Just saw this news...native Richmonder and current head coach at Valpo will take over the Spider baseball program. This seems like a very good hire.
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Now I know why Tracy and also the Columbia coach were at our games at East Cobb!
But this is good news to us locally. We need more local boys on the field for the Spiders and Tracy has the roots here to make that happen.
Woodson would definitely bring a winning mindset to UofR. What will be interesting to see is how he adjusts to the academic differences between the schools. Striking the balance between performance on the field and higher admission standards has been a struggle for many coaches. Add in the heavier price tag of playing at UofR vs Valpo and his recruiting skills will be tested right out of the gate. I wish him the best and hope he continues his success at Richmond. And I agree...more local/Virginia players on the roster would be great to see. It sure would improve attendance.
Actually UR and Valpo are pretty much equal academically, and in their admissions profiles. Also both private and both around the same size. UR costs about 30% more, though, which is always a challenge for partial scholarship sports at schools that have climbed into the 55k range.
The advantage UR has is that it is better known in the Northeast, where the high dollar students are more easily found.
I suspect Woodson was hired not only due to his professional experience and his coaching resume, but also because he has already shown he can produce a winner in a similar environment. Given that UR has changed a lot since Woodson was growing up here, that may have been more important than the fact that he's from here originally.
Midlo, maybe I'm looking at the wrong data, but the middle 50% of Valpo student body seems different (ex: 200 pts lower on avg SAT). Not weak stats, but when you look at the size of an entering class at schools this size (less than 880 students) and the pressure sports "variances" put on the admission results, I would imaginge UofR might expect a stronger student than Coach Woodson experienced at Valpo. Hope I'm wrong and that either way he's successful.
Woodson is a good hire because he has been a successful head coach at another D1 program in a competitive conference similar in conference RPI to the A10.
In my mind the two programs (Valpo and Richmond) are nothing alike except they are both private schools with an enrollment in the 4K neighborhood. The similiarites end there as the Admission requirements, financial commitment, and recruiting territories are very, very different.
It would appear to me that the Richmond brain trust wants to go in a different direction and feel Woodson (local boy) can overcome these differences mentioned above. Given Richmond's program history in the last 5 years, it is probably best try something new in this competitive conference with 15 schools vying for 1 NCAA berth. Maybe Woodson can bring in some talented kids from the wealthy Chicago, St Louis, and Ohio suburbs? We'll find out soon enough.
Frankly, I don't think Richmond could have gone wrong with any of the 4 final candidates. All of them brought something significant to the table.
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Got my data from the U.S. News colleges guide. They show the middle 50% with very similar test scores (though you have to know the conversion table to compare SAT's to ACT's).
When I compared, I used College Navigator to compare the schools side by side. You can select the school and then designate it as a "favorite". Select another school, and select it as a "favorite" and then do a compare. To save the data, you can export it to a spreadsheet or email it to yourself. Great tool.
There are definitely a variety of sources out there. I was using www.collegeboard.com which is from the SAT folks. It has several searching and comparing functions which is where I compared the SAT results of Valpo and UofR. They give you a range for the middle 50% of recent entering freshman which in this case showed the upper and lower end of the range was almost 200 points higher at Richmond than the comparable students at Valpo. I also checked US News rankings and found UofR was ranked as the #28 Private "National" university. Valpo did not make the national list but did make #4 on their respective regional list. As this discussion is proving, you don't always get the same picture from them all.
Look forward to hearing if there are any changes to previous commits (2013s and 2014 verbals) and new results on his initial recruiting. I would imagine he will be hearing from plenty of prospects that are more interested now that things have finally settled.