Tiger Tip 5: Athletic Recruitment

OK. Thanks everybody for joining today for Suwanee's tiger tip on athletic recruiting. We'll wait just a minute. We've got a lot of people logging in right at this moment. I'll let you get logged in before we begin, but we're really glad that you're here. First thing I should say is this event will this recording will be available after this event is over, maybe a couple of days after what the system will upload that into our onto our website. You can just search.

With Tiger tips on swanee.edu website, but we're glad you're with us today. We look forward to talking to you today about Swanee Athletics and the recruitment process. We have some slides that I really feel answer most of the questions that you submitted. There's a couple of questions you asked about kind of non athletic stuff that we'll talk about right at the end. But I look forward to sharing with you a lot of this information. So my name is Jeff Heitzenrater. I work in the office of admission here at Swanee.

I've worked at Swanee since 1991, so 32 years. For seven of those years, right at the beginning I worked in admissions and then I moved over to the athletic department and I coached track and field across country. And I did that for 21 years as the head coach and then four years ago moved back to the admissions office. And one of my roles is I'm the athletic liaison. So I work with coaches in their recruiting process and interact with both coaches and recruited student athletes.

Um, the other thing you should know is our older son Andrew UH graduated from Swanee in 2020 and he one of his things that he did in in college was he's a he was a varsity student athlete, started on the golf team and then progressed over to the basketball team, made the squad and ended up being the captain and and played all the way through his senior year. So that was a great experience for me as a parent as well. All right, so let's get started.

Athletic recruitment at Swanee. Here's some basic information. At Swanee, we have 24 varsity sports. We're NCAA Division three. We were a founding member of the Southeastern Conference, but that was a long time ago. And Division Three is very, very different than the Southeastern Conference. So we'll talk a little bit about that. The conference that we're in, this is Southern Athletic Association. There are eight schools in five states in the South in the USA, our mascot. You can see the other things there where the Swanee.

Triggers and there's my name, there's our logo as well. The Swanee Tiger. One of the things that many of you asked was very specific information about specific sports and that's not what I'm here to talk about today. I would encourage you to go to our athletic website. That's it on the screen. swaneetigers.com. Every one of those websites, I mean every one of the sports on that on that website are going to have quite a bit of information, win, loss, record what teams they're playing when they're season happens home versus away.

Games. There's also contact information for coaches, so if you want to reach out to them, that's that's really, we'll talk about this in a minute, but the website is going to have very specific sport information. We're not going to talk about specific sports tonight.

This is a list of all of our varsity sports, men's and woman's. We have 24. We also have a varsity non competitive cheerleading team. We do in addition to these sports have some club sports and we have intramurals. But tonight we're not talking about club sports or intramurals. Again, on the athletic website swaneetigers.com you can go on and find some information about club sports and intramural sports and some contact info to gather some more information.

From those specific teams, OK, let's talk about the athletic recruiting process in general and then also as it specifically rates relates to Division Three.

I really feel like there's some questions you need to ask yourself as a student athlete in high school, and let's talk about some of those. How good am I at my sport? So you want to participate in varsity athletics at the collegiate level? So who you should be reaching out to? What schools? What coaches really relates to? How good am I at my sport? You may not know that some sports like track and field and swimming and tennis, there's a national ranking in for each event.

In each each athlete within that sport. So you might know, for instance in tennis you're a top 100 player or you're a top 500 player and track and field, You might know well I have the fifth fastest time in the state or the fifth fastest time at my high school in my event or distance or whatever it is. And so I would advise you to talk to your coach or your high school or your club coach and just ask the question, OK, I'm interested in competing at the collegiate level. How good am I and do I have an opportunity to do that?

If you're an athlete who's being considered by Division One teams, you probably don't have to ask that question because it's likely they've already started reaching out to you. But if you're on this.

Information session, tagger tip. Then it's likely you're really interested in Division 3 Athletics, and you kind of want to know where would I stand? Every coach that I know at Swanee and even elsewhere in Division Three. You can reach out to them and express your interest. They're going to interact with you and they'll be very honest about the possibility of you joining your team.

Excuse me, What type of commitment do I want to make? That's a really important question. You know, participating in sport at high school or at on a club team could be very different than at the collegiate level. So you want to make sure that you're interested in committing to a varsity athletic endeavor at the collegiate level. They're committed to practice. You're committed to competition. You want that passion and experience to be a part of your college experience. Yes, you're going to juggle.

