COLLEGE SPORTS: Covid-19 having an impact on recruiting at FGC

Covid-19 has thrown college coaches across sports a curveball and it’s no different at Florida Gateway College.

Basketball coach Charles Ruise and volleyball coach Richie Tang have had to adjust to the fallout of the disease when it comes to recruiting. There’s no in-person visits and no games to get a look as prospective athletes, making it harder for both coaches to get a feel for whether a rising senior in high school is the right fit for their programs.

Ruise and Tang have pretty much already solidified their 2020 recruiting classes but they would typically already be out at tournaments this spring and into the summer watching high school juniors who were trying to lock down college scholarships as they head into their final seasons. Instead, both are in a wait-and-see pattern to find out if they’ll even get that chance next month.

Without an opportunity to see a prospect play in person, it makes getting a head start on the 2021 class much more difficult.

“Being able to see and put your eyes on kids in action really kind of gives you the feel that you need,” Ruise said. “Can the kid benefit from the program? Can the program benefit from the kid? It answers those kinds of questions when you’re able to get in and be amongst them and seeing them play live.”

Of course, players have plenty of tape of their highlights that coaches can take a look at on various recruiting websites. Coaches are also able to communicate with players via phone and email, and Ruise has even done some video calls with prospects as well.

But nothing replaces live action.

“It’s a whole lot different,” Ruise said. “You really have to just kind of trust what you’re seeing (on tape) is what you’re going to get. I like to find out what kind of person they are in practice when the game lights are not on.”

Tang echoed Ruise. He calls the face-to-face evaluation “really important” and one that can make or break whether you offer a player or not.

“We’re trying to see what that kid is like when they make errors, when their teammate makes errors and how they listen to coaching in timeouts,” Tang said, “and in certain cases we want to be able to evaluate what their parents are like. Are they the crazy parent screaming at officials? We miss all those things. Obviously we can see kids on video and the video can look good, but that’s why we want to see a kid in person and see if they’re a good fit for us.”

Tang would have spent parts of April and May at tournaments scouting potential prospects and he has a few penciled on his calendar for June, most notably the AAU Junior Volleyball National Championships in Orlando. But Tang says he also he plans to check out smaller tournaments in surrounding areas such as Jacksonville and Tampa.

The question is, will he even get a chance to attend them. With high school seasons taking place at the same time as the college season in the fall, Tang really needs these summer opportunities to start pinning down his 2021 class.

“With us and high school seasons running concurrently, it’s really tough to see them in season so the club season and offseason is really a big time for us to watch,” Tang said. “And if we’re going to a high school, it’s maybe to watch one or two kids. But if we’re at a club tournament we’re watching maybe 10 to 20 kids, so that’s a real big importance to the offseason evaluations in-person.”

Ruise also has plans to attend AAU tournaments and scouting events this summer. He says he usually checks out around 10 throughout the summer months in order to start laying the ground work for his recruiting class before the high school season starts in November.

If those events are canceled because covid-19 just simply isn’t under control yet, Ruise says it’ll make putting together a solid recruiting class “very, very tough.”

“It’s going to affect us tremendously,” Ruise said. “That’s a good time with AAU basketball and different scouting services putting on their events. Now that you can’t really get out there and see that, it kind of makes the future look a little dim with how you’re going to move forward.”