Episode #83: Paul Dill on Recruiting

🎙️ Significant Recruiting Podcast – Featuring Paul Dill (MIT Volleyball)

In this episode, I’m joined by Paul Dill, Head Volleyball Coach at MIT, to talk about what recruiting looks like inside one of the most selective academic institutions in the country. With over 1,000 career wins and decades of experience, Coach Dill shares what it takes to identify, evaluate, and support student-athletes who thrive both on the court and in the classroom.

We discuss:

• How recruiting changes when your pool is limited to 4.0 GPA/1450+ SAT athletes
• What Coach Dill looks for beyond talent
• The importance of curiosity, communication, and character
• Why being recruitable is about more than your stats

This conversation is full of perspective for any family navigating the recruiting process—especially those considering high-academic colleges and D3 programs.

📘 The Softball Recruit’s Journal is now the #1 New Release on Amazon in three categories!
👉 Get the Journal on Amazon

🌐 For more tools, podcast episodes, and free recruiting strategy sessions, visit coachmattrogers.com

Transcript

0:00

If you're gonna email a coach, email'em directly. You go through the recruiting services, the email chain starts over every time that they do. So if I'm looking back and I wanna look back on our conversation, I can't to remind myself of whatever I think, having that individual email, making it as easy as possible for the coach to access the information that you want me to have if I have to jump through several hoops and. Make an account somewhere and do all this to see your film. I'm not gonna do it. Welcome back to Significant Recruiting. I'm Coach Matt Rogers. Before we jump into today's episode, I wanna say a huge thank you, the Softball Recruits Journal. Just hit number one this weekend on Amazon's new release list. In three different categories. I'm incredibly grateful for the support and I truly hope the tools inside like the Weekly Reflections, the Coach communication templates and the Visit Prep guides are helping families take real ownership of their recruiting journey. So thank you to everyone. If you haven't checked it out yet, head over to coach matt rogers.com or to amazon.com directly for more details and free resources for both athletes and parents. Now today's guest is one of the most respected coaches in college volleyball. Coach Paul Dill from MIT. We had a powerful conversation on Friday about coaching and leadership, and that naturally led us into this follow-up conversation about recruiting, especially what does it take to identify and develop elite student athletes in one of the most competitive academic environments in the country? Let's dive in. Here's my conversation with Coach Paul Dill. there's so many families that I talk to that their dream for their kid is an MIT, to go to school in your league.'cause there's so many great schools there. Are there things that they need to understand about how you need to recruit as the co head coach at MIT? Well, I think, mi t's pretty unique. I think maybe Caltech would be the only other place that doesn't have, we don't have any kind of early reads. We don't have any, athletic slots pre-reads, anything like that. They've gotta get in on our, on their own. We can recommend we can. Support people, but there's no guarantees with that. And we literally find out the same day that they do if they've gotten in. Right. But what they need to know is, especially for any kind of high academic school, is. They need to get in that process a little bit earlier so they understand what, how to set themselves up to be as competitive an applicant as possible based on the requirements of the school. For us, if they're not taking the right classes and don't have the right classes by the time they graduate. There's nothing we can do for them. They're just not gonna get in, they're not gonna be a competitive applicant. So setting themselves up to be taking the right kind of math and science classes, in our case, in other schools, and might be other classes, and what kind of grades are gonna be required in those classes to be a competitive applicant is information that they kind of need to know as early as possible in the process. Because kids come to me a little bit later in the process and it's too late. They, they, they haven't taken the right classes or they've had a, a couple of lower grades that's just not gonna, it's just not gonna cut it for the, the com the 4% admit rate that MIT has. Understanding whatever schools you might be interested in, especially the high academic ones, is what is it that I need to do? To set myself up to be a competitive applicant, whether it's the classes you're taking, the grades that you have, the test scores that you need, and then setting yourself up to do those things. Okay. Well, we use, we'll use my daughter as a hypothetical. We come to visit, we set up a visit with you after her junior year, and we asked. Coach, what's more important to get into MIT? Is it honors, is it ap, is it ib? What, where do we need to be? What kind of classes do we need to be taking? Right. And the level and the, to just to have a shot at getting, yeah. So what's the answer to that? Yeah. So for MIT, the admissions process is about they, they wanna find a good fit for MIT and what makes a good fit for MIT? What kind of kid is a is an MIT kid, well, a kid that's an MIT kid. Wants to be taking the highest level math and science classes they can possibly take at their school. Right. Does it matter if it's ap? If it's calculus, it matters. Yeah. Okay. Because it, because what? What? Because what MIT will see