My Journey as a Recruit

While at Head First Honor Roll Camp in California this past week I was asked to speak to the recruits and their parents during one of the camp meetings about anything I wanted (No pressure, right?). I decided to tell a little bit of my own recruiting story and give some advice that I should have listened to a long time ago. We talked about developing a philosophy as a player and why that is so incredibly important. As a coach you are expected to have a philosophy, actually most institutions won’t hire you if you don’t have one. The part that no one really talks about is how players need to develop a philosophy as well. How can you pick a softball program and know if you will work well within their philosophy and program if you don’t know what your own philosophy is? Sit down and think about it. Think about all of the coaches you’ve played for and against, think about the college teams and coaches you love the most. Are there similarities in their philosophies? What about the differences? Do you want to play for an aggressive base running program or a program with big bats that hit everyone in? Do you want to swing at the first strike or take one to get comfortable? Do you like to play almost up the middle at second base or somewhere more in the middle? As a slapper do you want to power slap too or just soft slap? These are all things that you can ask in interviews with college coaches. But you have to know what your philosophy is before you can start asking questions about someone else’s, how else will you know if you could see yourself succeeding in that program? Take the time to write it down, define who you are as a player.
 
We take so much time picking a college and a softball program. The pressure to commit early is increasing by the year. I committed right after my sophomore season 8 years ago, and at the time it was considered early. Now, it’s completely normal to already have committed during freshman year. We all pick a school and are beyond excited to go on your official visit, meet your roommates, figure out everything you can before you get there. So, what happens when life takes a 180 when you get there? What happens when you start to feel like it might not be the place for you?
 
This isn’t really something I’ve ever talked openly about. I guess I’ve always been I little bit embarrassed of the decisions I made and why I made them. I think it’s important to share, even if it only resonates with one player or parent. Let’s start at the beginning. I was a sophomore getting recruited by a few different schools, some DI and some DII, there were scholarship offers involved and it seemed like all was going well to my 15-year-old brain…and then suddenly it wasn’t. I visited and fell in love with the College of the Holy Cross in Worchester, Massachusetts. They were DI, high academic, and competitive as a program and a school. The school itself was amazing, I fell in love the second I walked on campus. Small catch…at the time the Patriot League was not allowed to offer athletic scholarship, they could only offer merit and need based aid (so scholarship based on grades and family finances). Did I mention that Holy Cross cost $50,000 a year to attend? And that I wanted to be a teacher? I know what you’re thinking…those two things don’t exactly add up. So after a lot of tears and a lot of arguing with my parents that I would figure out how to pay almost $200,000 in college debt off, we moved on to look at other schools.
 
The recruiting process continued, I visited a few other schools. I was offered two “full rides.” In this case, they were both about 2/3 athletic scholarship and 1/3 academic scholarship…full athletic scholarships are a very rare thing as most programs do not have the funding to offer them. Caldwell College (NJ) and Long Island University-Post (NY), both good schools and both good programs. So why look anymore? I had two options to go to college for free. Most of you know that I picked Post and went on to start my career there. I stopped looking because I saw dollar signs. I picked a school that I liked, but didn’t love. That had a great softball program and that was successful, but wasn’t the style of program I was used to. It was also in an area that was nothing like where I grew up and I wasn’t overly comfortable with. I went on my official visit during their Homecoming Weekend and was beyond overwhelmed and started to second guess my decision. But it was free and they were a winning program, so September rolled around and off I went.
 
My freshman year was rough, to put it nicely. My classes were easy and I was bored a lot of the time. I wasn’t finding a lot in common with my teammates, which wasn’t anyone’s fault, we were just from different worlds. I was the kid who worked crazy hours all summer to be able to have money during the year while they had their parents’ credit card and could do and buy whatever they wanted. I didn’t have much time outside of softball to make other friends or participate in other activities. I wasn’t finding the joy in softball like I did before I got to college, it was feeling more and more like a job. I wasn’t eating, I actually lost 20 pounds my freshman year going from 135 to 115 at 5’7”. I genuinely think I was depressed, which is a hard thing to come to terms with. We did well that year, earning an at large bid to the NCAA regionals and losing in the championship game. I led the conference in saves and loved being a closer. I went home for the summer and started to think about what I wanted to do the next year.
 
Once I was home it was easy to start rationalizing why I was unhappy my freshman year. It’s freshman year…it’s hard for everyone…maybe it was just because it was a new place…I know everyone now, so sophomore year should be better. So off I went again in September, back to Long Island. It was a little better, I found clubs I could join that didn’t require a lot of time commitment, met new friends through them that weren’t athletes, I took more classes and tried to challenge myself by adding a minor. I had worked to gain weight over the summer and was keeping it on even when I was stressed. I was still pitching well and closing games, leading the national in saves at multiple points throughout the season. We had a great year, with the opportunity to play at the World Series. Our post-season continued almost a month after finals. So I was on campus with just our team and a few others, with just softball to think about. No classes, no other friends, nothing to keep busy but practices. I starting to think more and more about transferring as the post-season came closer and closer to the World Series. I wish I could say there was one thing that made up my mind, but it was really just a lot of little things that built up into a feeling of not belonging. We went to the World Series, lost two games and came home. We drove 8 hours home from Virginia, I talked to my coach as soon as we got off the bus, he agreed to give me release papers to transfer with the stipulation that I could not play for another East Coast Conference school. I packed up my car, and drove until 1AM that night to get home, never really looking back or regretting my decision.
 
 
So then what? I had just signed away two more years of free tuition at Post, with no idea where I was headed or what to do. I got home, and my parents weren’t happy at first…I mean who would be with all of the variables up in the air. Eventually they warmed up to the idea of transferring, since going back to Post wasn’t really an option anymore I guess they kind of had to. I reached out to my sister’s travel ball coach for some advice, and he started to help me find schools that were looking for a transfer pitcher. Starting the whole process over again researching schools, talking to coaches, planning visits...I felt like a failure. At 20 I was supposed to be getting excited to be an upperclassman and want to fast forward through summer, not be looking for a new home. Shippensburg University was the first school I visited, and ended up being the last as well. There was no full scholarship, there was little hope of a deep run into post season, and the facilities were that of a state school. The coach was honest and caring, and I liked the girls that I met on my visit. The school was exactly what I was looking for academically, known for their challenging teacher education program and opportunities academically are what sold me on the school. That summer I had the opportunity to do it all over again, the entire recruiting process. This time around there were a few less restrictions, as a transfer I could talk to coaches whenever I wanted through email, text, or on the phone which was really nice. I started to define who I was as a player, really what my philosophy was (and is still pretty close to today as a coach), and what I knew I had to have in a program. Shippensburg offered a lot of the things I was looking for in a program -athletically, socially, and academically. So off I went the following September. It was a great fit, I loved the school, I had time to be involved in my major, it’s where I started giving pitching lessons seriously, it was great. It was a perfect fit to the point where as a senior when my shoulder finally gave up on the whole softball thing, I was still extremely happy with my college experience after I couldn’t play anymore.

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Take softball out of the equation. Pretend you don’t work your butt off and love it and all those things that make you a great softball player. If you applied to X school just to go to school there, would you still love it? If you get hurt and can’t play anymore will you still love where you’re at? You go pro in whatever your major is, there are very few of us that will go pro in softball. If you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life, whether you’re 19 on a softball field or 36 going to work every day in the real world.

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