Episode #71: Wade Wilson on Recruiting

🎙️ Real Recruiting, Real Relationships

In this Significant Recruiting bonus episode, Matt Rogers sits down with Wade Wilson, Head Softball Coach at Texas Lutheran University and one of the most respected voices in Division III athletics. With a national championship and years of success behind him, Coach Wilson opens up about what really matters in the recruiting process—and what families often overlook.

This conversation dives deep into:

• Why Coach Wilson recruits like he’s adding a daughter to his family
• What he looks for in film and how he screens athletes with limited travel
• How a strong network and authentic connections shape his entire roster
• Why personal emails and persistence matter more than mass marketing
• His candid take on travel ball, summer burnout, and letting kids still be kids

If you’re a student-athlete or parent navigating the world of college recruiting, this episode is packed with raw, real, and refreshingly honest insights.

🎯 For more weekly recruiting advice, visit coachmattrogers.com to subscribe to the newsletter, get the book Significant Recruiting, and schedule a one-on-one strategy session.

Transcript

0:07

Welcome to Significant Recruiting with Matt Rogers. The bonus edition of the Significant Coaching Podcast where we talk directly about the college recruiting journey, what matters, what works, and what families need to hear. Before we jump in, be sure to visit coach matt rogers.com. You can grab your copy of my book, significant Recruiting. Subscribe to the free weekly newsletter for updates and tips, and schedule a one-on-one strategy session to help your family navigate the recruiting process with clarity and confidence. Today's guest is Wade Wilson, head softball coach at Texas Lutheran University. Coach Wilson has built one of the top D three programs in the country, but what stands out even more is how he recruits with heart honesty and deep care for his players in this episode. We talk about the real things, like what he's actually looking for in recruits, how personal connections shape his roster, and why he sees his athletes as his daughters, not just his players. If you're a family navigating this process, this conversation is a must. Listen, here's my conversation with our focus on recruiting with Wade Wilson. Coach, recruiting has become such a different part of the world that we live in. As coaches, I want to just ask you a few questions about how you recruit and how you build your program because I think it's really good for families to hear that. As hard as it is for you to recruit, at the end of the day, what you're looking for is kids that you wanna bring into your house, you want to introduce to your children. Absolutely. You wanna introduce to your wife, right? You want these young women are your daughters and you're wanna make sure that you're bringing in another daughter, right? That's not gonna mess up the culture that you have that can maybe make that culture better. I think hard noses is the number one thing we're looking for. When they're on the field, they're playing the game the right way. The extra bases, the extra effort, the extra, the competitiveness, the all of that stuff. The X factor. And I remember a kid asking me one time, what did you like about me when you saw me playing? I was like, I just liked the way you received the ball. She was a pitcher. She goes, the way I received it, I just, the way you caught the ball, I liked it. And she did end up being a very good player for us, but she was a great kid and I still liked the way she received the ball. She just didn't get very many people out. Yeah. I counted the other day. I think of, we have 29 players on our team right now. 26 of'em. I never saw'em play until they got here. we recruited a little different, I've got such a huge network in Texas that I pretty much can call somebody and say, and they're like, yep, she's your kind of kid, or, nah, she's not gonna make it. She wouldn't make it with you a second. And wow. It makes it so easy. And then once we get that list identified, then we do a little research as far as. watching some video. Yep. She's got some tools here and really it's boiled down. If she can run, she can help us. Yeah, we can. The rest of the stuff. I don't know that we're necessarily the, a great model, for people to do. Yeah. I think a lot of it now with the success that we've had, we've got people coming to us. Yeah. And then we can pick and choose, but usually it's a phone call or I call so and and they're like, there's three kids you need to look at. And then we'll do a little research And then we'll have, talk to'em. And more times than night just a phone call. I don't know, with a kid the other day and I called and I was like, we gotta get this kid right here. Yeah, she just nailed it. It was easy talking. It was I'm on it. So then you find connections. All of our kids that are on our team, for the most part, we have a connection to somehow, through somebody. And then you find that connection, and then that's your end right Now, they can speak on your behalf. They're gonna talk on their behalf. and we did it last night. I had a kid, that guy I went to college with had no clue. We lost touch. It was before cell phone, before email. And I get a kid and I talk to her and she goes, my dad. I'm like, who's your dad? And she said, quest. I said, oh my goodness, how did I not put two and two together. Where is he now? And I hadn't seen him since mid nineties, and so now he's do you know this kid? Yep. I know her. Great family, good kid. She love her great personality. She's a doll. And now we're on her. And so it just leads from one to the other, it's all connected in that sense and it's worked for us. So is it a model that would be worked for somebody else? I don't know. And that's, so many times you'll see out of state people hired in Texas and I'm like, they're never gonna make it'cause it's they're tough, especially at the D three level. Let's talk about that because I wanna hear your opinion on this.'cause