FREDERICTON (CUP) – The University of New Brunswick Fredericton and UNB Saint John spent $41,736 on athlete recruitment in the 2012-13 season.
“I encourage them to go find the best student-athletes as possible,” said athletic director John Richard. “If that means Australia, it’s Australia [and] if that means in Oromocto [a small town in New Brunswick], it’s in Oromocto.”
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The funding, however, only goes to varsity-level athletes and does not include club team such as Fredericton’s men’s swim team, the Ironmen rugby, women’s hockey or other club teams.
“They would self-generate dollars to go recruit athletes, no different than wrestling or cross-country,” he said.
Recruitment includes times the coaches travel to recruit — including airfare, rental cars, hotels, meals on the road and taking the potential recruit to dinner in their hometown. Recruiting also includes bringing players to the university for campus tours.
Although there is no limit to the amount of non-funded visits a Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) athlete can make to universities, CIS regulations allow universities only one funded university visit within an academic year — it includes airfare, hotels, meals and other costs.
“We’re after a certain brand of student-athlete,” said Richard. “And you certainly don’t get a top-level athlete without a campus visit and or coach’s visit [to the athlete].”
How the money is divided is different than a normal budget; it isn’t allocated to a certain percentage per team because it varies depending on the team’s needs.
There is a budget to take care of all conference requirements, which includes travelling to games, games at home, membership fees, telephone bills and other similar needs.
“My first priority is to satisfy conference requirements,” he said. “Our men’s basketball team [played] Acadia this weekend, that’s a requirement of the league, so once I price all that out … and pay all our staff with salary, there’s dollars left.”
The leftover funds go into the non-league budgets, and a portion of non-league budgets are spent on recruiting.
“I don’t dictate to a coach how much they can spend on recruiting, they have a pot of money and then they self-generate dollars,” he said.
Self-generated funds include fundraisers, raffle tickets at games, sport-camp programs — such as Adopt-A-Red — and other team-hosted events.
“They use that money for recruiting, but also for exhibition travel, equipment, stuff like that,” said Richard. “But I don’t tell a coach [they] must spend $2000, or [they] must spend $6000 in a given year.’ ”
Richard said the reason he doesn’t dictate to coaches how much to spend on recruitment each year is because of the constant change in rosters.
Each season there are players leaving and new players coming in, so the demand for players changes each year. In some cases no players leave and in some an entire team is needed.
“[It’s] a moving target,” said Richard. “That’s a question that I could answer today, but in a month it might be different.”
An example Richard used is the men and women’s soccer team, full of international recruits.
“To bring those student-athletes in for a campus visit it is an expensive venture … but it’s seemed to pay off for us.”
But budgeting the recruitment money and the recruiting process are two very different things.
“Recruiting is a 365-day-a-year job, and sometimes, based on where our individuals are from, it’s almost a 24-hour a day job, too,” said men’s volleyball head coach Dan McMorran. “There are times when I was recruiting our Australian that his wake-up time is my bed-time.”
He also said it is one of the most crucial elements of any coach’s job. At a university known for balancing its academics and athletics, part of their job is to find an athlete who is competitive at the CIS level, but who is strong in the classroom as well.
“You can’t build a program on one-year wonders,” said McMorran. “They get in here and are fantastic — good kids or good players — and then they fail out of school and don’t do well academically.”
But they also look for a strong personality. McMorran said he looks for players who have strong character and can be a leader on the court.
“We have two or three captains on our team on any given year, but we have 16 guys on a roster and I’m looking for 16 leaders.”
McMorran said he goes on recruiting trips, on average, five to seven times a year. Trips to Ontario, British Columbia and other provinces aren’t out of the ordinary — and last about three or four days — but recruitment trips also include trips around the province and Maritimes and those are only a one or two-day trip.
“A recruiting trip could be something as simple as seeing a club tournament here in the Atlantic provinces to travelling out west to take a look at national tournaments with club teams,” he said.
But it’s not just about meeting and developing relationships with the players — they also need to assure the parents that their children are making the right decision.
With players travelling from B.C., Ontario, Newfoundland and as far as Australia and Norway, the parents play a major role in the decision making.
“I think it’s incredibly important to get the message to their parents that they’re going to be coming to a great place,” said McMorran. “And they’re going to know their son is not only play a great level of volleyball, but hopefully become a better person when they leave here. So I think it’s important to recruit the family as well.”
Skype has also made it easier — and cheaper — to help recruit top student-athletes. You can not only see and talk to players, but you don’t have to spend the funds on travelling.
Players such as Eivind Andersen, from Norway, benefited from this.
“I spent a couple of hours at a time Skyping with my [Eivind’s] family and developing that relationship, otherwise I would perhaps have to go over and sit in their living room.”
In reality, he said, it’s a competitive world and the competition between universities is tenacious. Mixed with the funding not being as “free-flowing” as previous years, the recruitment process is that much more vital.
“Recruiting is probably the number one thing that we have to do,” said McMorran. “The recruiting is crucial to get those quality players in here – quality players, students, people and leaders.
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