Other things you're going, we'll talk about that you're going to be able to do other things at the Division Three level and be a varsity student athlete. But you want to make that commitment if your team at high school only meets a couple of times a week and sometimes you can miss competitions and it's not a big deal, that's not the experience they're going to find at the collegiate level. So. So you want to make sure that you're you're considering that option.

I would tell you right now to decide to follow the rules. And you might be asking yourself, I don't even know what rules he's talking about. I'm going to share that information with you in a second. NCAA rules is what I've talked what I'm talking about. I would say the vast majority of coaches in the NCAA, especially in Division Three, excuse me, are going to follow the rules. But you need to know what the rules are. So when a coach does go down the road and decides they're going to recruit you illegally or offer you money.

In Division Three, when they're not supposed to do that, you know what the rules are and you're gonna remove that school from your list. You're going to decide I'm going to be ethical. I'm going to follow the rules all the way through this process.

You need to know the contact calendar as well, and all this information is available through the NCAA. But there are four different sports, very specific calendars for when a coach can and cannot interact with you at the Division Three level. That calendar is and is very open and so they can communicate with you almost all the time, with the exception of before a certain point in your high school career.

Rather well, but. But compare that to Division One athletics that there may be times during the year a coach can talk to you for as a Division One coach and other times they cannot talk with you. And we. When you sign up for the clearinghouse to be considered as a Division One athlete, you are agreeing to abide by the rules. You don't want to lose your eligibility or as a student athlete, the collegiate level because you didn't know the rules and you didn't know what to follow.

I would also say do not be afraid to reach out to a coach. If coaches don't respond to your interaction with them, I would very quickly consider that their message to you about their level of interest in you as a student athlete. But most coaches are going to at least respond with some sort of information, and I would argue most coaches really want you to reach out to them. It's impossible as a coach to know every student.

Athlete across the country. It's a possible as a coach to know where we're located in Tennessee, to know every student athlete in the state of Tennessee. And as a track and field and cross country coach, I really appreciated when student athletes reach out to me rather than waiting for me to reach out to them. There's lots of student athletes out there that I wasn't aware of just because it's a bottomless pit. There are thousands of runners and throwers and jumpers out there. I was finding some of them, but many of them ultimately found me or found us.

So this guide is out of date that I have noted here, but the website is not. The NCAA has an excellent website that if you go to that website you will find the guide for college bound student athlete and they'll be one that has that says 2023-2024 where are we? Yeah, 2324. Sorry there are going to be lots of great explanations in.

Terms that you're going to understand as a student athlete, including a page just like this, one of the things you might be doing is trying to decide, do I want to be a Division One athlete or division two or Division Three? And what even is the difference between those three? And this guide really helps you kind of navigate those questions.

So sorry about my cough tonight. Umm, I would encourage you to go through this. This is one example of a page in this guide and it's really helpful of you for you to know the rules to also be able to turn with some information like this. It's going to talk a little bit about, for instance in Division One, what your average week might look like as a varsity student athlete in season versus Division Three. And that's been just really, really helpful information I think is you're navigating this process.

All right. So let's talk about some of your questions and some of the ones that we've had student athletes ask us in the past, What are the fundamental differences between NCAA Division three and all other divisions? So that would be and say Division One and then say division two, Divisions one and two have the opportunity to offer athletic scholarships. Division Three schools agree not to consider athletic participation.

Or athletic ability when we are awarding need based financial aid or merit scholarships. So if there's any Division Three coach out there that is telling you ohh, you'll get a great scholarship. Need based merit based here because you're a fantastic athlete, that is inaccurate. Either a they're cheating or two, it's inaccurate because Division Three schools cannot consider athletics as a part of the financial aid process. That's in essence.

The major the biggest difference, there are lots of other differences and that's where in that NCAA.

There's a lot of good information there about some of the other differences, For instance, the time commitment, the recruitment process, the contact periods for coaches. It's just a really important to know all that information so that you can process that and understand the rules. What are the NCAA Division three rules regarding communication between coaches and student athletes? That changes a little bit from time to time, but essentially speaking midway through your junior year is what I understand.

Again, this could have changed it actually recently, but coaches can begin to communicate with you at some point during your junior year of high school who our Division Three coaches, Division One and two cannot do that as much. There are much greater restrictions. So again, understand that there are also social media guidelines for NCAA Division three. And for instance it might there might be something to the effect of Canis. Can a NCAA Division Three coach follow you?

