Sam Enlund
Social Media/Graphics Editor
Graphic by Shane Delanty
Recruiting high school athletes is a difficult process. Most high school athletes do not move on to play competitive sports in college, making the recruiting process even more difficult for both coaches and players.
A NCAA study, last updated in April 2024, said, “Nearly eight million students currently participate in high school athletics in the U.S. Approximately 530,000 compete as NCAA athletes, and just a select few move on to compete at the professional or Olympic level.”
At Webster Groves High School, senior Brady Schuettpelz has committed to play at Grinnell College and has already gone through the recruiting process. Sophomore Scottie Adkinson and freshman Miles Simpson are currently going through the process and already have a number of offers.
Adkinson has six offers from Mizzou, St. Louis University, Lindenwood University, West Virginia University, Southeast Missouri State University and University of Illinois. Simpson has received four offers from St. Louis University, Southeast Missouri State University, Austin Peay State University and University of Missouri.
The high school basketball recruiting process starts with coaches scouting players, accessing fitness, building relationships, making offers and ending with finalizing a commitment.
On its website, Next College Student Athlete (NCSA) says, “Getting recruited to play men’s college basketball is an exciting but competitive journey. With thousands of athletes vying for a roster spot, standing out to college coaches takes talent, preparation and a strategic approach.”
Marquette University men’s basketball’s Shaka Smart has been the head coach since 2021 and is a former college basketball athlete.
When recruiting, Smart uses the program’s “Marquette Characteristics” to determine whether an athlete will be a good fit for their team. This includes questions to determine who the athlete is as a person as well as a player. Questions like “Will he compete forever?” with points to emphasize whether or not he will continue to compete and fight to win.
About what he looks for in athletes and what the most important characteristic in an athlete is, Smart said, “The most important to me is the ability to get outside of themselves and pour into their teammates. At this level, it is a small group of kids who have the physical talent to be able to play here, but the real separator is their ability to multiply those around them no matter the setting.”
Smart also described the biggest red flag in athletes and said, “The red flag is the opposite of that and getting a feeling that the prospect is selfish and only cares about themselves. Both of these are hard to pinpoint most of the time, and just takes time through observing and conversation to determine if either is present. Coaches also assist in the process, anywhere from scheduling games to get their players seen by college coaches, to helping them contact programs and figure out where they might want to play.”
Men’s varsity coach, Justin Mathes said, “As they go into their junior and senior year, you can start putting together film and reaching out to college coaches. With that, trying to find if that college has a camp that they could go to and visit, and then a big part of it is just trying to put together a schedule and put them in the right events.”
Mathes built the team’s schedule this year to include the Highland Shootout, the Bank of O’Fallon Shootout, the Coaches vs. Cancer Tournament and the Ramey Shootout. Including all of these tournaments and shootouts enables more players to be seen by college coaches who are more likely to attend events where they can watch multiple teams compete.
Alongside attending the tournaments Webster signed up for, Simpson attended exposure camps, events where other top athletes scrimmage in front of coaches. The athletes get a chance to show off their skills and compete against other talented players.
As a freshman Simpson has not only attended exposure camps, but also has college coaches reaching out to him. He has had phone calls with a number of coaches interested in him.
Simpson said, “I got a good amount of coaches reaching out to me, just talking about how they love my game… They go through my coaches so it would be like a three-way call with my coaches, me and them. Sometimes my parents will be on there.”
About the recruiting process Adkinson said, “The recruiting process has been good so far. I’ve been blessed to roll in offers early and experience what it will be like in college.”
Athletes can follow a number of different paths to get recruited to play in college. Some can go to a number of ID camps and be seen in person, while others might send out emails with film to numerous coaches. Schuettpelz took an entirely different approach.
Schuettpelz said, “I had a recruiting advisor for this thing called CAA, College Athlete Advantage. Basically he would send mass emails. I was looking at D3 schools. I knew I wanted to go D3 academically, so he would send mass emails out to all those coaches, and he had connections, and he knew the Grinnell coach personally and he reached out to him. They called me one night and we just had a connection.”
Feature Photo: Sophomore Scottie Adkinson goes in for a dunk during the men’s varsity game against Eureka High School on Friday, Feb. 21. The game ended in a 58-40 win for webster. Photo by Sam Enlund
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Sam Enlund-Social Media/Sports Editor This will be Sam Enlund’s first year on ECHO staff. She also made several contributions while taking journalism class her freshman year. |
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