**This feature is the first half of a two-part story about recruiting at the University of Alaska Fairbanks**
By:
Matias Saari, staff writer for the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer
Recruiting--it's an extraordinarily time-consuming, labor-intensive, even tedious aspect of college athletics.
The pursuit of an athlete may involve countless phone calls and e-mails, trips to games and tournaments, dissections of videotape.
It can be an underappreciated behind-the-scenes job that often falls to nominally paid assistant coaches.
But despite the unglamorous job description, recruiting's importance cannot be understated. Recruiting brings athletes on campus and goes a long way toward determining the success of a program.
Recruit well by bringing in student-athletes who spend four productive years at a school, and an athletic program builds a solid reputation as important as its win-loss record. Land a top junior player, or find one other schools have overlooked, and word-of-mouth may keep the overachievers coming. But spend months pursuing then losing an athlete, and the time and effort is lost. Worse yet, bring players to campus who perform below expectations, are disruptive to the goals of the program or leave early and dissatisfied, and there can be a ripple effect that can cripple, or at least hinder, an athletic department.
Recruiting at the University of Alaska Fairbanks brings a myriad of unique challenges and a diverse mix of athletes. From local walk-ons to highly touted hockey players with professional aspirations to Scandinavian skiers who often make a seamless transition to life near the Arctic Circle, approximately 120 student-athletes from eight countries and 12 American states filled the 2005-06 Nanooks rosters. There were 20 Canadians (all but one played hockey), 22 athletes from the Fairbanks North Star Borough and 51 Alaskans total.
In recent months, a coach from each UAF sport shared what recruiting is all about in their specialties. Following is a glimpse of how recruiting impacts UAF's endurance sports, rifle and swim teams. On Thursday, the basketball, hockey and volleyball programs will be featured.
Cross Country Skiing/Running
The list of recent standout skiers from European countries is an impressive one: Sigrid Aas of Norway, UAF's first skiing national champion; Johanna Turunen from Finland, a multiple All-American; 2006 Olympian Michal Malak of Slovakia; Marius Korthauer of Germany, an NCAA silver medalist last month and others from the Czech Republic and Sweden.
"It's easier to recruit a European than it is a Lower 48 skier," said
Scott Jerome, UAF endurance sports coach.
For one, the culture and climate--particularly in Scandinavia--is similar to Alaska, and thus not intimidating. The Europeans have no built-in stigma about going to an out-of-the-way place. And a skiing scholarship is a unique opportunity unavailable in Europe, where most competitive skiers race for club teams.
Not that Jerome doesn't covet Americans, especially Alaskans, in particular athletes from the Interior. This year's team had a healthy mix of Europeans and Americans such as twins Julia and Anna Coulter from Michigan and Bart Dengel of Valdez, who blossomed into an All-American this season after failing to make the travel squad the year before.
"We want to recruit locally, yet a lot of them want to go to the Outside for part, if not all of college. And I don't blame those people," Jerome said.
One local success story is Jed Kallen-Brown, who was an All-American in 2005. Another example is the Gillis siblings, who attended West Valley High School. Anders signed on at UAF (he was redshirted this season and did an exchange in Sweden) while sister Christina, whom Jerome recruited, opted to ski at Nordic powerhouse--and UAF rival--Northern Michigan University.
Jerome's biggest obstacle is getting serious recruits to fly north.
"The hardest part is just convincing them to take an official visit," he said.
Once they're here, it can also be a challenge to keep athletes in town. Malak as well as
Thomas Oyberg of Norway left after one season because their competitive skiing opportunities were better back home.
Jerome also is frustrated that he has no scholarships to offer for men's running, making it difficult to be competitive in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference. In the past, UAF's Nordic skiers have typically comprised the running squad, but their focus is more on becoming standout skiers. One exception is UAF's top runner in 2005,
Chris Eversman of Salcha, who does not ski. Unlike the ski team, however, he receives no university support.
This is changing with women's running, where three athletes last season were on partial scholarships, including
Pavla Havlova of the Czech Republic, the first runner from UAF to participate in the NCAA Championships.
