High school Recruitment

Change of plays

Coaches alter recruitment style to fit the times

Rosie Towler towleros000@hsestudents.org

Fishers Junior High and Riverside sudents run a drill at the football camp on March 20 to learn new skills. All of the young athletes ended up making the team this August and played with the team for the whole season. Photo given with permission from Dawn Crane.

The method of recruiting young athletes from middle school to high school has changed over the years for FHS coaches. Most coaches look towards middle and intermediate schools to recruit for their teams. In a football camp held in March for example, at the clinic, the coaches build enthusiasm for the sport by having the high school athletes help in the clinics to give young athletes in grades 5 through 8 help on techniques and practice on how they could get better by the time they enter high school. “As of right now, I'm pretty social media based, through Instagram and Facebook, then the rest of [recruitment is] kind of word of mouth,” said diving coach Jimmy Russ. Due to the increased use of social media, it is more common that coaches will begin to familiarize themselves with the platforms and try advertising their sport on different apps in order to recruit more students. “I mostly found out about [the sports] through social media, and my parents telling me stuff they found on Facebook,” freshman member of Color guard Veronica Vogt said. While most coaches do use social media as a recruitment method, others still use things like websites, signs and t-shirts to spread the word. “We use the website as our marketing tool as well,” Joseph Keller, head coach of the girl's and the boy's swimming program said, “Sometimes we even have signs, like yard signs that, in August, we'll set out at different places.” It is essential for FHS coaches to recruit middle school athletes with many different methods, to increase excitement towards the sport and grow their skills before they get to high school. “I think that recruiting young athletes at a younger age is important because it gives them time to figure out what activities they enjoy and what skills they can learn from them,” Vogt said. In many sports, like basketball, color guard, football and volleyball, the coaches not only reach out to young athletes and parents through social media but also use clinics to showcase what the high school sport has to offer. Clinics are in the form of a practice of the sport, where young athletes from different middle schools come to learn about the team and how they interact and meet new people. “I think clinics are helpful because they give people a chance to find out what sports are about and how much they enjoy doing them,” Vogt said. “It also gives a showcase of skills to the coach and/or peers” At these clinics, coaches build enthusiasm for the sport by having the high school athletes help in the clinics to give the younger athletes ideas on what they could be when they are in high school. “You get to see your friends and all those kind of things, so I think the same thing happens with extracurriculars,” Keller said. “They get started and then as they get started, they connect with people. They find a place that they can connect to, then those relationships keep them invested into what they are doing.”