Video: 356-pound anchor in 4x100m relay
See Kardell Thomas, a 6-foot-4, 356-pound LSU football commit, run the anchor leg on the Southern Lab (LA) track team.This is the first of a two-part series on recruiting with an NCAA recruiting coordinator.Cherokee Valeria is the recruiting coordinator and cornerbacks coach at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Wash. He's responsible for finding student-athletes in two of the nation's hotbeds — Southern California and Houston. The 2017 recruiting class for EWU was ranked third in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision by
247 Sports. Coach Valeria started his coaching career at the high school level, also in Washington.
He's been out on the road recruiting this offseason, and I asked how high school coaches can do a better job of helping their kids in the ever changing world of recruiting.
What are some mistakes that you've seen high school coaches make in recruiting?This first major mistake I see from coaches trying to over-sell their guys. They want to give you almost every one on their roster, trying to convince you that they all can play at your level. This hurts coaches more then they realize. The more a high school coach does this, the less a college coach will listen, until ultimately they get to the point where coaches may even stop coming around to ask about their players.
The second major mistake I see is high school coaches not giving you enough information on their players. College coaches want to know everything, from parents, to siblings, to grades, to girlfriends, to religion, to other sports (and many more).
The best high school coaches with regards to recruiting have spent the time putting together detailed recruiting sheets on their student athletes. So when a college coach is interested in the details on an athlete, it's readibly available.
The worst thing that a high school coach can do is just shoot a college coach a name. We will need more than that, this day and age; any college coach can look up a highlight. We need their address, email, social media contact info, grades; those are the bare essentials.
Getting your athletes seen through media channels, social and otherwise, is a benefit to your program.
Photo by Michael Turner
The best coaches do a good job putting together a detailed recruiting sheet on their student athletes and have them available when a college coach says they are interested in their student athlete.
Outside of that, the latest thing I've seen coaches do to market their team and their athletes is to promote their program through social media. As the recruiting coordinator, I am always asking high school coaches if they have a team Twitter account.
I am a big Twitter guy myself. I want to see what their kids are doing in the off-season. I want to see how they are grinding in the weight room, or out in the community. I want to see the things they do off the field, or how involved they are with supporting other sports. Those things matter to us here at Eastern Washington.
Last fall I was down recruiting Southern California and was talking to a high school coach in the San Fernando Valley. I asked him if he had a Twitter account yet? He did not. We proceeded to talk for over 20 min about the benefits of creating a team account, how he could use it to market his players, how he could use it to motivate and inspire his players and parents.
A few months later he has a few hundred followers and has done an amazing job with promoting his team. High school athletes are on social media, so why not use this platform to help them develop into better men while marketing their skill to the next level?
Chris Fore is a veteran Head Football Coach and Athletic Director from Southern California. He consults coaches and programs nationwide through his business Eight Laces Consulting.
