As high school and college coaches approach signing day on Wednesday we are all about to also push play on the next recruiting cycle. Of course we all know that recruiting never really stops and many of us at both the college and high school levels are already well ahead on the Class of 2017 even as we put the finishing touches on the 2016 kids. What follows is how we approach the calendar here at Cornell towards the eventual matriculation each year of around 30 new student-athletes. We follow the concept of “identify-evaluate-matriculate” in our process and each of these individual words are in some way shape or form always happening under the broad umbrella of “recruiting” though there is obviously somewhat of a linear flow as the months progress. Hopefully this synopsis is helpful for any coach approaching the next year of recruiting.
(DECEMBER)
Begin to put Geographic Area lists together and update recruiting database simultaneous to contacting the current class on the road.
(JANUARY)
Attempt to work in evaluations of top known targets for the next class simultaneous to contacting the current class on the road.
FEBRUARY
-Build and “Work” the recruiting database. We use JumpForward here and it provides a central online server that houses all of our information and film. We will manually enter known prospects but will mainly rely on recruiting service database “dumps” into our system. Of course, any known “top” high school programs from any area will be scrubbed to make sure that we are gathering prospect data manually from them if need be to complete our database. The number one goal this month is to evaluate on film as many AREA prospects as possible.
MARCH
Same as February. In addition, we will start to POSITIONALLY cross-evaluate films that AREA coaches have passed on. Also, this a month for heavy high school coach communication via phone and email; meaning, if we have a film that both the Area and Position coach have “approved” to move forward with athletically then the Area coach will work with the high school coach to begin to attempt to push the young man towards an unofficial visit and/or summer camp tour stop while also making sure that the young man fits our admissions and financial aid parameters to continue the process.
APRIL
This is spring ball for us so simultaneous to working hard at developing our current and incoming (from a distance) players we are now working as Area coaches to winnow down our target pool towards planning an extremely efficient May evaluation period. At all levels and especially here it is imperative that at every stop in May we are continuing the evaluation process in a very high quality manner which hopefully centers around watching the prospect actually practice football. In addition, we will work hard this month to write HAND-WRITTEN notes to our pared down TOP PROSPECT lists alerting them of our high interest and desire to evaluate them in May.
MAY
Spring Evaluation Period. The quantity always varies but as stated above quality is of paramount importance. That being said, a decent barometer is that every on-the-road recruiter on the staff will attempt to make around 100 spring visits to high schools around the country. If we can marry up our top film evaluations with these stops then we will have succeeded in live evaluating upwards of 800+ recruitable student-athletes who are rising seniors. During May we will strive to use our one phone call out to prospects that we are allowed to again focus our efforts on the high quality, evaluated, and highly interested prospects so as to hopefully make an impact towards the summer camp season.
JUNE and JULY
SUMMER CAMP SEASON. Over 6 individual camp dates we will strive to coach around 1000 rising seniors towards developing them for their senior year seasons and pushing them through the process. In addition, we will “guest coach” at dozens of other institutions around the country to achieve the same goal. Concurrently we will stay in constant email/twitter message contact with top prospects while continuing to pick-up the pace of hand-written notes to high-value targets. THIS IS THE PIVOT POINT OF THE ENTIRE PROCESS.
AUGUST
This is an extremely internal month for us as we “stack” our recruiting board and work to communicate out with only the top prospects that are deemed as viable as to where they stand with us and vice versa, on their “board”. In non-scholarship recruiting like the Ivy League this is the time the processes of working through the admissions and financial aid paperwork systems are primarily initiated.
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER-NOVEMBER
In-Season Evaluation/Paperwork Process Period. We will attempt to use any and all evaluation days allocated to us by the NCAA and IVY LEAGUE in order to continue to refine our evaluations on top prospects. Obviously we are trying to see them practicing or playing real football in pads during competition. During these three months we are working towards getting admissions and financial aid feedback via our paperwork processes in both areas. In addition we will have in-season official visits for any prospects that we feel are top targets that are close to committing to the Program.
DECEMBER and JANUARY
On-the-Road Contact Period/Official Visits. During these two months we will work to use our 6 off-campus contacts for our top prospects via school and home visits in addition to having as many as 4 on-campus official visit “weekends” towards making reciprocal commitments.
FEBRUARY
FINISH THE CLASS!