Dave Bakken’s Student-Athlete Recruiting Thoughts
Fall, 2008
For Internal WSU Athletic Department use only (directly), though the links and ideas of course may and should be reused in team-sponsored pages as they wish. Please don’t link to this directly, because one archive newspaper article below is only available on a per-fee basis (Dave paid for one copy).
Dave is a WSU alum (’85 BSs CompSci & Math) and is a huge Cougar sports fan (double entendre alert!). He returned to WSU as a professor in 1999, in part with the lofty goal of helping to build up his beloved undergraduate computer science program. He has been extremely involved with faculty recruiting, and is very effective at selling people on the virtues of living in Pullman. He has helped out the football team, meeting with a dozen or two recruits during their hour with a professor in/near their area, and is quite happy to do so for other teams, especially men’s and women’s basketball.
Below is some of his arsenal. He hopes that they can be useful in some way in helping to convince recruits to make a trip here, because he has read that once they do, a very large percentage of people fall in love with the place and the friendly people etc. He is sure that some or much of the notions below are well known by WSU coaches. However, some may not, and even for notions well understood there may be useful sources below.
Here are some of the main obstacles to overcome in a recruit’s mind:
This place is bleak! That is what recruits can think, when they drive down from Spokane the usual way along the “moonscape” as some call it. This is easy to counter, see “This is Not Kansas” below.
Here is how to counter that:
· The easiest way to counter this is, (during daylight hopefully), one direction between Spokane and Pullman AVOID THE MOONSCAPE. That is, go from Rosalia to Palouse to Pullman. They get gorgeous scenery there, and it only takes 15 minutes extra. Mapquest map.
· Another key: Help them know its not just flat, boring, vegetation-free land here…. There is topology and vegetation! Some ways:
o Get some raised relief maps up in Bohler. Here is one. One of the first things I did when coming here was, for faculty recruiting, to mount a 2x4 grid of them on my research lab. It covers from the Canadian border to the Wallawos in Oregon, from Dayton east to Missoula. But just 1x2 covers Spokane to Lewiston, Lake CdA, etc.
o Show them this nice ground cover map, you can print one out for each recruit.
· Give them a printout of the National Geographic Article (US Letter size, 11x17 tabloid size, costs $2 to print at Kinkos). Note: I had a student employee scan this, it is better quality than if you spend $100 (which I did for faculty recruiting) and print from the National Geographic disk.
· Have some topo maps printed on walls. Here are some I created from my DeLorme GIS program at home. Some are large scale, some small scale (close up), some US Letter sized and other 11x17; some portrait and some landscape.
· You can’t give them one, but have the “O Palouse!” DVD playing in the background somewhere (volume off if needed)
· On any bigger map of the area you can point out all kinds of things: fly fishing in Idaho, Schweitzer skiing, deepest canyon in the US (Hell’s), …
(You can collect a lot of info here … Zeppoz, concerts and plays at Beasley, …)
The radio commentator for the USC Trojans noted in his blog in 2006 (link):
Heading the Palouse is, believe
it or not, one of my favorite trips every other year. It is truly God’s
country, wide-open spaces, nice people…what’s not to like?
When UCLA’s Tab
Perry was hospitalized in 2002, Pullman opened up its hearts and doors to
it. Here is an article from the LA Daily News (12/6/02),
with some things highlighted. Some key notes:
While doctors treated his
injuries, the nursing staff,
``Everybody in
…. Price, on his way into work each morning, would deliver a couple of Egg McMuffins and visit for a half-hour. [a person with an 80+ hour/week job!]
UW’s Taylor Barton was hospitalized in LA, but I don't think anybody went by,''said Perry
Here are some things from the checklist Dave makes sure to mention to faculty (may or may not apply to students).. Rather than typing in, here are some sample checklists I have used (I always leave the student with them). As part of the “broader academic context” I pump up how great of a place Pullman is to live, go to school, how great the coaches are, etc.” In my notes, something in [red] means I left them a brochure or printout regarding that.
· Justin Juckem & Geoff Meincke (11/22/08) (.doc)
· Micah Hannam (.doc, .pdf), circa 2006
· Lawrence Ball (.doc, .pdf) circa 2005 …. @$%&*! WSU admissions committee did not admit him, though UA (probably higher ranked) saw fit to (I know; I did my MS and PhD at UA.
We’re Not in Kansas anymore, Toto! J
GO COUGS!
