A new home

He said he used a lot of internet searches, sent emails to prospective players and received emails from players who were interested in playing at JMU.

As time went on, he began to travel to other countries — mostly in Europe — namely England, France and Northern Ireland to see potential recruits play in tournaments. Now at this stage of his tenure as JMU’s head coach, he uses a holistic approach to international recruiting.

“Now we have gone with everything, we’re calling, we’re emailing, we’re FaceTiming, we’re doing every avenue we can,” Cheves said.

Something Cheves has at his fingertips that other sports might not have access to are ranking systems. These rankings show the top players in different age groups and allow coaches to see how these young players from different countries are performing. Cheves said this is a great stepping stone to begin recruiting these players.

“The European golf rankings, we can go and we can look up who is doing what from every country,” Cheves said. “The world amateur golf rankings gives us a good starting point for what everyone is doing, really, across the world … We can go and see their results in one place and determine if this is someone that is playing at a level that we feel like fits within our program.”

Another feature of the internet that Cheves and many other coaches use to their advantage is social media. Cheves sometimes DMs athletes on Instagram and Twitter to try to get a line of communication going — “we’ll use essentially every resource at our disposal,” he said.

An additional tool at Cheves’ disposal is each country’s junior national teams. Cheves said over time he’s built relationships with coaches of a few of these teams and they tell him about players that are playing well so the program can further scout them as they develop.

“We have gotten to know some of those coaches, so we can ask them who is going to be on the team this year and who is coming up,” Cheves said. “And then we can track those guys and reach out to them as they come of age.”

In the end, while language and cultural differences make things more difficult on the international recruiting trail as opposed to in the U.S., Cheves said mutual interest between himself and a recruit makes things simpler.

“I wouldn’t call it a big adjustment, we all have the one thing in common, and that’s golf,”

Cheves said. “We kind of rally around that common interest and goal and so it makes it a lot easier.”

All the aforementioned sports are different and each coach has their own nuances to recruiting. Over time, JMU has built a strong winning tradition, something Morgan believes players must buy into.

“Our culture is so extraordinary,” Morgan said. “If you get the wrong person, even if they have the right skill, it destroys the culture.”

CONTACT Will Moran at moranwp@dukes. jmu.edu. For more soccer, golf and field hockey coverage, follow the sports desk on Twitter @TheBreezeSports.

EDITOR EMAIL Evan Weaver breezeopinion@gmail.com

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