is, okay, this, these are the classes that this person has taken. Here are the classes that the school offers. Now, if there are more advanced classes the school offers that the kid has not taken, then their feeling is, well, this person doesn't wanna challenge themselves. They're not challenging themselves enough. And so, a kid that takes, calc bc let's say they're on a really early track and they take Calc BC as a junior, and then they're signed up to take AP stats as a senior. That's a red flag at a place like MIT because they're, they'd be they're thinking would be, well, this kid should be taking multi-variable calculus or linear algebra, or something more advanced. And if they can't take it at their school, maybe they should try to take it at, a community college or something like that. Just that's how competitive it is to get in and what you're facing as far as what everybody else has. Now, if your school doesn't offer Calc BC and the farthest you can go is calc ab, then MIT takes that into consideration for sure. Okay. It's about what are the highest level classes the school offers, and are you taking them and are you challenging yourself? And are you getting A's in those classes? Yeah.'cause because I go back to how I grew up. I grew up in a farm community with 2000 people. And we didn't have ap, we didn't have International Baccalaureate, we didn't have, right. It's all, yeah. It's all about what the school offers. Yeah. Are you taking the highest level that your school offers? But I love the advice of, Hey, your school has a limit, but you really want this and you're gonna challenge yourself. Is there a local junior college that offers this level of physics or this level of Right. Of calculus, right. So you can show Yeah. I'm pushing myself to the next level. That's important. Yeah. Right. Okay. No, for sure. All right. I go round and round with families on this and I never try and tell a family what to do, but I try and give them the option. So I, MIT is very much on the furthest end of the spectrum here in terms of the places they can get into. Does MIT admissions look at that cumulative GPA or the weighted GPA and if that weighted GPA is a 4.1 and it could be a 4.5, can that negatively affect their admissions? I think it can potentially. I think it's. It's not too much about the weighted so much. I think it's about, the grades that they're getting in those classes overall. And and again, are they challenging themselves? Right. I think that's kind of the biggest thing. Okay. Yeah, I, that's kind of the way I preach it. If you're taking the highest level class you can and you're getting an A where you don't need that extra bump, maybe you got a b plus and that B plus got you to an a. With the weighted right. That can sometimes work against you, I would imagine. Yeah, a little bit, yeah. All right. Let's talk about A-C-T-S-A-T. Sure. I preach to parents they should be taking both because of the learning style in both. Let your kid figure out the learning style they have, take both, whichever one they really feel most comfortable with. Take that 1, 3, 2, 3, 4 times. Right. Is that a. A piece of advice for a kid that's looking to get into MIT or Caltech or a school like that. Alright. Yeah, I think, I think taking it a little bit early so you gotta get a sense of where you are with it. Yes. And so, you know what you need to kind of work on a little bit. Sophomore year, freshman year not freshman, I think. I think freshman year is too early. You're just not gonna be prepared, especially math wise'cause you just haven't seen the stuff yet. I think taking it I. After sophomore year, I think is pretty big. So you get a sense of where you are and then what you need to work on so that when you're taking it during your junior year, you're you're more be better prepared. Yeah. I think that that's, that's key. I think taking both is a good idea to see again, which is gonna be better for you and not, and I'd say don't sub automatically submit any scores anywhere. Just have the scores and then you can submit them if you want later. Yeah you can submit your best score later, right? Exactly. Or score later, right? Yeah, exactly. You can super score and you Yeah, exactly. But if you're, if you maybe don't test as well on one, let's say but you test a lot better on the other, then you might not wanna submit that first one at all and just go with the a CT'cause that was better. Or the SAT if that one was better. Uhhuh and your school will take what you either, either test Yeah, it takes either test and there's certain kind of, scores they're looking for based on. You know, especially the math piece is and that's kind of the indicator to them of, oh, this person will be able to handle the rigors of the curriculum. They're going to, the rigors in the curriculum that they're gonna see math wise. Yeah. You know, scoring lower than that. They probably won't do well at MIT. