The recruiting process centers around opportunity, struggle, and ultimately, reward. With this comes the luxury of guidance. My coach has experienced the ups and downs—the thrill of the Ivy League and the push for giving a gymnast a foot in the door for their dream team. For this month’s Recruiting Declassified, I sat down with him to find out more about his experience as a recruit’s coach.
The below responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
What is your role in recruiting?
“I help you guys get the skills that are needed for college, and I communicate with the college coaches.”
By communicating with coaches, he builds relationships for me with schools and coaches, facilitates gym visits, and even helps decide if a certain college coach’s style will work for me. Essentially, my coach takes on the job of matchmaking and says he looks at a gymnast’s “personality, skill set, durability, and what education they want.”
Kind of like taking a “which school fits you” Buzzfeed quiz, my coach preaches that this process is for the gymnast and that they need to find somewhere they can succeed gymnastically and academically. My coach said he’s had a gymnast where he’s put in lots of work toward a school, got the athlete a full scholarship at this…
