In Recruiting, a Big Push From Small Colleges, Too
By BILL PENNINGTON
The players, a jumpy group of 16- and 17-year-old boys from around the country, arrived at the Headfirst baseball camp last month in Ruther Glen, Va., with statistics that stood out. It was not just their batting averages. These were players who scored, on average, 1,300 out of a possible 1,600 on the two-part College Board exam.
Most of the 165 players were A-minus students, and all wore identical white T-shirts, with only numbers stenciled on their backs to tell them apart.
The campers tolerated the cattle-call atmosphere at the Virginia Sports Complex just north of Richmond because of the potential payoff: 30 college coaches, many representing elite liberal arts colleges and Ivy League universities, were scouting players. Among them was Dave Beccaria of Haverford College, a small liberal arts college outside Philadelphia that is one of the most selective in the country and which has agreed to give The New York Times access to its recruiting process through the academic year. Beccaria has been in touch with more than 1,000 high school players since the beginning of the year, most of them juniors when the process started. He initiated contact with many, but others sent e-mail messages to him, some sent professionally made videos showing them in action and a few hired recruiting services to promote them. Almost all joined the summer-long tour of showcase camps like the one in Virginia.
By the time the recruiting cycle is complete, Beccaria figures six to eight of those players will join his team at Haverford, a college that competes in Division III, requires Ivy League-caliber academic scores and does not offer athletic scholarships.
As the competition for admission to highly rated colleges like Haverford continues to escalate, the playing fields of America are becoming an ever bigger part of that process. High school students and their parents are looking for any edge, and an athletic résumé is seen as the extra ingredient that can get a student's name on the precious list that the athletic department gives to its admissions office each year.
That list can include as few as a dozen names in one sport, with perhaps half expected to be admitted, although there are no guarantees. Still, with select institutions routinely rejecting 7 of 10 applicants over all, parents and their children relish the odds given "listed" athletes.
For coaches, the key is deciding whose names to write on the list. Haverford is typical of the top-tier liberal arts colleges, academically and athletically. The college ranked eighth in the liberal arts category of the most recent U.S. News and World Report rankings; nearly 40 percent of students play a varsity sport; and its athletic director, Greg Kannerstein, said that athletics played some role in the admission of about 15 percent of each recent incoming class.
"Years ago, I would go to lunch with someone from admissions with a bunch of names on the back of an envelope," said Kannerstein, who has been at Haverford for 30 years and served as acting dean of admissions last year. "We would look at a few applicants' folders and pretty soon we'd have a team. It's a different world now."
That is true for all Haverford varsity sports, for men and women, from s****r to softball.
The volleyball coach, Amy Bergin, like Beccaria, is pragmatic about her approach to recruiting.
"Of 1,000 I've contacted, about half will reply," Bergin said. "About half that reply will be academically qualified. About half of them will be truly interested in Haverford. About half of them will be actually good enough to play volleyball for us. About half of that group will apply for admission. About half of them will get accepted. And about half of them will decide to come here.
"If that happens, that's a really good year. That's almost eight girls."
Prospecting Via E-Mail
Flipping through a binder prepared for coaches at the Headfirst camp - the 18th recruiting event Beccaria visited this summer - he examined the grades and test scores of each player. He immediately crossed off about 120 players, or 70 percent, saying that their test scores or grades were too low. For the next two days, with a roster that matched names to T-shirt numbers, Beccaria followed the progress of the other 45 players, paying careful attention to the 8 to 10 he had seen at previous showcases.
Some of these players Beccaria had known of for more than a year because they had sent e-mail messages to him as juniors in high school. It is a common practice that many coaches appreciate.
"You want someone to show the initiative," Beccaria said. Or, as Georgetown University's baseball coach, Pete Wilk, said in an address to parents and campers at the close of the Headfirst camp: "Parents, I'm pretty sure your college eligibility is over. So let me hear from your son; he's the one who might play for me."
Beccaria's e-mail messages from potential applicants often included a schedule of the showcases the player planned to attend. This is important information because Beccaria and his coaching colleagues rarely scout individual high school games. The image of a weary, grizzled coach driving from one dusty high school ballpark to another is a nostalgic artifact.
At the dozens of highly orchestrated showcases around the country, coaches can see 150 to 200 players in a day and analyze them in an environment that resembles a professional audition. The players perform hours of skill drills: fielding dozens of ground balls, throwing to every base, catching, hitting, running and playing simulated games.
Another relic of college recruiting's past is the significance of a high school player's senior season. Beccaria and the other Haverford teams' coaches complete their serious evaluations by the summer after a player's junior season. This year, most of the Haverford coaches had identified their top 20 players by Aug. 15. With the push to get applications in for early decision on Nov. 15, or by the regular decision deadline of Jan. 15, an athlete's senior season can be almost irrelevant.
When Beccaria, who led Haverford to 25 victories last season and to its first victory in the postseason, watched prospects this summer, he was continually winnowing his list. But he knew he did not need to make it too short. Coaches from other colleges would do that for him. Even at the small-college level, it is hard to hide a prospect, and the most promising are often looking at Ivy League universities and other elite colleges that offer grants as enticements.
At the Headfirst camp, there was a moment in a simulated game when one of the players Beccaria was interested in, the sidearm pitcher Clay Bartlett of Washington, was facing another Beccaria prospect, outfielder Ben Sestanovich, also of Washington. It figured to be a good matchup because Sestanovich laced a crisp single in an earlier at-bat against another pitcher.
Beccaria leaned forward in his chair as the at-bat began, aiming a radar gun in his left hand. Aligned in rows of chairs alongside Beccaria, seated like jurors, were 11 other coaches.
