Transcription
Good morning, everybody. This is Coach Anthony. I wanted to facilitate the process, so I wanted to get this out there while it was kind of on my mind. I watched a lot of people complaining about the recruiting process, recruiting services, the transfer portal, the officials, the 8 a.m. AAU games, the fees that are charged at the AAU games to get into the games, the parking. I watch it all, right? And it's not to say I believe that people don't have a valid point, but let's just call it what it is. I mean, it's business for the most part, right?
But I'm also seeing, on the business end, why a lot of, let's say high schools—even at high school levels—why a lot of times the coaches can't focus on recruiting or getting kids recruited because there are a lot of unseen forces. Right? Coaches have their lives as well, right? So I think a lot of people forget that. Right? Coaches have their lives and the lives of these kids, um, in their hands, so to speak. But how can you really focus on that recruiting phase when you don't even know what team you might have come next week, weekend?
A lot of times the way it's set up, they—I know they like to call it sometimes when the circuit starts—they'll say this is the transfer portal for AAU. When is that starting? Where teams, kids jump teams the very next weekend, or whatever. You play one kid one weekend, and now he's—you're playing them again because he's on a whole different team, right? You have that going on. Really, not going to speak to that; that's, you know, that's on the parents and whoever is guiding those folks as to how they do that.
But your high school teams, you see kids going to different high schools almost every year. Sometimes there's a kid going to another high school; it's like the high school transfer portal, right? And you know they're different rules in place in organizations as to how that's allowed. But if you've got to focus on what your roster looks like every single day, every single year, and you got to keep checking with the kid and checking with the parent, "Hey, you coming back this year? Hey, you coming back? Are you coming back? Are you sure you coming back?" They say they're coming back, and then they don't come back. But it's like, it's high school, so your thought process sometimes is, you know, how it used to be: you went to one high school; you went to that high school for four years. That's not the case anymore, especially when you—sometimes if you're at a public school and some charter school is calling or some private school is calling and they're great and they have, quote-unquote, "connections" and networking, and they supposedly can get you in a better place when it comes to getting recruited.
So a lot of these student athletes will jump ship from a public school, go to a CH, or go to a private school, and the grass is not always greener on the other side. But once again, my question, which is the subject of this live: how can the coaches concentrate on recruiting if they don't even know what they're going to have for each season? Because they have to focus on the team concept because they have a job to do. So your star point guard is not happy with whatever—it could possibly be a charter school that is nationally—not nationally known—calls and says, "Hey, come play for us," and the parents say, "Hey, we're coming." How do you combat that as a coach? I mean, if you're a good coach and you're doing everything you're supposed to do, there's not much that you really can do about it. If the parent and the kids want to leave, they're going to leave, right?
But I caution parents and coaches to understand that this is not what it used to be. As I said earlier, I grew up when you went to school, for the most part, you went to that high school for four years. There were always kids that excelled athletically and wound up going to play at a private school. This has been going on for years, but it's really happening now. You know, and just as they call it the transfer portal in high school. So how do you really expect those coaches to focus on that? They've got all the internal issues going on, and the last thing they need is, "Uh, this kid is not happy, and now they're going to go to that next high school." Well, guess what happens with that? We have that going on in the AAU; we have that going on now in the colleges. So it's a—it's now commonplace at every level.
So I say that to say this: if it's commonplace at every level, it's a part of the culture now. So it's not just a phenomenon that is just happening. And I just kind of wanted to touch on that because I'm—I'm trying to figure out how do coaches do it? You already have your lives going on, especially high school coaches, and now you get hit with, "Hey, yeah, we—we're going to go another route." "What you mean you're going to go another route? This is your second high school, your third high school." How does that translate when they go to college? Is it going to be more of the same? Are we going to celebrate you committing? Are we going to celebrate you getting these offers? Are we going to celebrate you getting signed? And then to do it all over again the year after that because you—some kids have a—kids and parents have a track record of not being happy at a spot, it quote-unquote, "not being that right fit at the time," and then they're going to another school again.
So we've got "right fit" all the way around, and at some point, if the right fit is not fitting, or you know how we say like sometimes the math is not mathing—if the right fit is not fitting two or three times, there's a problem there. And sometimes, as coaches, we have to be able to see these things within our programs and feel like, "Hey, is this student athlete a right—a good fit for our program?" It's not always about the right fit for the student athlete. So sometimes we have to remember that, and that's trickling down. So at the high school and club levels, we need to know that as well. We can't just take that, "Oh, this kid's a great—great stud." Well, some is not even great student athletes—great athlete, but sometimes we're not even focusing on grades. That's a whole another story. But just ask the coaches to start to really take a more in-depth look at it—look at it for what it is. You may be renting a player for a year, even at the high school levels. It is what it is.
Hopefully, coaches will get an opportunity to be able to focus a little bit more on that and really look at it for what it is. A kid can say they're coming back; it does not mean they're coming back, even at the high school level. So, um, just wanted to kind of get this out there a little bit; it was on my mind, and um, let's—let's really try to take care of the student athletes, whether we have them for a year, two, three, four, whatever. Let's do our part, that so when—when it comes down to it, that as a coach we can say we did what we needed to do; it just may not have been the right fit for that student athlete as they grow, and then they continue, and then they want to move on to, I guess you could say, greener pastures.
But also, I would say have us have some sort of a speech ready for them, um, like an exit speech or something. Try not to just let them leave your program without at least seeing—almost like a real—real business, right? Find out what's the reason why? Did they want to leave? What was causing them to—what caused them to want to go? Sometimes they're not going to tell you; the parents are just going to say, "We just want to go." It can happen. So at the end of the day, take care of yourself, take care of your programs, and do your best to take care of whatever kids you have left, because those kids also still need you, and the process is going to be the process regardless. So all you have to really—really remember in this is that the kids are going to come—come and go; it's going to be really about the ones that you've really affected, because at some point they're going to remember who you are and what you did for them.