you obviously have a program that's got a really deep system and you have relationships, so it's easy for you to fill your roster. But let's say my daughter's not a softball player, let's say she is and wants to, she's hungry to play in Texas and loves the idea of Texas Lutheran. Is there value in her sending you an email with some, Phil, is there value in her making a phone call to you and saying, Hey coach, I really wanna play for a coach like you. I'd love to get your thoughts on me. Absolutely. The thing we're seeing now, it's all that, AI generated stuff you can read right through those where they Yes. Have the, they have their AI type up what they want to do. And so you can read through most of those, but I think it's persistence. If I see an email, I've got 52,000 unread emails in my email box right now, 52,000 unread. yep. So getting to everybody is impossible. So I think persistence is there. if so many of the emails that we get though are from the services, Sports recruited and all that stuff that they're just, they're sending it to. 2000 other coaches as well. But when you see that personal email, like I always tell the kids, make sure you put something in the title. Hey, I know you from this person, put your coach's name, or something like that. Yeah. Whether there's a connection there. We've got kids, we talked to a kid the other day whose mom went to school here. She was from, the mom was from Florida, just on a whim, ended up at Texas Lutheran, and now the daughter wants to come back here. So we've been with her. And then once that, once the first initial, then we start doing a little research and then it's we've got kids on our team that I've told, you'll never play for us, you'll never play, you'll never get on the field. They're still a TLU and they're great teammates and they're great kids. But, and so we try to be honest with him before that. And give them the information they need, then they have to make the choice, yeah. You're not gonna play for us. You're not good enough. There's too many people in front of you. But Te OU is a great school and we're, it's a great group of people. We've got a soccer kid on our team right now whose older sister played for us. She's just on our team.'cause she transferred a semester. Come be a part of us. You're gonna have 28 friends immediately. It's gonna help break the ice for you next semester when you're playing soccer. And she shows up at practice every day. She sits in the dugout, she wears a uniform. She don't practice. Every now and then I'll put her in a run, but that's it. And she's just, she's got 28 sisters now that's gonna help her with a transition and maybe make it a little better for her in soccer next semester. That's fantastic. It's a good family. Good family. Her sister was good kid. Parents are good people and she's not hurting us at all. Since you don't go out much and recruit, you don't go to many tournaments and high school games like that. What are you looking for in a film when you see, if you're gonna open up an email and you're gonna watch film on a kid, What are some of the things you want to see? There's things that we see immediately that we can rule a kid out, okay, what are those things? Like a kid swings the bat and the bat comes backwards after it hits the ball. They're just not strong. It, there's too many holes in the swing. Hitters is either you get math or you don't get math. People that don't get math, you gotta work really hard at it, right? Yep. Yep. You're not a very good hitter. You're gonna have to work really hard at it. Where there's kids that don't have to do anything. They go out there and they hit 400, right? if they're fast, that automatically gets'em through to the next round. because we can, you can always use that. We can teach the other things. but, and pitching. If every video clip that you send me pitching there's runners on base, then you're probably not a very good pitcher. I don't need to see on base. I've never heard that before, but it's makes so much sense. Yeah, but don't, you're clipping and showing me what you want me to see. Don't have runners at second and third though. Every pitch that you throw, that's not good. So there's things like that and just and if I see a video I as, I would rather see it from the belly button view. I don't wanna see behind where you're looking through a fence, then an net and a catcher. In an umpire, you can't see anything. So I want the angle there and they, and we can see a swing and you, yeah, there's something to work where there, the ball's jumping off the bat, arm strength is big and athletic. If you're athletic, you already have an advantage, being athletic. I love that. And those things are so important for softball. Do you prefer game footage over practice footage? Practice footage? Because for me, when I was recruiting for baseball and softball, I wanted to see repetition. I didn't wanna see, I didn't know what that pitcher was throwing 40 mile an hour and it was a joke. I wanna see what can you do over and over again? What's that? Follow through mechanic part of it. That's all we're looking at. There's a mechanic. if we need to see you, we're gonna watch a game where we can see those kind of things. Like out filters, they'll send it from home plate or something. I can't see anything out there. It is wasted time right there. There's nothing there. So I'd rather see that from you doing that out there. Your feet work good, you have good arm strength and are you catching the ball where you need to and not basket catching every ball that's hit to you. Those kind of stuff. So it's not, it's not rocket science by any means. And parents with iPhone capability, you could take a one minute video that gets everything that needs to be seen in a one minute video and upload it and send it, and it takes you no time at all. That's right. You do it inside. A lot of it can be done inside. It doesn't have to be outside. I think the biggest thing for kids is persistence and make you a list of places that if softball was not on the table, you could see