When I called Thomas Eich to see how his college experience was going, he was at a bowling alley where his Track and Field team was having a social outing. I could hear the pins rattle in the background as he enthusiastically shared a recruiting success story of going from being an unknown prospect to being a student-athlete at one of the best colleges in America, where 80% of his education is being covered by scholarships!
Thomas Eich was 5′ 11″ 185 pound lineman for the John Glenn High School football team in Walkerton, IN. He also was very good in Track, and at his mother’s insistence, he always applied himself academically. He carried a 3.7 GPA and scored a 1280 on the Math and Reading part of the SAT, which is very good. As I always tell audiences, the better your grades, the more options you will have when it comes to playing your sport in college on scholarships. Thomas never made All Conference in the Northern State Conference, but he made the Academic All State team in Indiana, and that carries a lot of clout with Admissions Offices at many top colleges.
Glenn High Head Football Coach and Athletic Director Justin Bogunia brought me in to speak a couple of years ago. The Eich’s became aware of “The 5 Things You Need to Know and the 5 Things You Must Do” to have success in recruiting. They realized since he played in a small conference in a tiny town, they would have to be very proactive to make sure colleges knew who he was as a student-athlete. They became involved in NCSA. Thomas took ownership in building his Profile. He worked with his coaches at Glenn to get his video put together, and it was sent out by NCSA.
Did you notice his Head Coach is also the school’s athletic director? Coach Bogunia was very helpful with video and certainly available to talk to coaches upon request, but to 
expect him to take the lead in recruiting when he is also in charge of arranging officials for all school athletic events, hiring new coaches, AND coaching a football team that has to figure out how to beat traditional power Jimtown….is unrealistic.
Thomas Eich put a lot of thought into what he was looking for in a college experience.
“He wanted to stay with a smaller college since he had grown up in a small town,” said his Mom, Sandy, “He had gone to a small grade school, St. Patrick’s, before it closed, and then a small High School in Glenn. But he was very open to going off to college. He had always joked with me that when he graduated he was getting out of Walkerton!”
“I was getting five or six new emails a week from coaches,” said Thomas. “I had over 20 coaches call me at home. NCSA really helped a lot. You don’t know what to do to get your name out, but the NCSA system is organized ane easy for college coaches to view.”
“Thomas was very good about staying on top of it,” said his Mom. “When he would get home he would respond to coaches. We ended up taking visits to colleges in Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota. We had letters and calls coming in left and right.”
Thomas was leaning towards a college in the southern part of Indiana when Macalaster College of Minnesota became involved. They found him through NCSA and really liked his athletic and academic profile. The Eich’s took a visit up there and everything clicked. Thomas also took to heart part of the message from College Recruiting Simplified that your college choice will have an impact on the next 40 years of your life. Macalaster College is one of the top rated colleges in America.
“I will only be playing sports four more years,” said Thomas, “but I will have a degree the rest of my life. That’s why I chose Macalaster. It was a top ranked school in the middle of a vibrant city (St. Paul, Minnesota). When you are in a city like that you have more opportunities for internships and you can explore the culture inside the city.”
Macalester ranks 15th in a survey of high school counselors whom U.S News asked to rate colleges according to which “offer the best education to their students.” The college ranks 29th overall and 25th for academic reputation among the 266 national liberal arts colleges in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings. Macalester ranks 13th on the Great Schools, Great Prices and the Best Financial Aid lists, and is one of 13 schools noted for the strength of their study abroad programs.
Macalaster would never had know of his young man had he not built a recruiting profile. They loved his academics, school involvement and dedication as an athlete. Macalaster is a Division Three college. They do not offer athletic scholarships, but because Thomas was a very good football and track athlete, it certainly made him someone that was attractive to the college. “My feeling is that Admissions at a top school like this is impressed by the dedication it takes to be an athlete in High School and also carry a very good GPA,” said Thomas. Because it is one of the best schools in America, tuition is “up there” but Thomas told me he is getting over 80% covered in various scholarships, none of them having anything to do with athletic scholarships.
“His grandfather became upset at first,” said Sandy, “because we are a Twenty First Century Scholars program and he could have gone to school in-state for free. But then he researched the value of the Macalaster degree and got all excited. He hit me with fact after fact about the school and said, ‘I can’t believe Thomas is going there! He was very excited. He went up there to help with the move. He said he would help with some of the costs.”
Thomas is a young man who really didn’t have a problem going 10 hours away from his home in northern Indiana. Ironically, I had talked to a young lady that played softball at his High School a day before talking to him. She picked Ancilla College because she wanted to stay very close to home. Every young person is different and college location is something to be thoroughly discussed through the process. Some want to be real close to home, others 3 to 4 hours away, some 10, and some have no real issues with being 2000 miles away.
