Monday, May 17, 1999
Associated Press
Hawaii's Karena Greeny, center, leaps off the bench
while watching first half action against UNLV at the
Western Athletic Conference Tournament in Las Vegas,
March 1. Also pictured are Hawaii head coach Vince
Goo, left, guard Kii Spencer and forward Crystal Lee, far right.
Convincing a student-athlete to play
By Al Chase
at your school is often a four-year task
-- one that never seems to have an end
Star-BulletinSWELTERING high school gymnasiums.
Weeks at a time away from your family and friends.
Hotels and restaurant food.
Recruiting college basketball players is so glamorous.
And if you'll buy that, most coaches would probably be happy to sell you some oceanfront property in Mililani Mauka, too.
Recruiting, clearly, is arduous with no guarantee of success. As Joe Ely might say, the road goes on forever, but the party never ends.
The period to sign players to national letters of intent ended Saturday. University of Hawaii women's coach Vince Goo and his staff already are working on the 2000 recruiting class ... and the 2001 class ... and the 2002 class. Starting July 1, they will begin identifying prospects for the 2003 class.
"The key is the month of July, the whole month of July. They have tournaments all month all over the country," Goo said. "You can send three coaches out on the road all July to cover these tournaments."
Goo and assistants Da Houl and Serenda Valdez are the recruiters for the coming season. Associate coach George Wolfe will stay home this year.
"Coaching at the Division I level is not for someone who is married and trying to raise a family at the same time," Goo said. "You have to have a very understanding spouse. George has two little ones growing up and it's tough being gone for four weeks."
There are 50 July tournaments nationwide. The Wahine staff will attend about half. They will watch seniors-to-be closely and try to identify underclassmen -- from 15 years old and up -- they want to add to their recruiting files.
Goo will concentrate on the seniors-to-be, according to the needs for the 2000-2001 season.
"We have four seniors graduating and we're going to have to fill the 1, 2, 3 and 5 spots. We have enough 4 players," he said. "There will be a sleeper here and there, someone who has not gone out and played the previous summers, but the majority have.
"We rate the individuals as we see them and that changes from summer to summer, depending on who improves more."
The July days start with an organizational breakfast about 6 a.m. Houl maps the day's schedule for each coach. Those logistics are important.
The first games start at 8 a.m., the last around 10 p.m. The bigger tournaments use as many as a dozen gyms. Many are high school facilities, which means hard bleacher seats and no air conditioning. Watching all rounds is critical. The opportunity to watch a prospect disappears if she plays for a team that is eliminated early.
Goo puts a premium on being on-site at least half an hour before game time so the coaches can observe a prospect off the court. The helps the coaches can ascertain a prospects attitude toward her teammates.
When a prospect walks into the gym, they observe how she carries herself. The coaches want to know if she looks bright and ready to go or does she look like she's there because she has to be there. They note if she interacts with teammates before the game and whether she encourages her teammates while she's on the bench. In short, is she a team player?
It's one of Goo's three A's: ability, academics, attitude.
"You have to take notes constantly, otherwise you can't remember everyone you've seen at the end of the day," Houl said. "When you see them again, the rating might go up or down."
Once the coaches come home, the weeding process begins. What begins as a large list is whittled to 20 or 25 prospects.
The next step is to schedule home visits during a three-week period from mid-September through the first week of October. This will be the first time Wahine coaches can have personal contact with recruits.
"Players can have an unlimited amount of home visits , but usually don't have more than 10 or 12," Goo said.
"We rate the home visit, see what kind of questions they have for us. We prefer to hear questions about academics, class size, professor-to-student ratio, different majors, not what brand of shoe we wear," Goo said. "We're not too interested in someone asking how much it costs to ship a car to Hawaii. One girl wanted to know if she could bring her horse here."
The next-to-last step, if mutual interest remains, is to arrange a campus visit for the recruit.
After that, the coaches review everything they know about a prospect, decide whether to offer a scholarship, then wait to see if it is accepted.
This past recruiting season also produced a problem _ some would say the right kind of problem _ for the UH coaches.
"We never had more players who were interested in us and who we wanted than there were scholarships available," Goo said. "Next year's team will be one of the few times we're using all 15 scholarships."
Wahine coaches followed in-coming freshman Christen Roper for four years before signing here to a letter of intent last November. From recruit to signee
July 1995: Assistant coach Da Houl watches Roper play on her club team, the Ventura Stars, in summer tournaments.
Wahine coaches,
By Al Chase
players try to make
campus visit realistic
Star-BulletinThe campus visit is just the final piece to the puzzle that determines whether a prospect is offered an athletic scholarship to play basketball and pursue a degree at Hawaii.
The coaches have scouted the prospect and made a determination after the home visit about the prospect's academic priorities.
"They need to show some major concerns about academics, otherwise they don't come in for a campus visit," Wahine head coach Vince Goo said.
"There are three important aspects to the campus visit. Academics is number one. We want to talk basketball with them and there is a social portion which is an integral part of the college experience."
The NCAA allows recruits 48 hours to visit a campus. Wahine recruits are brought in either side of a weekend so they have the opportunity to meet with academic advisers and attend at least one class with a player. Most recruits have a good idea of their choice of major. Meeting with an academic adviser affords the coaches another opportunity to gauge the priority a recruit places on education.
Recruits have the option of staying in a hotel one night, accompanied by a player. They also must must spend one night in a campus dorm or apartment to get a feel for what college life will be like the following year.
"We try to make the 48 hours as realistic as it would be when they come here. If they make a decision to come here, they need to be satisfied and happy with their decision," Goo said. "If they show up here next year and things are totally different from their 48-hour visit, then they are not going to be happy.
"That's why they don't have dinner with the president (Kenneth Mortimer) because they won't during their four years here. If they do well academically, then they'll get invited to the president's scholarship breakfast.
"If they are not happy, they're not going to train hard, they're not going to study hard and they won't be good citizens in the community."
The recruits are told about the rules the team follows. They know if they have an unexcused tardy to a class, they will be on the dawn patrol (run two miles at 6 a.m.). If they have an unexcused absence from a class, they are suspended from basketball for a week.
"Some feel they can not handle that. They'd just as soon be somewhere else," Goo said.
Interaction with the Wahine players is as critical as any evaluation made by the coaches. The the players have to believe in, and feel comfortable with, a recruit, who could soon be a teammate.
"We do the best we can when we recruit. We try to make a good guess. That's why it's so important that our players have input when the recruits visit," Goo said.
Over the years the coaches have discovered the players readily volunteer information when they like a recruit, but don't say much when they don't.
"Them we know it's probably lukewarm. Not surprising, our players are pretty accurate," Goo said.
The Wahine have never received an oral commitment from a recruit before she left the islands. The coaches want recruits to return home, or back to campus for junior college players, and speak to people, usually their parents. It's also a time for the UH coaches to make one last evaluation.
"We need to talk to our players and get a feel if the prospect can fit in, adjust to our program and our style," Goo said.
