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Post by holmesbend on Apr 15, 2013 12:19:13 GMT -6
^^ We share the same definition of "chase". That's hilarious. One of my closest friends..matter of fact, he teaches in the classroom next to me, too....He use to ask, "You ready?" at a party/bar. If they looked confused, he just moved on...those that didn't ask anything were usually willing and out the door.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2013 12:28:02 GMT -6
I think a lot of issues with player retention come down to the way you run practices. If you try to be the Junction Boys you're going to have a much harder time keeping players than if you find ways to make practices more fun and less physically taxing for players.
We recruited 10 players to come out and join us after we started practice in July.
Of those 10, one was a senior who got some reps as our #4 WR, one was a senior who played a lot as our top backup DL but stopped showing up for practice after 3 weeks (still showed up for games and got mad we stopped playing him, so he quit at midseason), and another was a big slow junior we just used as an extra body on the DL when we needed someone to fill that spot. The others all washed out after a few days even though some were promoted to #2 on the depth chart at their positions before they even put on pads.
It can be successful, though. When I was a Senior in HS we got a new HC who went out and recruited the halls hard to get certain cliques of athletic kids to come out. 4 of those were juniors on the basketball team, 4 were seniors who'd quit for the previous HC, 1 was a transfer friend of those basketball players who was kicked off a team at another school, and 1 was an athletic kid who was just friends with the seniors.
We'd finished the season before with 26 varsity players at a school of 900ish, including 9 seniors and only 12 on the freshman "team." We started the spring with 80+ for practice. When things started in the fall we had 60 and dropped to around 50 for the season.
Of that "recruiting class" that yielded 20+ new varsity players:
12 of them started that season (4 were 2-way starters) 1 became Conf. DPOY and a 2 time All-State LB who played 1-AA ball 4 others made the All Conference team (2 chose to play college basketball over football) 1 was a selfish turd of a player (guess which one?), but a freak athlete who cost us 3 games through stupidity 4 quit the team during the season because they didn't get to start
The connections to that group of basketball players eventually led to 2 more transfers from the other school who became starters, including an All-State RB. They also had a bunch of friends come out who didn't play much, but they recruited their friends, etc. It was a pyramid thing.
So yeah, it can sometimes work, especially if you focus on building relationships with kids families' and friends to get them there. It just depends on what you've got and why they're not already playing for you in the first place. This HC did really get soft on discipline, though, in order to keep his "studs" happy.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2013 16:08:04 GMT -6
Several good ideas here, so I don't have much to add. Two things stick out to me, though. First, as fantom said earlier, ask once or twice and leave it at that. I worked for one HC who actually ran some kids off who might have played because he came across as needy and begging. And, well, he was begging so it was hard to disagree with that assessment.
Second, I've found the best way to recruit kids who play other sports is to actually talk to them about their other sports and show interest in that. We talk all the time about being about the whole athletic program and not just the football team, so this is another avenue to model that behavior.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 15, 2013 16:09:25 GMT -6
Several good ideas here, so I don't have much to add. Two things stick out to me, though. First, as fantom said earlier, ask once or twice and leave it at that. I worked for one HC who actually ran some kids off who might have played because he came across as needy and begging. And, well, he was begging so it was hard to disagree with that assessment.
Second, I've found the best way to recruit kids who play other sports is to actually talk to them about their other sports and show interest in that. We talk all the time about being about the whole athletic program and not just the football team, so this is another avenue to model that behavior.
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Post by Coach Bennett on Apr 16, 2013 6:12:10 GMT -6
Sometimes it works to simply say to a kid, "I know I've been talking to you a lot about playing and I see where you're at. If you feel like coming out for the team, we'd love to have you but I'll stop asking you about it."
Like most recruiting/selling, this approach doesn't work very often but that's not to say it hasn't.
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