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Recruiting is all about building relationships. It usually starts off with a simple handshake. College coaches who build the best relationships, will recruit the best players, which usually leads to them having the best programs in the country. Then there’s the fun part. Prospective recruits get to experience tons of campus tours and special passes for games. 

But recruiting over the past year and a half has been a pretty big challenge for coaches at PCC. Coaches have had to take alternative methods for getting in contact with recruits such as zoom meetings and more one on one phone calls. 

Michael Terrill is the head coach for the women’s volleyball. Terrill expressed that they have had a bit more of a challenge than they expected. 

“We finished recruiting our 2020 class at the beginning of the pandemic last year,” Terrill said. “It was difficult for all of us because we didn’t know if we would have a season or not. Much of the recruiting process took place on the phone and zoom’s than it typically does.”

Now this isn’t even the biggest issue for the volleyball team. That would be the decision from PCC not to pay stipends to head coaches, and not being able to hire assistant coaches. 

“This has been a blow to morale because our staff put in the same work we do each year to recruit players and plan a season,” Terrill said. “For the upcoming 2021 season of recruitment, without having assistant coaches we cannot recruit players at the level we’re accustomed to and I personally feel it’s ethically wrong to ask my assistants to recruit for PCC without being compensated.”

It is a real shame to see some of these assistant coaches going through this tough time without any kind of help from the school. These coaches put in a lot of time away from their social life and family. Now other coaches have had different responses to the issue of recruiting over this past year.

Steven Mojarro, head football coach for the lancers, had a lot to say regarding the struggles of recruiting over the last year.

“There have been a lot of challenges, however our coaching staff has found very creative ways to keep recruiting players,” Mojarro said. “Our best recruiters are our players who have been with the program for the past 2 years.”

Mojarro also stated that the team is hoping to get newer students on campus as soon as possible when it is safe to do so. For now, the team has made special videos for recruits of all the great things that PCC has to offer. In addition he mentions that some have committed because of it.

It is nice to see that coaches are taking different routes to help benefit their team in the long run and ultimately get the best players that they can. Now it’s not all smiles for all PCC sports. One sports team on campus has had a really tough time recruiting due to the pandemic. 

There have been a lot of issues revolving around sports over the last year. Seasons have either been delayed or canceled. Tournaments have also been canceled, and so much money has been lost. 

Due to this, it has not only affected the student-athletes in college, but the athletes that are in high school. The kids in high school who are being recruited by coaches regardless of the sport go through a lengthy process. 

The NCAA has a certain guideline that schools, coaches, and athletes must follow when they are being recruited by coaches. The four different periods are contact period, evaluation period, quiet period, and lastly the dead period. 

During the Contact period a college coach is allowed to have face-to-face interactions, watch the athletes compete and can visit student-athletes at their respective high school. In the evaluation period, coaches can do almost all of the same as the contact period but have face-to-face interactions with the athlete or parent.

The quiet period only consists of writing letters or texting. They may not visit the school, attend competitions, or speak with the student-athlete in person. Lastly, the dead consist of no communication with the student athlete and nothing that consists of school visits or in home visits. 

Recruiting is done in multiple steps and many different ways. The struggle of recruitment as of late has given coaches lots to think about. Good thing is that normality for coaches is on the way. This past year has been pretty difficult for everybody involved in athletics and now with the development of vaccines and low covid rates, sports may finally be getting back to normal.

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