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's get into volleyball.'cause I know this is where you live. My, my former assistants still make fun of me'cause I had a board, everything was color coded. Four years out, we were looking at freshmen, and they were moving the board and they, sophomore and junior. At what age will you start looking at a kid and put'em on a list if you see'em going into sophomore year. Really? Like there's some kids that reach out before that and we'll, they're on our list. We have'em, but that's not, we're not kind of looking at them too much yet. I think, sophomores we're, we want to start the conversation with sophomores about the academic side of things, about, hey. This is what you need to do to set yourself up to be competitive and then kind of keep our eye on them athletically and see how they develop. Yeah. And if they're gonna be someone that can help us then, hopefully we've given them all the information and they set themselves up academically then to be as strong candidate. So I think it's that sophomore year and then really the junior year is kind of critical as far as their grades and everything else. And then and where and seeing where they're developing athletically. And I imagine you're asking about test scores junior year too. Have you taken a TSD? Yeah. Yeah. Do you have an early score? Do you Yeah, we gotta get, yeah, we're interested to see like if we wanna get there. The we're, as soon as we start talking to'em, we're saying, get us your transcript, whenever that is. And then, okay, every semester afterwards, give us your latest transcript. Give us your latest transcript.'cause if somewhere along the lines they come back with a transcript that the grades are really low, it's, we can start to say, okay, this is probably not gonna be a good fit. Yeah. And realize that earlier in the process. But if they're keeping their grades up and they're taking the right classes then we're gonna be on the right track. For sure. Yeah. And then obviously the athletic piece, seeing them play and seeing'em at these high academic camps or seeing them at tournaments and getting film on them is critical in the process or that to see how they're developing so that when it comes time for us to make a final decision on who we wanna support who we think is gonna be a good fit, we have as much information as possible. It. It drives me crazy when I'm talking to a family and or I'm speaking somewhere and a family will go our coach told us they would take care of it. Our club coach said they're gonna take care of our recruiting. Our high school coach says We don't need to start this till the end of junior, early, senior year. And I wanna pull my hair out because I want families to understand how important is to build a relationship with some college coaches as sophomores, as juniors. Because now somebody that really understands recruiting, really understands how hard it is to get in the door, can coach you a little bit and guide you a little bit. Yeah. Do you appreciate that when you get to get your hands on a really good kid as a sophomore to help'em coach through the next two years? Yeah, I think that's critical. I think that's critical. And that's because they need to take ownership of their own journey, so to speak. Because the parents really can't do it for them. I mean, they can help. Obviously, but they need to take ownership of it a little bit. And they need to make sure that they are, they're communicating with coaches and figuring out what that coach is looking for and how much they want to communicate with them and what they need to see from them and all of that. I think that that's, that's really critical. And establishing those'cause I'll, I'm gonna recruit kids ultimately at the end of the day that I want to hang around with. Like, I'm not they're people that I see and I'm like, okay, that's not someone that's gonna fit in for me. I don't necessarily want to coach that kid based on their behavior or how they're carrying themselves or whatever it is. Or their attitude. So I wanna be ultimately around people that I think are really fun. So sometimes somebody that I establish a relationship with early and I click with and think is really funny and great and fun to coach'cause I've coached'em at a camp or whatever. They might be a little less athletically than, than somebody else. But because of that relationship I just want to coach that kid. And so I'm gonna, I'm gonna, pursue that. Yeah, you're gonna help them everywhere you can to help them get prepared to get through that admissions process, but also help them be prepared if they want to come play for you. Yeah, exactly. Start building that relationship early. I love that. Exactly. All right, I'm gonna ask you a question and I know your admissions director and your financial aid director are probably gonna be holding their breath to hear what your answer is.'cause I know how this works. And I know better to ask it, but I'm gonna ask it anyways'cause I know a thousand families would ask me to ask it. What are the bare bones for me to get in the door? What? What's that? A-C-T-S-A-T score. What's that? GPA? Yeah. What where does my chance begin and end to get into MIT? Yeah. And I know it's a hard answer. I know there's not that concrete answer. Yeah, there's no exact formula, right? Yeah. There isn't there. There isn't. But here's what they're looking for, right? The, they're looking for people in the top 5% of their class academically. They're looking for people that are taking the most rigorous classes they can take in math and science and getting A's in those classes from, ninth grade on basically. And then, are they challenging themselves with those classes? So having a, an advanced math, like multi-variable calculus or linear algebra is always gonna be a help. Or, oh, this kid took physics as a freshman, but oh wait, they're taking AP physics C as a senior. That's a big, that's a that's a big, that's a big help. So things like that, that they're looking for. And then scoring wise, the seven 80 math and 35 math is what they're looking for. The, and can be maybe a little lower than that, but everything else has to be through the roof. And then there, that gets you in the conversation though, like that's just part of it. That gets you in the conversation of, okay, this person will be able to handle what they're gonna see here. And