone calls and visits. We will occasionally still use the electronic letter flow.

PHONE CALLING

When calling recruits, I instruct my coaches to introduce themselves as a coach from Bethany. We tell them that we are definitely interested in having them as student-athletes and that they are a priority in the recruiting process. Remember, most of them have been receiving mail both from our competitors and us. We want to congratulate them on being great players who were recommended for college scholarships.

We have our student coaches call first because they have a strong feeling about what the young men are going through. We have the student coaches humbly share our success on and off the field, as well as telling them what makes the program successful. We want them to know they are a priority who can make a difference in our quest for a national championship.

If the young man is not home, we ask to speak to a parent, but make it brief--unless the parent pushes the conversation. We remind the parents about specific testing dates and visits and let them know how excited we are to be recruiting their son.

HOME SCHOOL VISITS

When recruiting the student athlete at the school, we make sure to organize our daily schedule, date, and time of visit. We want to contact the coach--not just drop in on him. We have to remain flexible, as some school administrations may not let the students out of class.

We plan on no more than 90 minutes at a school. If we have the whole day, we will plan to see no more than five schools. We make sure to map out a travel itinerary between schools so that we do not waste time driving.

When we call the coach, we ask for a couple of minutes and make sure to ask permission to visit with his players. I have been a high school head coach and know how frustrating it is to discover that a college recruiter had been in the building without me knowing about it.

You may already know whom you are going to see, but ask the coach whether he has anyone else who might be considered a sleeper or just a bit undersized who wants to play. Sometimes you can get lucky with one. Call the coach the evening before you visit to confirm the meeting.

Ask for directions to his office and whether you will be called upon to sign in at the main office. If a problem arises at another school on your itinerary or you are running late, make sure to call the coach and let him know. Upon returning to your office, write him an apology.

When you meet with a player, either at his home or school, make sure to bring along a lot of information. If you don't know all the facts and figures about your school, don't make the visit. You must be able to answer any question.

A good salesman knows all about his clients and their needs, just as a coach would know his profession and product (i.e. sport). You may sometimes have to bring extra questionnaires for the players.

Keep the meeting brief, no more than 30 minutes, and have a question-and-answer period afterward. We also hand out a paper with a graph on it to the parents and students. We ask them to fill it out for us. The questionnaire is also sent to the four other schools that the students professed an interest in. We score a point total for things like academics, goals of coaches, opportunities to play, coach, etc.

This chart enables the recruits to list their choices of good or bad among the five schools. It also lets the parents know that we are not trying to snowball anyone (recruits or parents). They can add up the points and see where each school stands.

We explain the advantages of a private and small school education. We talk about football, expectations, community, and the support of our administration and town. We conclude by talking about scholarships and financial aid--which is very important on our level.

We hand out our business card and email addresses so that the kids may reach us for information they require. Kids attend to most of their needs via air mail and we accommodate them as much as we can.

We also set aside at least two more weekends in January and February for visitations by the parents and athletes. We want them to look school over once more and visit with teachers and admissions, etc. We have some of our current players host them for the night and take them to dinner and maybe a basketball game or some other campus event.

During this whole process, our football coaching staff will be watching and evaluating recruiting tape. I believe it is important to have everyone's input.

We watch recruiting tape on Wednesday and Sundays, starting in early November. We use a grading system and then tally the numbers up and rank each recruit on a board. We tell each coach to always be honest and let the young man know where he stands in the recruiting process.

Last but not least, we want to be professional, look sharp (all our coaches wear slacks and a button-down shirt) have class and be yourself. I have coached at every level of this game and understand that the process is long and many stones have to be overturned at the small college level.

Finally, every recruiter maintains precious relationships with the high school coaches and keeps in mind that they are the lifeblood of our program.

In closing, what we do here is not a science, but it is the best way I have found to stay alive with a small budget and not a lot of resources.

By Tony Johnson, Football Coach, Bethany College, Lindsborg, KS