On Facebook or Instagram Can they like your Instagram posts? Can they message you within Instagram or other social media platforms?

That's a really important thing to understand and that NCA guide will be able to tell you that.

And when does the Division Three recruit start the application process? So one thing you might see is some student athletes will reach out to coaches as.

As juniors or even in the summer between their junior and senior year and the coach will say, you have a guaranteed roster spot on our team now. You haven't even gone through the application process, the application process for rising seniors, those who are going from their junior senior year right now, it doesn't begin until this summer, doesn't begin until later in the summer, and so there could be some applications that are school based that are available right now. But if you do, the common app and other things are not available until typically.

Until August. So the coach might say you have a guaranteed roster spot. What they're saying is if you are admitted, you have a guaranteed roster spot. So I see student athletes right now saying on their social media, on their social media page, I've committed to, you know, be a this athlete at this school and I know they're Division Three, They haven't been admitted yet. So what they're saying is if I'm admitted, I'm committing to compete at this school. Good to understand that process.

OK. When does the recruiting process begin for Division Three coaches and athletes? When do Division Three recruits commit to a particular school? I just mentioned part of that. You know, the commitment process happens really lots of different times. Like some student athletes are going to wait to see where they're admitted, what their financial aid or scholarships might look like, and that could be in the spring of their senior year. And that's when they're going to decide.

OK, I'm committing to the school.

Other student athletes are going to say OK, a coach has said.

He admission says it's likely you might be admitted and so we would like to have on your team you have a roster spot.

And the student would decide I'm going to commit right now, fully knowing that I need to.

Wait for my admission decision, but if the process begins?

For different sports at different times, if you're a lacrosse player, for example, the lacrosse recruiting process for for Division One, some of the higher levels, especially with scholarships, begins really, really early.

And you might see sophomores and juniors committing to schools.

Sometimes you hear about that in Division One basketball, verbally committing as a 10th grader or something like that. Or 11th grader.

And so that filters down, and there may be some divisions, 3 lacrosse teams, for instance, that are starting to fill some of their roster spots early on, students haven't applied, haven't been admitted, but they have some of that information. They go for it.

So it depends on you and when you want this to begin. You can start interacting with coaches as soon as the NCAA will allow you. That NCAA God will tell you when. You can start to do that Division Three sometime your junior year. But it's not unusual for a student athlete to reach out their senior year. You don't want to wait so far into the process that a team fills up all the roster spots and suddenly you don't have an opportunity. But you also don't have to necessarily reach out early if you know.

This team isn't going to fill the Russian brats until May of my senior year. I can really wait.

How does the student athlete reach out to a Division Three coach? Lots of different ways. Coaches can get names from high school coaches. From club coaches. They'll reach out to them. The high school coaches will reach out to us or to the coaches, or might find you on a recruiting website and CSA or something like that. More times than not, in Division Three, just as many coaches reach out to to a student athlete as student athletes reach out to coaches.

I would encourage you if you have a list of schools that you're interested in and you want to compete at that level, go ahead and reach out. Find their e-mail address, find their phone number. It's all on athletic department websites. Send a message, get on that coaches radar early because again, they might not find you unless you reach out to them, especially if you're not in a really local area to the team. It's especially difficult the farther you get away from that school.

All right, let's shift gears a little bit. We'll talk about some of you asking. Some of you asked about a lot of student life balance, so let's talk about that. How does the Swanee student athlete, how do they balance athletics, academics and other activities and social life? One of the things you should know about Swanee student athletes is that they are students first and athletes second. And so they're very committed to being a student and their academics here at the university.

That's one of the main things they're considering the university for, and athletics are also a part, probably a big part, of their decision making process. There are also no student athletes here who are only students and athletes. Everyone is involved in something else, and that's one of the basic principles of Division Three is that students will have the opportunity to be students on this campus in the student life the same way that other students are.

Now, sure, you're committing to a team, and if you're on the soccer team, the fall's going to include practice and competitions. You're going to make a big time commitment so you'll miss out on some stuff.

But in other times of the year, you're going to be able to participate in lots of different campus activities. So our students are able to juggle all those things really easily, partially because they're hard workers and they're good students. And our student athletes maintain a higher average GPA than the rest of the student population in general, and so they are able to juggle academics and athletics very easily. What does the day in the life of a swanee student athlete look like? Well, it's not that much different than the rest of the student.

Population.

Our classes typically meet from 8:00 AM until maybe 4:00 or 5:00 PM.

