NEW PALESTINE — The college offers started to roll in for New Palestine’s Blake Austin a few months ago.
A two-way starter for the back-to-back Class 5A state champion Dragons, the 6-foot-1 wide receiver visited Miami (Ohio) for a junior day event in late January. A week later, he went to Northern Illinois’ junior day with classmate and teammate Matthew Brown.
Brown made a stop at Central Michigan the next month, while picking up offers from Indiana State and Illinois State. The recruiting process increased for Austin, too, as Illinois State, Eastern Illinois and Indiana State offered scholarships in February.
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Austin expected to field a few more potential college offers once spring football arrived, but then, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic halted all NCAA championships and sports seasons on March 13.
With the decision to end NCAA competition came an all-encompassing instituted recruiting “dead period,” which restricted in-person contact between college coaches and prospective student-athletes.
Originally, the dead period was set to run through April 15 only to be extended on April 1 for an additional six weeks until May 31 — right in the heart of what normally is the busiest football evaluation period during the recruiting process.
Football recruiting was already in a “quiet period” prior to the sports shutdown, so the decision this month to continue the restrictions has created an unforeseen problem for juniors such as Brown and Austin.
“Recruitment has really been messed up from all of this,” Austin said. “There is a dead period, which started in February, and obviously, the pandemic started during the quiet period, so we’re pretty much going to be in a dead period until this thing is over.”
With college coaches unable to visit potential recruits, due to the statewide schools shutdown and the on-going NCAA dead period, incoming 2020-21 seniors are left in limbo somewhat.
Official visits to colleges aren’t an option nor are unofficial trips. College coaches can contact prospects through phone calls, texting, FaceTime, Zoom and written letters, but nothing more.
“That means I can’t really have any face-to-face contact with coaches,” Austin said. “That really slows down recruiting because before coaches offer you, they want to have a real-life conversation with you and talk to you. That doesn’t help me at all or anyone for a matter of fact. Since this has happened, I really have no idea when a commitment date will come.”
The issue hasn’t just been a football dilemma, basketball recruiting hasn’t reopened either.
In a dead period when the pandemic brought forth social distancing and limitations on gatherings in late-March, basketball recruiting has been at standstill. The dead period was scheduled to end on April 1 with a quiet period to follow before April 9 when recruitment was set to witness an influx.
Similar to several hopeful football recruits, who are without opportunities to showcase their talents in front of college coaches, the impact of the coronavirus is wide spread for all sports and recruitment.
“I have a couple of seniors, like Max Hayes, who are still deciding what they want to do. He was going to work the summer circuit and see if he could get better offers, and they can’t do it,” Mt. Vernon wrestling coach Chad Masters said. “There are no official visits. Things have changed a lot.”
With the absence of in-person recruitment, the postponement or cancellation of offseason events and seasons hasn’t helped either, including AAU basketball and the Indiana State Wrestling Association’s state tournaments where competitors often garner interest from recruiters.
“USA wrestling just came out and postponed all tournaments until July, so a lot of these tournaments or college showcases might not happen,” Masters said. “Like Drake Kendrex (who is now at West Liberty), he got noticed when he was on Team Indiana, and colleges talked to him at Fargo (during nationals in North Dakota). Now, a lot of these kids might not have that option.”
The AAU Wrestling Scholastic Duals in Orlando, Fla., a trip the Marauders often take to promote their athletes and compete as a team, was pushed back from June 18-24 to Aug. 2-4 and moved to Virginia Beach, Va.
The rescheduling could leave Mt. Vernon’s uncommitted wrestlers at a disadvantage.
“We had 10 kids that were going to wrestle at national tournaments to go out there to be seen. They can’t do that now,” Masters said. “Our Disney trip, they postponed it and moved it. Well, if school starts, that’s our first week, so you can’t have kids go.”
A key time for AAU basketball, Greenfield-Central boys basketball coach Luke Meredith, who like all high school coaches, isn’t able to work with his players with all prep athletics frozen until the schools open again.
Typically, a time to get his future and current Cougars in the weight room, on the court and for team bonding in late spring and early summer, the current scenario has Meredith keeping contact with his players via Zoom, while he’s reaching out to college coaches in the process.
“It’s especially difficult for under-the-radar kind of kids we have. They really need this AAU spring and AAU in July, too, to get their name out, but it’s also difficult on the seniors,” Meredith said. “Jake Cochran, he recently committed to Concordia University (Ann Arbor, Mich.), if he would not have, and we had not had that communication throughout the course of the year, and put some of his recruiting off as we went along, he would have been in trouble.”
Athletes still have the opportunity to commit while the dead period resumes, like Cochran did on March 26, but their choices are limited to the offers already received.
“I can send them film, but a lot of times, they are trying to recruit you in-person, if you’re trying to go an Anderson or Concordia or a school that’s a D-III or D-II. It makes it more difficult,” Meredith said. “I’ve been communicating more via email reaching out to a few.”
For those multi-sport athletes, who are trying to use their versatility to their advantage, the dead period has become an obstacle.
“For example, you take a Tyler Antic, he’s trying to decide if we wants to go to IU as a student or does he want to try and walk-on and be a punter at UIndy? For that, they want to watch him punt,” Meredith said. “He played safety. He played linebacker, so it’s difficult for us too, to communicate when coaches are reaching out to ask what type of kid is he, but they need to get him on campus, and they can’t do that.”
College coaches evaluate potential recruits utilizing data points, which carries over several years or months. The absence of offseason events, such as 7-on-7 football showcases and AAU tournaments leave data collection incomplete.
“For guys like Blake and Matt Brown, I think they were right on the edge of really starting to get that ball rolling very similar to how it went for Maxen Hook (Toledo) last year,” New Palestine football coach Kyle Ralph said. “For Maxen the spring was huge for him last year because he gained his weight back from basketball and when those schools came back in a second time and saw him do spring football stuff at the size he had gotten to, it was a no-brainer at that point.”
Austin and Brown were expecting those same opportunities, however, there is concern and speculation the recruiting dead period could run deep into July and possibly until Aug. 1.
“A lot of those schools had evaluated Matt Brown and Blake Austin very similar to Maxen, and I really felt that spring football time was going to be a time when those two kids would see an explosion in offers,” Ralph said. “A lot of those schools have called me, and I’ve called them since and just talked about the status. Pretty much every single one of them is saying this has really hurt recruiting and some of those kids like those two. They really wanted to see those kids that are high up on their board, and they can’t or they couldn’t.”
The current in-person recruiting stoppage could lead to a frenzied August evaluation period for many colleges with smaller schools possibly gaining an edge due to proximity to potential prospects for immediate visits.
Yet, if the pandemic isn’t subdued to the point where athletics at all levels can commence once fall sports season arrives, then many collegiate hopefuls could still face the same questions.
“I told Blake, it’s not a big deal. It’s a unique situation. I told him to be thankful he’s already got scholarship offers. There are a lot of really good football players out there that don’t have any right now,” Ralph said. “Some of those kids really needed the spring session. At least at the end of this, he should have his education paid for, but there are a lot of kids out there at the moment that don’t have those options yet.”