yourself going to school. Yeah. And then concentrate on those schools, right? Because softball may not be there. You may have an injury, you may not be good enough, whatever it is, but you're still going to school and you're happy where you're at. That's right. and then pursue the athletic side of things. And D three, we don't tell anybody. No. If they show up here, we don't tell'em. No. If they're not doing things right out there, which we've never, I think in my years here, we've had two kids we're this is not the right fit for you. Yeah. Just, you probably need to go find something else to do. As long as they're pulling the rope in the same direction, we're not telling'em No, come on. Be a part of it. We do good things out here. All right. Last question. I'm gonna take you to 30,000 feet here. You got all these families that are trying to get their kid recruited. All these kids that wanna play college softball. Forget Texas Lutheran for a second. What advice. You give parents and kids as they're starting this journey to get recruited, what do you want them to know? What do you want them to be thinking about? I want them to think about being a kid. We've given up our summers to chase this crap and it works out for very few of them, right? Yep. Now, if, and once kids commit to us, I'm like, take the summer off. Go enjoy your family because it's over with. You're not gonna have this opportunity ever again. Go be a kid, go enjoy the summer, go travel, go do something other than softball instead of your parents spending$20,000 chasing you all over the damn country playing in tournaments that they're just after your money. I'm not a big travel ball fan and me neither several guys on our staff that's how they make a living, I respect that. It's a business model. My kids didn't do anything in the summer. None of'em were college athletes either though. So I'll qualify with that. But yeah, they had a chance to, I'm like, you go tell them thank you, but we're gonna be a family in the summertime. We're gonna travel, we're gonna go see the country and do those things. And so we made a decision. we just didn't think we had enough parents. There was two of us and three of them that we could chase them all over and be fair to all of them. So yeah, we just decided we weren't gonna do that. So I think that's my big advice. If you're good enough, somebody's gonna find you. Yeah. The kids are so stuck right now playing D one or bust, and then they get there and then they end up being nothing. They end up doing nothing because it's not all that. And so we're really after the kids, and that's one of the questions we ask is it have to be D one. If they're chasing D one, then we're not it, we just move on. Thank you for saying that. And that was my topic this week is just ride a bike. Go bowling, go swimming, go do some sleepovers. If your weekends, that's all you're doing is playing softball and you never get to be with your friends and you never get to, go on a picnic or go to the movies with your family, then there's so much you're missing. That's small Town America back in the eighties when we grew up. We had some great times and some of my best memories were doing that. I live and breathe sports, I played, but I never played on any travel teams. We had stars and when that was over with early in the summer, it was over with, and then we got to be a kid for the rest of the summer until school started back. And, yeah, baseball season was 15 or 20 games. I don't remember ever playing more than 15 or 20 games. This season they play every weekend this summer they'll play every weekend. A lot of people will every weekend. And it's just the price of it. Holy cow. I couldn't imagine what their, you could pay for your college education two or three times over if you'd just invested that money, I took the IV out for this interview that's been draining from my daughter's volleyball clubs. So usually they just take a couple pints of blood every day. Absolutely. I'm with you. I'm one of the suckers, but my daughter, she doesn't have any dreams of playing college volleyball a whole lot. And she just loves the competition and loves the, and it's right for her. That's good. I don't have any problem with that. I need to compete. Yeah, compete. I get it. It's hard for me to say no to that, absolutely. Because I love what she's gaining from that as a human being. No Doubt. Coach, thank you so much for your time today. It has been an honor to get to know you and I hope you don't mind if I call you a friend.'cause I feel like you're good man. Really enjoyable. I'm, got a little emotional there and I was afraid that might happen'cause it was still fresh with this and, it's what it is, it's what, it just tells me how much you love it. And how much you love these kids and how much they mean to you. And it's the reason you keep doing it and to keep doing it as well, if not better than everybody else. So thank you for what you're doing. I'm gonna be cheering for heck like you, for you and the girls going forward and hope you get another national, another Natty title under your belt. Thank you Matt. Appreciate your time too. Thanks coach. Alright buddy. Bye-Bye. That was Wade Wilson, one of the most genuine voices I've ever had on the show. He remind us that great recruiting isn't about hype, it's about character, connection, and fit. If you're a student athlete, coach Wilson's advice is gold. I. Be persistent, be personal and be real. Send film, follow up and focus on schools where you'd be happy. Even without sports and parents, don't sacrifice your whole summer to that grind. Let your kids be kids. If they're good enough, the right coach will see the ability and make the connection. To get more weekly recruiting tips and tools, head over to coach matt rogers.com. You can subscribe to the free newsletter, grab the significant recruiting book, or schedule a one-on-one strategy session with me to take your next step with confidence. Hey, thanks for listening and thanks again to Coach Wilson for reminding us what truly matters in this journey.