When Bartlett struck out Sestanovich with a hard, tailing slider on the outside corner to finish two scoreless innings of relief pitching, Beccaria was impressed, though he made sure he did nothing to show it. Without looking, he also knew that the coaches to his left and right, including those from Columbia and Cornell of the Division I Ivy League, were busy taking notes on Bartlett's unusual delivery and commanding presence.
Beccaria stood and, with a wry smile, walked to another field to watch another player. He would keep Bartlett and Sestanovich on his list.
"There's a long way to go," he said.
Keeping Score of the Videos
While Beccaria was visiting showcases, Bergin, the volleyball coach, spent her summer nights caring for her 1-year-old daughter and calling potential recruits on the phone. She rarely goes anywhere without a printed database of prospects filling two four-inch-thick ring binders.
Every time she contacts a player - some she has called five times - she notes the date of the conversation and what was discussed on the player's file. That way she will not repeat herself - not make the same pitch about the benefits of Haverford's proximity to Philadelphia twice, for example.
And Bergin listens carefully to the athletes, trying to gather clues.
"There are the girls who say, 'Well, I'm a Division I talent,' " Bergin said. "And I think, 'Forget it.' I don't need the attitude. I've got to spend four years with these girls. I cross girls off my list all the time because I think they'll be high maintenance."
Bergin, whose three-year record at Haverford is 59-33, cautiously considers the 15 to 20 e-mail messages or mailings she receives from recruiting services every week. Recruiting services are private enterprises that charge a fee to mass-market a high school athlete to various colleges. They have become increasingly popular, even in the more obscure sports. Bergin finds the services useful, but she thinks parents are spending too much money on them.
"You just laugh at some of the professional videos I get with their Hollywood special effects," she said. "It's so unnecessary. Just give me a few skills highlights, and then I want to see a simple game tape. I've seen enough girls hitting balls as 'Eye of the Tiger' plays in the background to last a lifetime."
Giving an Honest Appraisal
On an overcast day in early August, Haverford's men's lacrosse coach, Mike Murphy, stood near the lush, tree-lined center of campus awaiting his first potential recruit of the day. Seven months from Haverford's next lacrosse game, this was potentially a pivotal day for Murphy's program. He had stacked appointments to escort four quality prospects, and their parents, around campus.
Three days earlier, meeting with another prospect, Murphy had courteously encouraged the player to focus on other colleges or universities because his high school grade point average (3.1 on a scale of 1 to 4) and his SAT score (1,120) would make him a long shot to be admitted to Haverford.
"Despite the fact that I like him as a player, I have to be honest," Murphy said. "There should be more dialogue like that. Kids should ask: What are my chances of getting in? What are my chances of playing?"
Two years ago, Murphy discouraged a top high school goalie from coming to Haverford because Murphy had a young, promising goalie who was only one year older.
"I told him, 'You can come here, but you'll probably sit for three years,' " Murphy said.
The goalie went to Swarthmore, Haverford's chief rival 10 miles to the southwest.
"And of course, he starts in goal as a freshman for Swarthmore and when we play them, on the first sequence of the game, he stuffs one of our guys on a point-blank shot," Murphy said, rolling his eyes. "I'm thinking, 'What did I do?'
"But our guys played pretty good. So did our goalie. We won, 11-7."
Now, on this day, Murphy's top recruiting priority is finding a goalie so that he is prepared when his current starter graduates. He has identified 12 high school and prep school goalies after spending eight weeks traveling from Texas to Massachusetts attending camps akin to the baseball showcase events. For Murphy, who has resurrected Haverford lacrosse with consecutive winning seasons, recruiting is a meticulous business. He does not do mass mailings trolling for recruits. A three-year starter at Duke and a former assistant coach at Brown, Virginia and Penn, Murphy relies on his contacts and his own eye. In June, at a camp at the Brunswick School in Greenwich, Conn., Murphy surveyed 150 players over six hours of play. He wrote down the name of one player.
The high school goalie Murphy is welcoming to the Haverford campus is Kevin Friedenberg of Needham, Mass. Murphy has scouted Friedenberg twice. Seconds after shaking Murphy's hand at the student center, Friedenberg hands over his transcript, which Murphy scans in seconds and offers immediate advice.
He wants Friedenberg to take as many Advanced Placement courses as he can in his senior year. "You're a good student, but that's the first thing that admissions will ask about," Murphy said.
Murphy takes Friedenberg and his parents on a tour of the campus and athletic facilities, answering questions as he walks, but he makes sure to come back to the Advanced Placement courses and how important it is for Friedenberg to take all that are offered.
"When recruiting at this level, if you don't take your cues from the people at admissions and use it to guide the prospects on their academic record, you're just crazy," Murphy said. "That's probably as important as identifying athletic talent."
In parting, Murphy persuaded Friedenberg to come for a weekend visit in October, when the Haverford campus welcomes its prized recruits in every sport.
Murphy's other visits went similarly, although on one of his campus tours, a player from Maryland asked Murphy where he might rank among the defensemen Murphy was recruiting.
"You're not in the top five," Murphy said. "You might be in the top 15. But academically you're more qualified than 80 percent. Some of those defensemen ahead of you are going to be good enough to go play Division I. Some will go elsewhere in Division III. So you can move up. You can also improve. I'd like to come watch you play again."
Later, asked if it was hard to be so blunt, Murphy said: "I have to have that conversation with him sooner or later. There are coaches, even in Division III, who tell every recruit, 'You're my top guy.' They just stockpile. I don't want to mislead anyone."
At the end of the day, Murphy was back at the campus center, awaiting his last visitor.
"You start this process knowing of hundreds of kids you think you might want to play for you," he said. "But you know that only a few will actually be on the field at your first practice. And none of them will be on scholarship and all of them can walk away at any time. They can just quit.
"So you better have made your choices carefully, and they better have come for the right reasons."
