By Ryan Maloney, assistant women's volleyball coach
Here's what goes through our minds when we're recruiting a high school athlete to Fredonia ...
1) Will she fit our culture?
Two years ago we got an e-mail from the setter of one of the top high school teams in New York. I sent an e-mail to her coach, and the response was surprising: "Don't recruit her. She has a bad attitude."
Unfortunately we had to stop recruiting her. The good news is this coach is now a go-to character reference for volleyball players in that area.
We're lucky to have developed a network of high school and club coaches who know what type of mentality we look for in a player (see: Family, Passion, Service, Purpose) and are happy to point us in the right direction.
More than anything else, the recruit has to be a fit for our culture. It's easier to give our girls a good experience when the right people are in place.
2) Does she want to get better, or does she just want to start?
It's been surprising to see the growing number of high school players who say they absolutely want to see playing time in college... as a freshman. Having a good college volleyball experience has become synonymous with seeing the court.
Is it really a good idea to guarantee playing time to someone who's never been in your gym before? Is that fair to your current players who've been training with you for a number of years? If we tell them they may not start, should we worry they won't commit to us? If we tell them they will start, and they don't, won't they end up resenting us?
Sometimes dealing out worst-case scenarios is the best way for us to stay true to our values. I may have to tell a recruit that I'm concerned her expectations are too high. Even though she was the star in high school, she may not see the court as a freshman here. If she's okay with working towards her goal of being a starter, she's going to fit in great. If not, it's probably best she looks somewhere else.
Now she knows that by the time she's a junior in our program, she won't automatically be replaced by the next-best recruit, that she'll always have a chance to compete for her position.
3) Is she talented?
At the Division III level we don't have a lot of time to work with our athletes; they have interests and passions outside of volleyball. If a player wants to take spring season off to study abroad, she should.
This means:
- She needs to have a base level of talent right from the start. More and more we're working to find players who can compete at the top levels of Division III.
- She needs to be self-motivating (intrinsically motivated).
The second point is probably more important than the first. We have contact with our athletes from mid-August - early November, and then for 3-4 weeks in March. How is she using the rest of those months to get better?
The self-motivated player will have a plan for how she's going to improve. The player motivated by rewards and recognition will wait for the coach to tell her what to do.