Today concluded my mentorship with Ohio Northern University. Today, I spent time working on the 2016 All Conference lists by searching the different high school football conferences and then saving them to a shared Google drive that I have set up for the coaches so that they can access these list at anytime for the next recruiting period. While today was officially my last day of the mentorship, I will be staying on and continuing to help out with recruiting for Ohio Northern. I will be meeting with Coach Paul to go over my status as a contract worker for the athletic department and then getting started with my new position.
As I reflect back on my experience I have learned so much about what these coaches go through on a day to day basis and I owe a debt of gratitude to Coach Paul and to the entire coaching staff at ONU for not only welcoming me in but helping me out whenever I had a question and letting me assist them on different projects. While this is a great starting spot for me I still have my goals set high and will continue to look to move up higher in the rankings.
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Today, I focused on confirming all the visits that I had set up and changing up a few. One of the schools that I had wanted to schedule was not having school this week so I needed to find another school to fill in that position. Fortunately, I was able to do this. I also worked the phones pretty hard today confirming appointments for tomorrow so that Coach would be able to hit this high priority schools and talk with the players and coaches.
After working the phones, I also spent some time focusing on the next wave of recruiting that we will be doing. With the signing period coming up fast, it is also time to start looking at next years class as well. So what I started doing was looking at the current juniors that had made the All District teams and All Conferences teams as well. So I have been searching the internet for the All Conferences teams to gather more data to get a head start on the next recruiting period. Today, I worked on setting up recruiting visits for Monday and Tuesday of next week for Coach Paul. Yesterday was the first time I had ever done this before so I am trying to get the hang of this and to try and get everyone on board. Add on to that, I have to figure out the best routes to the schools that makes sense for Coach Paul so I don’t have him driving all over the state. So, what I did was use the six schools that he wanted to visit on Monday and put them in order of distance. Ashland was the first school that he wanted to go to and then from there I was sending him to Mansfield Madison, then Mansfield, Ontario, Shelby, and then Colonel Crawford. No school was more than a 20-25-minute drive from one another so this made it an easy setup. I had confirmation from every school about Coach Paul coming in except for one which was Mansfield. The one thing I found astonishing though is that one school does not permit its athletes to meet with coaches to be recruited for college. I could not wrap my head around this and probably never will.
Today I finished up reviewing film for the recruiting profiles for Coach Miller and Coach Russell. Meanwhile, I went back and was updating some information for Coach Paul for some new schools and new information on other potential recruits. I then spent the rest of the afternoon setting up recruiting visits for Coach Paul for Friday. I setup visits for him to go to six different schools to visit the student-athletes that are interested in coming to Ohio Northern including one that I was very high on. Fortunately, I was able to get all the schools on board for the visits as most of them was were very excited to have Ohio Northern coming to the school. To finish out the day, I got great news! I was asked to stay on with Ohio Northern as a contract employee to help them with their recruiting. No matter how long this may be I was pretty excited to be asked to stay on and to help out.
While in the office today, I went back through Front Rush to add any players to the recruiting profiles that I have been putting together and also seeing which players have already been ranked as well. After spending several hours going through around 35 schools I started reviewing film of those that had not been ranked. I started on Coach Millers schools first since he had the most remaining. Basically what I do when I am reviewing film is looking at the players athletic ability and their fundamentals. When you are looking for a prospect you want to be able to see something that sticks out and that makes you say yeah this kid can definitely play at the next level. There are several that I have found but they wouldn't be able to play at the positions they are currently because they would be undersized to play. So the best thing to do at that point is to evaluate their abilities and to see if they would be able to handle another position. While I did not get through all the schools today, I did finish up Coach Millers and will work on Coach Russell's tomorrow when I go in.
Today as I worked on Coach Millers recruiting profile I found myself having to take more time than what I normally would have had to. There were some mistakes in the list for some of the coaches at the local high schools so I had to go on a research journey to find out the correct head coach. Then I had to track down all of their contact information and for anyone who has had to attempt this before knows, it takes forever.
None the less, I was able to finish up his initial profile today and when I go into the office tomorrow I will confirm everything through Front Rush and add any additional players that need to be added. At this point I will also go through and do some film evaluation of the players that need to be evaluated and have not already been evaluated from anyone on the staff. Once I complete this, it will be on to another project as long as this part does not take up the remaining time I have here at Ohio Northern. With another sick kid at home today, I was able to do most of my work from home and get a lot accomplished. Since we use Google drive at the school and share the high school data base. I was able to access all the schools I needed to right from home. Also, since I have access to one of the scouting websites I was able to get more than half of my schools done today while still tending to my child. One school that I found interesting was McComb high school. The only reason being is that they have a set of twins on the team that are being recruited and as a father of twins, I though that this was something pretty cool. The next great thing is that you tend to start rooting for these kids in the playoffs so that they can go win a championship. Well I'm not sure how tomorrow will go yet, I may have to work from home again but hopefully I will be able to get back into the school by Wednesday so that I can access the recruiting database and update the profiles that I have already done.
Today was a short day and I did not get a whole lot accomplished. This tends to happen when you have a few sick kids that keep you from getting work done. However, I started on a new recruiting profile today for Coach Kyle Miller's and was hitting up a lot of local schools again. I also was sending out my now weekly emails to coaches that I have not heard back from for Coach Paul. As my time winds down here at Ohio Northern I am starting to transition the contact information from myself to having all the coaches send in their list of student-athletes to Coach Paul instead of myself.
As I come in today, the mood in the office is up beat after a big 80-3 win on Saturday over Wilmington. I got in and spoke to Coach Paul for a few minutes and let him know that next week would be my last week of my internship and that I would be sending him plenty of emails for things to go over for my mentorship. After that, I got straight to work finishing up Coach Prices schools. Going through the schools, I came across a South High School in Cleveland and became stuck searching for information on the football program. Getting stuck isn’t anything new but what I came across was new. I discovered that this school had been closed a few years earlier which would have been why I could not find anything about the football program.
After finishing up Coach Prices’ recruiting, I got started on Coach Russell’s. Coach Russell’s territory hits close home to me because it is all the schools that I am very familiar with and have relatives that work at one of them. It was fun going through some of these schools because I have watched some over the weekend in the high school playoffs so I was familiar with some of the players as well. It only took a few hours going through these schools because of my familiarity. Finishing up Coach Russell’s schools today will led to start on Coach Miller’s tomorrow and that will take the rest of the week most likely. While I didn’t work a lot today, I spent my time getting organized for the next three coaches that I will be working for. After finishing up Coach Krepps, I thought it would be a good idea to see how many schools that I had remaining between the three coaches. I had a total of 45 schools remaining to go through with the majority being Coach Kyle Millers. So, what I did today was breakdown the schools for Coach Price and Coach Russell and decided to start on Coach Prices’ schools first since he had the least. I was able to get through a couple of his schools today but will pick up on the rest on Monday when I go back in.
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