Those practices are in the afternoon, and so you would have one to two classes. You don't have your. The thing is, is in high school and college, you're not in class from 8:00 to 3:00 the same way you might be.

At the high school level.

You might have two classes or three classes, and then you have some free time to do homework, to participate in other activities, to do your work, a work study job or a job off campus. And then you go to practice, typically in the afternoon. Sometimes coaches will have early morning practices depending on the time of the year, so that could be when practice happens. But you'll have practice a couple of hours a day, You'll have maybe some training room time, maybe an individual meeting with the coach, and then you have dinner and then you like.

Everybody else, you head to the library or whatever your favorite stuttering spot might be, get your homework done and and then you chart, you know, sleep and charge into another day and you have three meals mixed in there somewhere. So.

Now, what might be a little different, it could be the weekends. You know, if you're in basketball season, if you're a basketball player, then you you might have two games over the weekend. You might leave on a Thursday at the end of the day and play a game Friday, play a game Sunday, come back after that. And so you have to get some class excuses to get out of class and, you know, make up the material at another time. There are limitations to how many classes you can miss and so that that helps student athletes avoid missing.

A ton of class for varsity competition.

And then out of season, that could be very different. You know, you might have.

Practices out of season if they allow that for that sport, but you won't have that competition piece built in there.

Is it possible to be multi sport athlete at swanee? The answer is it depends. If you want to be a soccer player, which is a fall sport, a women's soccer player and a field hockey player which is a fall sport, the answer is no. Now those coaches might make an exception for you if you're outstanding, but the answer is still probably no. Too many demands within a single sport to do 2 sports in one season. So it is highly unlikely that that social situation would actually work.

Out. You have to decide.

Fear of soccer player and you want to participate in track and field in spring?

It's likely that those two coaches are going to work together so that you can do both of those sports in track and field. There were a couple of athletes over the years who did cross country. They would transition into the swimming season and then they're swimming and diving, and they transition then into the track and field season. They didn't have an offseason and those student athletes really wanted that experience. But as coaches, swim coach, swimming and diving, coaches and myself would work together so that that student athlete could make.

What happen?

Let's talk about the calendar year for a student athlete. So let's just start with the summer. So you've just, well, fairly recently ago. Some students, not you, have finished high school.

And 450 or 80 students who have decided to come swanee. 170 of them might be recruited. Student athletes, those athletes are getting information from their coaches. Hey, here's what the season is going to look like. If we have a preseason, this is what this will look like. And we would like for you to do this training over the summer to prepare yourself for the season. So that's what the summer is. You'll get training from your coach if you're a spring sport person like baseball.

That just ended. That summer training might be relatively light, but it's still going to be something. So that you're building towards the fall season and you're going to be ready when you come in. Then you show up as a student athlete in the fall. If you're a fall, fall sports student athlete, then you would have in season practices, games, competitions.

If you're a spring sports student athlete, the fall will be the offseason and so it's likely you'll have some interaction as a team. But the NCAA does limit that. So there'll be a lot some things, which again, you'll probably do on your own to train and get yourself ready and the rest of the team ready for the season. Winter sport athletes have a little bit of buffer when they show up before practice begins and then the end of the season is right around, you know, before spring break, typically in the spring, and then you have a buffer on the other end.

So there's summer training, offseason training, and in season practices and competitions. That's typically a a calendar year for student athletes at the Division Three, maybe even Division One level.

Some of you ask questions about some sort of basic things that are happening on college campuses and how that works for student athletes. Like, for instance, how is housing determined for student athletes exactly the same as everybody else. They do not. We do not have student athlete housing. That's an NCAA violation. We cannot do that. And we actually don't typically don't house students from the same sports together. We want students to interact with lots of other types of students. Now, my son came in as a golfer and was roomed.

With a basketball player and that happened semi randomly, although they might have said in their housing form. Hey, I'd like to.

A room with another athlete or residential life might have said these two guys are going to have practice in the afternoon. Their schedules will match, so they'd be a good match.

But they don't put sports together intentionally.

So the process is essentially the same for everybody. What academic counseling services are available to us? Swanee. Student, Athlete. Well, the NCAA says whatever services we offer to a student on campus is the same service we have to offer to our student athletes, who can't be special services available. But at a small school like this, the academic and the counseling system is.

Is very good for a small school. One of the things you're paying for and coming to a small school like this is a small classroom experience, Small interaction, interactions with counseling. Like counselors. Here have a small group of students that they work with. You'll have advisors. All of that is done on a much smaller scale. A lot of personal interaction and a lot of one-on-one attention. That would be for every student at this university.

