Recruiting the Juco Route: It's Never-Ending

 

Adrian Gonzalez pulled out a small notebook, and started charting numbers next to the players he identified.

 

The numbers represented the grades the Dallas College North Lake women's soccer coach issued to each player's skill level. After each game, he approached the players, and in some cases their coaches, for those he was interested in bringing to his campus for a workout.

 

"I'm looking for players and students," Gonzalez said. "I'm looking for players that have a decent level as a soccer player, kids that are serious about going to college to start their education."

 

Welcome to the off-season – and in some cases – in-season life of a Dallas College coach.

 

Recruiting is the name of the game, and coaches in all sports spend parts or most of the year constantly identifying prospective student-athletes to bring to Dallas College campuses. 

 

Mountain View volleyball coach Jana Bonds, who like her Dallas College counterpart coaches, recently attended a qualifier club tournament in Austin, Texas. 

 

"Before I even go to the recruiting trip, I have a list," Bonds explained. "And that list is what I'm needing, as far as positions go. So I go off the list. After that, I'm going off what I like. Every coach has their different, you know, what they like in a player, what they're looking for in a player."

 

At club volleyball tournaments like the one she and other Dallas College coaches attended in Austin, the competition is broken up into different divisions based on skill level: Open, USA, Liberty and American – the former group representing the best players. Bonds doesn't try recruiting from that level. 

 

"I clearly will not be at those, looking for those players, and I'm going to tell you why," Bonds said candidly. "We are Division III junior college, and we are not able to scholarship. Those players are normally really great players that are really playing some volleyball. Those kids really don't look at us much if we're not scholarshiping. So then you're going from Liberty, USA and then American. Nine times out of 10, you can get a USA kid. Some of them are strictly a USA level type of play, a smaller tournament. So that's what I base it off of, and what I like in a player."

 

At the junior college level, where student-athletes come for a year or two, the door is always revolving. Recruiting and rebuilding teams is ongoing. There's always a constant shuffle. 

 

In January, Bonds prepares by planning for recruiting trips and developing an off-season schedule with workouts and training. 

 

"I recruit as if I have no one coming back," Bonds said. "That's like, five kids are saying, 'Yes Coach, I'm coming back for my second year.' 'I'm like, OK,' but I still recruit as if I have zero on my roster.

 

"Do I enjoy rebuilding? I do enjoy it if my season didn't go as planned or if there's player who were cancers that I'm getting rid of, I do enjoy that. Now if I have six or seven players who I think will be good to build off of, that's when I really need to focus and hone in on these six-seven players. Recruiting to me is fun. You're going to get way more Nos than you get Yeses at my level, but I like the challenge."

 

Dallas College Eastfield two-time national champion coach Phil Nickel put together one of the finest National Junior College Athletic Association Division III volleyball recruiting classes ever two years ago. That group of players helped lead the Harvester Bees to a 69-1 record with two titles the past two seasons. 

 

"You want people who are going to buy into our vision, and what we want our program to be," said Nickel, who also attended the Austin event. "My first year, I just evaluated who … I mean (Dallas College) Brookhaven was the top of the conference that year, and I said, 'What do I need to do to be able to beat Brookhaven?' We went out and found the pieces we felt like we could compete with or put us on the same level as them."

 

While the academics are an important part of the recruiting process, coaches first identify talent levels. Bottom line, though, there's no avoiding grade checks.

 

"You don't have to find Rhodes Scholars, obviously, at this level because it's junior college," Nickel said. "But you have to have people who are interested in going to college. We ask questions. We talk to club coaches, we talk to high school coaches, and see when they come on visits, we ask questions to try to get a good feel of what they're looking for, and what their goals are. And we want to make sure that their goals align with our goals."

 

Determining a student-athlete's personality is a part of the recruiting process, and coaches want to make sure the culture of the team is one that produces a cohesive unit. Camaraderie and chemistry are always important in athletics.

 

Of course, finding ways to stay in the winner's circle is the goal. Mimicking what Eastfield constructed in 2023 is the ultimate quest.

 

"We may not ever be able to find a complete class like that, but that's the goal," Nickel said. 

 

North Lake men's basketball coach Josh Mills is looking for players who not only are talented, but mesh with those around them.

 

"What jumps out to me is how hard they play, if they're a good teammate," he said. "By a good teammate, I mean, if they're not getting down on themselves, not getting down on each other, making the right plays, unselfish plays offensively and defensively. Some people think you can't make selfish plays defensively, but you definitely can."

Mills identifies all the intangibles of a player, using contacts and services, and then upon evaluating each athlete, he determines whether he's a fit. He spends time watching film on prospective players, and then evaluates players through open visit competitions.

 

"You got to get attracted to him for your program first," Mills said. "I really like building relationships. I feel like we've gotten some of our best players after they've gone off to another level, but then choose to come to North Lake."

 

Bringing a student-athlete in for a visit and evaluation doesn't always translate into a signing.

 

"Sometimes the relationship doesn't mean as much," Mills said. "We put a lot of work in. It's hard to win. It's hard to find guys that can score at this level. It's hard to find guys who can defend at this level. It's hard to find guys who want to be coached and learn how to win."

 

Dallas College Cedar Valley women's basketball coach Latasha Keith admits the recruiting process can be stressful and frustrating.

 

"You have to sell your program history, you have to sell your coaches, you have to sell Dallas College when it comes to the tuition costs," Keith said. "They want scholarships, and they want housing. You have to rely on your program history and your coaching philosophy to bring kids in. I'm looking for the girls who are disciplined, coachable and work hard. I'm not looking too much for girls who can score, but let me see how hard they work, and you can see that on the defensive end."