Havlova's eligibility has been expended, but Jerome has recruited a highly touted runner from a new continent to fill her shoes:
Emily Cheptoo of Kenya, discovered through a local connection, will arrive in Fairbanks as a freshman this fall.
Rifle
Inheriting a dynasty that won six of the previous seven national championships (and since reclaimed the title it relinquished in 2005) makes coach
Dan Jordan's job much easier.
A rarity in other sports, sometimes blue-chippers seek out Jordan even before he tries to recruit them.
"Shooters are looking to come here," said Jordan, a former All-American shooter at UAF. "A lot of time they come looking for you. So that helps out."
Jordan's 2005-06 roster included athletes from Germany and Sweden as well as six U.S. states, from New Jersey to Texas to Alaska.
Nonetheless, the rifle team has some of the same obstacles facing other UAF athletic programs, such as its geographic isolation and frigid winters.
Jordan's own recruiting story overcame those challenges. One of America's top junior shooters and a highly sought recruit from Colorado, Jordan had all but made up his mind to attend West Virginia University. Then UAF came calling, and Jordan accepted a free plane ticket and campus visit with no intention of actually becoming a Nanooks. Upon arriving, however, Jordan, an outdoors enthusiast, was immediately enamored with Alaska, the university and the tight-knit rifle squad. Within days, he committed to UAF, a decision that changed his life and career path.
Many shooters, however, especially before UAF became a powerhouse, never get on that airplane.
"I think there are a lot of challenges recruiting here," said Jordan, citing distance from the Lower 48 and the weather.
"A lot of times the parents are the ones that need convincing," said Jordan about mothers and fathers who are hesitant to send their children to the Last Frontier.
Jordan tries to offset the climate issue by promoting UAF's schedule, which typically includes lengthy road trips around Thanksgiving, Christmas and the NCAA Championships in March.
Jordan's also laments the number of scholarships offered to the rifle team (Jordan must divide 3.6 scholarships, the NCAA maximum for rifle programs, among his entire team) and the high cost (upwards of $1,000) for the leather suits used as team uniforms. The university pays for the team's warm-up suits but the athletes must buy their own uniforms.
"If we had the money and could buy the shooting outfits, that would be a good recruiting tool," said Jordan.
Swimming
Faced with the daunting task of starting up the women's swimming team, which was being reinstated after a lengthy hiatus, coach
Scott Lemley was in a bind: he needed at least 11 swimmers to field a team. The problem was he only had eight lined up, having divided a paltry 1.6 scholarships among them.
"I knew I was going to have to rely on UAF students because I had so few scholarships to recruit with," Lemley said.
So he held a tryout, for which 10 girls signed up. Eight actually showed up at the Patty Center pool. Lemley enlisted seven of them as walk-ons and had his team.
His roster this season included 15 swimmers, two-thirds of them from Alaska (five local), the others from western states such as Montana, Colorado and Washington.
"Half our team barely swam in high school," said Lemley, who swam at UAF from 1970-73 and coached the men's and women's programs from 1982-87. "I had to teach probably more than I had to coach this year."
Lemley's top swimmers in 2005-06 had a swimming background, such as captain
Hilary Carlisle, a standout high school swimmer from Tigard, Ore., who came to Alaska for adventure and hadn't swum in three years;
Samantha Zinsli of Kennewick, Wash., whom Lemley said was overlooked by other schools but is excelling at UAF, where she holds 15 of 22 team records; and captain
Rebecca George, who transferred from Central Washington University after that school dropped its swimming program.
One that got away was Felina Rosadiuk, an All-American swimmer who Lemley coached at Lathrop High School, who turned down Lemley's offer of a full-ride scholarship and signed instead with Oakland University in Michigan (she has since left Oakland and no longer swims competitively).
"It's very difficult to keep a kid up here," Lemley said.
Though Lemley's team was overmatched in many of its inaugural season meets, the coach is optimistic about the future. Aiding Lemley's cause is the fact that he will be given six scholarships in year two and the NCAA maximum 8.1 in the program's third season.
"If I can recruit five to six strong swimmers, we won't have to hold a tryout. For a second-year program, we'll be in pretty good shape," he said. "Next year, our recruiting is going to make our team twice as good."
- UAF ATHLETICS -