The other question is it possible for student athletes to participate in other campus activities Greek Life Community Service Study Abroad Outing Program? Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. Student athletes here are very active outside of their sport and outside of academics and are able to juggle all the things on that list and others. Now again, if you are going away for the weekend to compete at Hendricks and roads in A2 basketball games.

And there's community service in the weekend and outing program activity and some Greek life stuff. You're going to miss it. You're not going to be here, but there are plenty of other times during the year we'll be able to participate in all those things, and that's what our students do.

OK. So let's look at some of our facilities now. These are images actually that are going to change. So for instance, Joanne Gymnasium, which is up there at the top, that is currently going in under a facelift. There's going to be new stands. There's going to be a new floor. The volleyball net that you see set up, that's competition. There'll be practice Nets. A lot of really cool things are happening in the Fowler Center. And so I would encourage you to come visit and see some of those. Talk to a coach.

And find out about all the great changes happening. The tennis facility is one of the best, I would say, in the country. They really have gotten lots of donations there to improve that facility. You can actually see the golf course in the background and we'll talk about that in a minute. Pewitt Field, also known as the PIT, is where men's and women's soccer, women's field hockey and women's across competes. One of the things we hope to improve on here in the next few years is to add another field for the soccer teams, men's and women's soccer.

So typically they move out of that facility and leave that for field hockey and across the Fowler Center, that's another image there. We have an indoor track, there is an outdoor track as well. You'll see that here on the next slide.

But the Fowler Center and the Wellness Center both have athletic, indoor, athletic performance and practice facilities and training facilities. We do have a nine hole golf course on campus that was renovated not too long ago and it's fantastic. It's in really good condition and and it's a great place for our varsity teams, Mens and women's to practice, I should say. You know, tennis teams, golf teams, both nationally ranked, actually had national champions.

In tennis and women's double s this year. So those are two of our premier teams. There's Hardy McGee Field and Coughlin track and field facility, Harris Stadium. That picture was taken a while ago actually before the parking lot was paved, but it gives you an indication of of what that looks like. Those are facilities too that will get facelifts we hope sometime in in the near future. We do also have an equestrian center on campus, which is very unusual questioning as a varsity sport.

That image right there is on university property. We do own 13,000 acres. This image is right about the center of campus and but it gives you kind of an indication of the Cumberland Plateau where we're located, 13,000 acres, most of which is undeveloped woods and forest. And so you can imagine as a cross country or distance runner here, you've got miles and miles where the trails to run through and the equestrian facility is located out there.

But I would say it's kind of the edge of civilization in Swanee, right where the houses and buildings end. And so they have a big facility, but also area within the domain, which is the 13,000 acres to, you know, go on, take the horses out into trails and do some trail riding.

This is another image just giving you an idea of what the Cumberland Plateau was like. We have most of the land we own is on the plateau, but there's 1000 foot difference between the plateau and the valley. And there are lots of overlooks like the one you're seeing here where our students can kind of take a break and relax and watch the sunset and listen to the coyotes and owls. And it's a very rural setting, very nice setting for students to kind of focus and concentrate on their academics and athletics performance competition preparation.

Very committed student athletes at the University of the South at Swanee and we are our coaches are committed to competing at the highest level. All of them want to win if we've made some coaching changes here in the last couple of months or even years. And so it would be really good for you to spend some time on our website, learn more about those teams, interact with coaches and gather some more information. Always feel free to reach out to the office of Admission. We are happy.

To help, there's my e-mail address. I'd be happy to answer any individual questions that you might have, but you really should spend some time swaneetigers.com to gather more information about the sport that you're interested in. To reach out to coaches. Coaches like to get their recruits interacting with their current student athletes on their teams. So you can reach out and ask for that information and they would be happy to connect you to them. All right, that's all we have.

Today again, this will be recorded and put it on our website. You can check for that under the Visit tab, Virtual Information and search for Tiger Tips. We're glad that you joined us today. We're excited that you're interested in Swanee Tigers and the University of South and we we hope that you'll continue your search. We also want you to come visit, so talk to the coach about the recruiting visit or schedule a visit at the visit website to come see Swanee and you can request on that visit forum.

To meet with the coach and we'll try to set that up for you as well. Thanks for joining us tonight. We look forward to interacting with you more and have a good rest of the summer.