“There’s times I miss the cornfields and good ol’ Indiana,” said Thomas, “but the way I look at is you only get a chance or two in life to try something like this. I had never lived in a big city before and it is an adventure!”
One of the ways he dealt with any kind of homesickness was finding Catholic services on campus. “It brings a little bit of feeling of home to St. Paul, Minnesota,” he said, “because going to service is something I have always done in my life.”
“I have always prepared my children for life,” said Sandy. “I have them prepare meals during the week. My job is to get them to adulthood and be self sufficient.”
Thomas has a chance to leave Macalaster with a degree that will carry tremendous clout in the world.
“One time when we talked on the phone,” said Sandy, “he said, ‘Mom, I am not screwing this up. This is my future.”
Injuries are a part of football, and Thomas had a concussion from a helmet to helmet hit in practice. A lingering shoulder injury from High School means he will sit out this season. That doesn’t impact his scholarship one bit because he is there because of his academic scholarships.
“The football coaches here are very serious about us being students first and athletes second,” he said. “Some of the guys on the football team have classes that go into practice time. The coaches are very accommodating.”
“The football coaches are fantastic,” said Sandy. “I have the coaches cell number. And you should see the majors of the football players….Biology…Math…the average GPA of the football players is 3.3 and they are not in simple courses. This was just a no brainer. When a college like this wants you….”
“What I like about this football team is the brotherhood,” said Thomas. “Most football programs have over 100 players so it can be hard to get close. We have 73 so it builds more of a brotherhood. We really want to make the program work here, so we are a part of something special.”
“The football players started practice two weeks before school,” said Sandy. “He said they did team bonding things every night after practice, like going out for pizza. He said he has a family up there of the players and coaches. He told me if his shoulder injury ever kept him from coming back he would still want to be a part of the program in some way whether it was being a manager or continuing to work out with them.”
Thomas plans on being back on the gridiron next season, possibly as a fullback. He is definitely going to run Track in the Spring. He is an athlete that loves two sports, and a D3 school like Macalaster offered him more of a realistic opportunity to do both sports. In his Profile he made sure coaches knew of his accomplishments in both sports and that helped make him more attractive to Macalaster.
Thomas is loving the challenging academic life so far in his freshman year. He is going to major in English with a minor in Educational Studies, with a goal of teaching at some level one day. As far as his courses early in his freshman year, he says Beginning Latin is very tough. Intro to Psych is challenging. He really likes Intro to Creative Writing.
“One day in Intro to Creative Writing,” he said, “we rode bikes to the Mississippi River and went 11 miles down it on canoes! We then took the train back.”
“I really like Beginning Social Dance,” he added. “I am learning about Ball Room Dancing.” One day we may see him on Dancing with the Stars!
While you can take the boy out of Walkerton, Indiana, you can’t take his team allegiances out of him. Walkerton is near South Bend, home of the Fightin’ Irish of Notre Dame.
“I am still a Notre Dame and Packers fan,” said Thomas. “I will always root for the Irish. It doesn’t change.”
What about being a Packers fan while going to college in Minnesota?
“We’re close enough to Wisconsin that there’s a good mix of Packers fans here!”
Thomas Eich is having an adventure going to one of America’s highest rated colleges. He will leave there with a degree that will impact the rest of his life. “I was hearing that if you have a degree in English from here that you can get into a good medical school,” said Thomas. “This college is that well known.”
It all came about because he and his Mom worked the recruiting game and took advantage of a trusted and verified resource such as NCSA. The coaches at Macalaster were able to immediately look at his transcripts and test scores, and then video. That makes a huge difference.
“I told Thomas that I would sign him up for one of the programs,” said Sandy, “but that he would have to work it. NCSA was very clear with us about how important it was to follow up to coaches, and to get our video in so they could put it together. As I mentioned, he was very good about it. He would come home and I would tell him who called and he would call them back. We visited all kinds of schools. It seemed like every weekend we were going somewhere. It was work, but look how it turned out!”
Thomas Eich didn’t hope to be discovered. As a result, he has gone from tiny Walkerton, IN to the Twin Cities and a highly respected college. What are you doing today to make sure your recruiting experience is successful. Are you doing all it takes to put yourself in position for an adventure like Thomas is experiencing? Don’t look back ten years from now and regret that you didn’t work the recruiting game.
Charlie Adams, NCSA Athletic Recruiting Network Senior Speaker – cadams@ncsasports.org
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