Recruiting

            RECRUITING SPECIAL FOR COACHES TOO

By John Leon                                                                        

            The Holy Spirit Spartans football team had a year for the ages, and the records are well documented. The next question to be answered is what happens to the team now?

            Head Coach Bill Walsh, who is also the Director of Institutional Advancement, had the enviable job of sorting through the multiple offers his team had, and after the smoke cleared, all 23 seniors were accepted at colleges in one form or another.

            “It’s been an interesting process,” he said. “You hear the same theme from all of the schools at all of the levels. The goal is to make sure the kids end up at the right school for them.”

            A perfect example is middle linebacker Chris Mancuso. He will walk on at Rhode Island University for football, but it’s not for lack of effort. His work ethic is legendary at Spirit on and off the field. A 3.66 GPA, high SAT scores and he wants to be a pharmacist. Rhode Island is one of the top pharmacology schools in the country, but because of his height (5’9”) an athletic scholarship was not forthcoming.

            “That will change when they see him and how hard he works, on and off the field,” said Walsh. “But that’s a great example of the process we go through.”

            Many factors play into the process such as geographical, major and then it’s just a matter of the visitation and what kind of financial package that is offered.

            As Walsh learned this year, many of the recruiters do their due diligence in finding out about the players, but more often then not, they don’t.

            “It takes about 5 minutes to see if they’ve done their homework,” he said. “The good schools stop in the Guidance office first, talk to the AD, talk to everybody to find out if the kid is a good student, good person, attendance, good character, etc., then they come talk to me last.”

            Walsh pointed out the Penn State, Michigan, West Chester and Boston College were some of the schools that did it right.

            The volume of schools that came through Spirit was large this year and with some players getting academic scholarships, baseball and wrestling scholarships, it tends to get complicated.

            “It’s important to have someone in the school to help the kids sort out things,” said Walsh. “Some schools just send offers sight unseen, such as Marcus (Witherspoon) had. On National Signing Day he had three full scholarship offers, even though we told everybody he was still going to Michigan. One school never even met him and still sent an offer.”

            It doesn’t stop there, as Walsh pointed out, the school even helped one former player get into TCNJ, even though he had to transfer to another school due to financial reasons.

            “Ibin Miller had to leave Spirit due to financial problems but he was here for 3 years and we helped him get into TCNJ on an EOF scholarship,” he said. “He was a vital part of our family for three years and we got him a State Championship jacket to let him know he is still part of us.”

            It’s been a unique year for Holy Spirit, with a State title in football, the Boys basketball team reaching the South Jersey finals, and the baseball team is ranked very highly as well. All the stars have aligned, but the real stars are the kids that are going to college, proving that it’s not only great when you win, but doing something with that success is an even bigger victory.

                       Their hard work has paid off and the future looks very bright.