 

She echoes most other coach's criterion when zeroing in on a player:

 

Hard working

Good grades

Coachable

Good character

 

"You're looking at their body language if they make a turnover, if they make a mistake," Keith said. "On the floor, you can recruit them just from their body language. You say, 'Do I want her on my team? She's making mistakes, she's dragging, she's throwing a tantrum.' So you're watching how well she handles mistakes, how she handles being coached, a coach coaching her, how good of a teammate she is."

 

Keith is one who believes a player should be able to express themselves, what with their personality and appearance.

 

"Especially when it comes to myself, my coach has always been a free-spirited person," she said. "Anybody that knows me knows how much I love fashion. I like to do my hair, I like to have my nails done. So when I have the girls, and I see them, this generation, they're free spirited. I want them to be themselves, but also be respectful. They want to wear their colored hair. Their hair being long, we find a solution for that: tuck it in your jerseys or don't wear it at all. There's no such thing as being girly girly. I like my girls to be who they are, and be respectful about it."

 

Eastfield 24-year baseball coach Michael Martin has been recruiting for a couple decades. He's developed relationships from prior coaching stops that helped him build pipelines to send him players.

 

"There's a lot of different avenues that are afforded to me because I've been here, and had a little bit of stability in our program," Martin said. "Some of these younger guys coming in maybe haven't developed those relationships yet just because they're new, not because of anything else. That really works in our favor as far as recruiting."

 

Martin has delegated a lot of recruiting roles to his assistants over the years, entrusting them to sign players off their own evaluations. He also has his assistants recruit through social media, specifically X.

 

"We use those mainly to just get information on kids," Martin said. "If we see something we like, then we try to bring those kids in, work 'em out so we can get a better idea. There's definitely something to that – the social media aspect of it.

 

"You have so much turnover at this level that you're constantly replacing half your team, as far as baseball goes. The recruiting process is never ending. We just stopped recruiting for this year about two weeks ago. I tell my assistants, their first gauge is, 'I need you to go out and find better than what we've got.' We want to get better. Do we always find that guy who's better? No, but we hope to get pretty darn close."

 

 

Dallas College Richland men's soccer coach Raul Herrera doesn't structure his recruiting endeavors to a set plan.

 

"I don't know if there's a perfect formula," he said. 

 

Herrera, who's won six NJCAA Division III championships as a coach, has used local, regional, American and international resources to bring players to his Dallas College campus. On last season's national runner-up roster, he had 15 international players. 

 

Being bilingual helps.

 

"Our initial aim is to have the best player possible," Herrera said. "Sometimes our best player is international. Sometimes our guys are born in a different country, but he went to a different high school here. If the local guy's the best one, he's the best one. Yeah, those internationals take to us, and the international game has grown. I don't recruit, saying, 'Oh I need to get internationals.' We've been very successful. I have a lot of contacts. You trust some, and you roll the dice with some. You go see some in person, and some fly in to our tryouts. Some of them contact us. I'm looking at my e-mail right now, and I get 20 e-mails, and half of them are from different countries, and half of them are Texas kids."

 

Richland's players occasionally refer other players Herrera will bring in. In the Thunderduck soccer network, it's wide ranging how players eventually put on the purple, green and yellow. 

 

"We're very fortunate that our success has brought a lot of attention, and a lot of it is they contact us," Herrera said. 

 

In sports, there's a lot to be said about the offseason. At Dallas College, soccer and volleyball represent that time right now. And for those coaches, it means putting in the work to build the next team.

 

"I love doing my job all year round," Herrera said. "Obviously, there's nothing like game day in the fall."

 

Every now and then, a Dallas College campus will pick up a student-athlete who came from a four-year institution. That pickup sometimes can strengthen a program into a bonafide winner. Herrera and Richland are a testament to that.

 

Cedar Valley women's soccer coach John Antonisse has been recruiting different levels for a long time. He's constantly searching for new players to build his team – and his program has grown from a team that hadn't won a game in three years prior to him taking over as head coach to one that collected 10 wins in 2023 and eight in 2024.

 

"Recruiting is top of the list," said Antonisse, who's used the same blueprint for years at different levels of college soccer. "Although I recruit year-round, once the fall season ends, I kick it into high gear before the holidays, and it continues through the spring semester."

 

He, like other coaches, spends his offseason scheduling spring scrimmages and fall traditional season games, developing players and preparing summer workout routines for his returners. Of course, like any other coach, grade checks and academic progress monitoring is part of the offseason checklist.

 

"Player retention is critical, so that's a priority," Antonisse said. 

 

For first-year Dallas College Brookhaven women's soccer coach Alex Denning, he stepped into a program that already built a name for itself, winning three straight national titles prior to his arrival. He inherited an assistant in Robert Williams, who helped shape the program into a champion through his recruiting efforts.

 

"Recruiting for a top team takes a lot of work, and luckily I have help from Robert," Denning said. "He is always grinding, and his love for Brookhaven makes it easy to sell. We work hard on identifying players, and then building relationships to make sure they will fit. We try to see them play a few times, and get them on campus."

 

Both Denning and Williams utilize different contacts to network for student-athletes. But they rely on their current roster to find even more.

 

"A big part comes to word of mouth from our players, them telling us who we should look at and telling their friends to check us out," Denning said. "We are selective, and take our time with the process, but there is so much in the details that we always have something going on to build the program. Our recruiting class for '25 is already excellent, and we aren't done yet."