Recruiting players with in your school

Way too difficult to answer this question without more info. Truthfully I am not sure you can provide what info we would need. In a nut shell i believe it comes down to your "likability " your "ability to be trusted" your atmosphere created at practice and in the weight room. Always other factors but it is much easier to self check. I would focus on creating a better bond with younger teams... mighty mites, jr. High etc...

I'm the dean, so if you misbehave and are reasonable we probably get to know each other and build trust. If you misbehave and you aren't reasonable we probably won't make it work any way. So the real turds don't even come out for the team.

We notoriously work hard and dirty (we do our conditioning in dirt) and our weight room has no AC so you've got to really want it. Show up 1 second late and I throw you out, take 1 extra second to tie your shoes, and I throw you out of the workout.

I can't get 'baseball guys' and 'basketball guys' to stick around much. No AC, no 'free throw practice' ironman football and high tempo and expectations aren't good for most Gen iY kids.

No

Background here I am at a school that is going into year 3. We started with our grade 10 class and have moved with them now into their G12 year (2013-2014). So this is right in our wheelhouse.

1) recruiting the halls is it worth it? YES. You will find some bodies that need to be playing who have yet to get out there. Will you get some duds yes, but you may get a stud as well. We pulled a starting LB, OL, DB out of the halls last season never played a down before. So far this season I found our G10 RB who never played, 2 OL and 1 DL. One of the OL has played for 6 years (youth) as a center just never thought about coming out...

2) How we do it is less intrusive / time intensive than you. We have taken the approach of great advertising. During weight room we scout the other sports practices (Basketball & Rugby which starts inside) we ID athletes there that are not yet playing then start with our players approaching them to play. Then in May we get up the posters and videos on the screens in the school. We get the flashiest nicest stuff out there to get them going. We ensure our spirit packs that kids get have more, and more expensive high end clothing. We have signage in the "team room" that all sports use that is specific to football and about our culture it never comes down!
Lastly as we near the sign up / meeting date for spring camp we flyer the halls after school one day.

Last season we ended the year with about 40 and we brought 70 to camp.

Five a year is 20 over a four year span. Remember, every time you get a kid you've also potentially recruited his little brother, cousins, and friends. 

Make football special in your school. A few things that we've done to do that this spring to boost our numbers:

1. Team Camp in June. We're going to the Linfield Team Camp in Oregon this year. We've never gone to a team camp before. When we announced that we were going to Oregon this Spring, we got at least 5-10 athletes (bball and track stars).

2. Football display case. Neglected for 2 years, over spring break I made up a nice team plaque of our 2012 varsity team, and put up some nice pictures of the team from 2012. Got a couple of older helmets, shined them up, spruced up some nice cleats, and a signed game ball from 2012. Now, it doesn't look like our football program died 2 years ago, and instead, everytime I pass by the display case now, kids are looking inside it.

3. Website and twitter update. I redid our website completely, and made it more attractive and functional. I update it every few days with news, schedule updates, shout outs. I also created a team twitter for the players and parents to follow. I've seen our players retweet stuff all the time, and a few tweets have gone viral.

4. New swag. We are buying every Varsity player a new helmet this Spring. Firstly, for safety reasons to replace our old stock. Secondly, we're getting the matte finish, and redoing our logo. We just did helmet fitting, and there is a buzz in the whole school about the helmets.

5. Fundraise like crazy. We did a manure sale, and are getting ready for our bottle drive. We got money from our PAC for the helmets. As they say, money can't buy happiness, but it sure as heck buys a lot of stuff that people like, such as new helmets, cool sprit pack, etc...

And we just found out that an alumni of our school is donating a new scoreboard and will be installed in the summer, in time for friday night games in the fall.

In summary, try to make football special in your school. Will it rub some of the other sport coaches in your school the wrong way?? Probably (our head basketball coach had to post recruiting posters for next year, the first time in 15 years). But I always tell everyone that football IS special, and that if you want to a part of something special, better get on the bandwagon...

It is very frustrating coach... trust me, you and I have had this conversation before... we are going through the same issues as your school. We get the same thing. Luckily for us, we got a kid last year who may end up being our #1 RB this season, at worst #2. Will be a junior. My assistants are good at tracking kids in halls, and I have the counselors on-board, so any kids they have to 'deal with' that they think could use the structure of football they send to me.

I generally have a rule for spring... For every 100 kids on my 'list' we will end up with about 75 of them. We keep searching for that 'diamond in the rough', but haven't found one (yet)

Disclaimer: I'm not sure where we got this, but it wasn't our idea. It was either on here or at a clinic.

THE LIST
We tell prospective players that they are "on the list." They ask "what list?" We say "the list of guys who should be playing football." That is usually the end of "the list" talk with most of them. They walk away a little shocked and interestingly satisfied, almost saying to themselves "I'm on the list?...Yeah, I'm on the list!"

The reality behind the thing, there is no written list. Every student at the school is a potential player, so they're all on "the list." They don't have to know that though. They walk away feeling special and you might be getting a new player. Now, hypothetically, you might end up saying this to 50 kids...20 end up coming out...most of whom might not have tried football otherwise. Some of them will quit, but even if you end up getting only 2-3 new players from using "the list", isn't that a successful recruiting campaign? Any of us would love to have just one more contributor to the team, so it is time well spent, IMO.

I Coach a school with about 100 students. All of the coaches on our staff all work the halls and none of us are teachers or staff at the school. We usually each take time off of work to have lunch on campus from time to time so the potential players have a chance to get to meet us. I think the most important recruiting tool we have is our players. We remind them regularly that what they do and say and how they treat the youngsters(we are a K-12) determine whether kids want to be apart of what we are doing. If one of our "stars" is a jerk to some 7th or 8th grader that kid wont come out for the team.

next, that's great, but do you really need 65 freshman football players? Can you practice-develop them all equally-effectively? How do you get them all game time?

Especially now if you have to have try outs and cut kids.

How many will still be playing by their senior year?

I think sometimes coaches place undue emphasis on numbers, as if having bigger squads-higher participation somehow validates us and our programs.

I agree on the importance of Sub-Varsity coaches.

We hit the hallways. All year round...

Its definitely made it hard to coach but the best kids played the entire game and the rest play when the game allows (either getting killed or killing em). 

I look at it like they have a chance to succeed. Its really up to them. They either develop and play or they don't.

We certainly had a lot of bad players come out but really just being on the football team is a cool thing and many kids are happy with that and just being able to wear a uniform to school on gameday.

I coach in the largest division in the state as we have 1200 kids in the school.  We have 3 teams (freshman, JV, Varsity).

Will many wash out over the 4 years?  Don't know, but what I do know is we are creating a culture where football rules the school and that's fine by me.  This is a school where all soccer is king (I know... how does that happen in the USA) and we had to change the culture.

All that being said, we changed HC's recently and the new HC is a little different so we will see what happens. 

Personally though, I would much rather be in a position to have try-outs and cuts rather than begging kids to play.  Now getting 50 per freshman team is easy to do.

  

morgs,

Do you have a local access cable tv station?

If so, how about having a replaying highlight video of last season with whatever information you need to convey scrolling across the top?

Thanks coach. We do these things too. I am not the HC, but I am the only one who is in the building so recruitment/retention is my department, along with paperwork, finances, and all the other administrative nonsense. Basically the HC, just not in name. Anyway, I refuse to chase players through the halls because even if they do come out, they are going to quit, or not be a strong contributor. Like you said, it's the athletes playing other sports that I'm after, and I have been doing very well in this department. I so far have pretty strong commitment from 8 or 9 kids that we wanted last year but couldn't get, all of which who should become immediate contributors.