St. Joe's (IN)

This is no knock on St Joe's...actually a kudos...but...

It's amazing to me that all the D1 schools in the area overlooked a kid like Pericht...

That was amazing. Sometimes some top players fall in under the radar.

blazer25,

St. Joe's has some pretty agressive recruiting tactics which may have "twisted" his arm to sign, so to speak.

Hawk,

St. Joseph has some excellent players on their roster. My son for example was recruited by Michigan, MSU, Marshall and other D1 programs, but wanted to play as a freshman, so he signed on as a Puma. (He pitched in 16 games as a freshman, and was 5th in the conference with an era of 1.56 in 9 games,for the 25th rated team in the country.) I guarantee that St. Joseph would fare extremely well against most of the D1 state schools. As a matter of fact, at least 3 players that play at WIU, were rejected by Coach O'dette and his staff. They are an excellent team that plays great defense, has good pitching and has good leadership, with Victor, Fussell, Reimer leading the way. These guys may be 5'11, not 6'1, but they can compete with anyone.

They don't need to twist anyones arm, BIGMW.

Sdawg34,

Of the players I know who were recruited by SJC, a very short period of time was given to the player to make his decision. Even if the SJC staff was aware the player needed more time to evaluate other options, they were reluctant to grant additional time. This could force a player to sign before exploring other options. I'm not knocking them, it's not a bad ploy on their behalf. I also understand their need to potentially move on to explore other candidates.

BigMW...I agree with you on the time pressures. Coach Odette wants to know now, not next week. He signed one of my son's friends out of HS, he gave him 48 hours to committ or the offer was off the table. The player committed and 2 weeks later had a much better offer from a DI...he took that DI offer and his mom said Odette was quite upset and rude to her. She is a teacher and just told him..."you shouldn't have put him in the spot to disappoint you"

But they do have good players, It will be fun to watch them in FL

i think it is wrong to give a kid a time table of when he should make his decision... if the coach really wants the player and he should if he is recruiting him, he should give him all the time he needs.

BigMW and others,

I see your point about pressure to sign, I think twisting the arm was a little inflamitory.
At TeamOne Notre Dame I heard the head coach of South Carolina tell a catching recruit that he expected to get a committment from another catcher the next day, and needed this kids commitment that day, and would sign the first one to commmitt. Now that is pressure.

The recruiting game can be quite nasty.

Sdawg34,

The deadline they gave my son was still during the baseball season coinciding with the NJCAA DII World Series and SJC knew it. His JUCO head coach was a little miffed and called SJC to move that date. Nothing like having the pressure to sign on your mind while your team is competing for a championship.

Without getting into the details, I tried to explain these tactics and for lack of a better phrase, I called it "arm twisting". I apologize if you see this as inflamatory, I meant no disrespect to the SJC program. They have many fine players and should be right in the thick of things in the GLVC this year.