In high school I played football and wrestled in the extremely competitive West Suburban Conference of Illinois. I thought exposure would be easy because there were scouts at games and state meets. In wrestling I was a three- year letter winner, a state qualifier, state placer in freestyle and Greco and ranked 4th in the state. I figured coaches had to know who I was. After my first five football games alone I averaged ten plus tackles a game, started since my junior year and had DI attributes strength and speed wise but still no calls.
I guess I never really knew how the recruiting process was supposed to work. My assumption was that the coaches would all come to me with offers and I would pick. I was wrong. I did not know that there are only 9.9 scholarships for DI wrestling teams, or that hardly any DI programs allow you the freedom of competing in two demanding and time consuming sports like football and wrestling. My thoughts were that my coach would do all my recruiting for me, but I didn’t realize that wasn’t his job till it was almost too late.
I had to make my own highlight tape in between class periods, send them out to coaches, look up email addresses and phone numbers, and contact every coach that I could think of from DI, DII, DIII, JC and NAIA schools. When it was all said and done I was too late and almost everyone was done with their recruiting. I was told to go the JC route and contact coaches in a year. So that’s what I did. I went to a JUCO and got my grades really high, trained with the team and coached my old high school wrestling team.
I received calls and offers the next year from two DI Big Ten schools for wrestling, and a number of DII and DIII coaches and various NAIA schools. I then took a few visits and went with the school that provided the highest graduation rate for players and financial assistance. I was awarded a wrestling, football, and academic scholarship to Briar Cliff University where I graduated from three years later.