they're gonna be okay. Now we want to bring in the most cool, creative, diverse, interesting people that are gonna make this a great campus community in general. Right? And that's why here anyway, they do like athletes because a athletes do better than everybody else.'cause they're already used to that lifestyle. Right? They're being pulled in 10 different directions at once in high school and still excelling academically. So they know that they can handle that when they're in college.'cause that's what college is. And then they, and then athletes get involved in campus community life. So they like athletes in the process. So that will be a little bit of a help. Those are the bare bones of it, and, but there's just no exact formula for it, unfortunately. Let's say I have all that and I get a 1300 SAT 1300. Yeah, no. Okay. You got, like I said, that seven 80 and then that may, 700 plus on, on the verbal that's what they're looking for. 1400 minimum. No, I'd say 14. 1480 minimum. 1480, minimum. 7 47 47. Seven. 700. Seven 80. 700. Seven 80. Math has gotta be higher. Yeah. Math's gotta be around seven 80 anymore. Should I be, look, should I be talking to you? If I wanna major in English? Potentially, yeah. I mean, MIT is like a very, one of its best kept secrets is humanities or like one of the best in the world as well. You can do that, but you've gotta understand that, hey, you're still gonna have to take all of these core classes in physics and calculus and everything else. You can't just skip that. Okay. You're gonna have to take these core classes and then you can eng major in English and that's fine. And they don't care what you wanna major in when they're looking at the admissions process. So they don't care. Okay. They don't care. So if I wanna work at NASA and I wanna be an astronaut and astrophysics they don't care right now. Right. Okay. Still comes back to the quality of the person and the, and how I'm challenging myself in my own personal environment. Right. Am I in that 5%? Am I doing, am I challenging every aspect of that environment? Yeah, a hundred percent. Love it. Talk to me about roster size. What's perfect roster size for you? 16 to 18 based on mid-semester illnesses. Injuries, things like that. That's kind of a sweet spot for me as as far as having a good number and always having a good number to be able to practice and get after it with each other, and having some depth, I think is key. And I think if you have the right team culture, you can handle a bigger roster, and that's fine. And kids understand that as long as you're being transparent with them and they know exactly where they're fitting in. 16 to 18 is basically three teams. Are, do you like the balance of saying, okay, I've got three outsides, I've got three right sides, I've got three setters. Or do you like saying, I know I'm probably not gonna pay more in two setters, I'd rather have a couple extra hitters or an extra middle. Where are you at in that world? Yeah. I think pins are big and middles are harder to find. Yeah. And so I think, if you can have three or four good middles and you can have four to six pins, or I guess six pins. You're gonna be in a little bit better place. Nine hitters at least. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. I think at this level for how long, how many matches we're playing, how many matches a week we're playing that best of five on a tournament weekend when you're playing two matches in the same day can be a little bit of a bear. So being able to get people rest and not overuse them, overuse them too much during the length of the season can, can be critical to your success being healthy at the end. You've gotta have certain grades, you gotta have certain test scores. You gotta like the kid, you gotta like their character. They've gotta be creative, they've gotta be fun, they've gotta be fit. Your culture. You have so many boxes you have to check. Yeah, they're real. It's really hard to find all those boxes and you've gotta hammer. At the pen or a hammer. Your 6 1 6 2. You've got such, you've got the hardest job, top three or four in the country to do what you do. I'll say it. If you won't say it, I'll say it. Okay. What? DSS and liberos are a little bit more volume in that world. Yes. What are you looking for? What do you look what are some of those criteria points for that back row kid that gets you really, really excited service, Steve. I. Service receive, it's all about service. Receive at this level. Yeah. And being in system everybody can defend pretty well. I think if you've been playing a long time and that's your role as a ds you're pretty decent at defense and we can teach you more. I think service receive and then and then having a good court presence I think is really big. It's really what I, that's really what's what. It turns me on, like when I'm watching somebody has great court presence, has a lot of energy is running around all over the place back there and high fiving their teammates and slapping'em on the back and being loud and then being really consistent in service-y I think that's really big. So if somebody sends me film and they're, they're passing it the 10 foot line consistently, I'm like, well, if they're passing there, if they can't handle the serves of a, 16, 17-year-old, 18-year-old, they're not gonna handle the service of a 21, 20 2-year-old at our level. So it's like service. They're not putting it at the net, right? Yeah, they're not put, yeah. It's gotta, that service receive is the biggest thing for me. Just a quick technical point, a perspective. What's the footwork look like? Are you looking for calm feet? Are you looking for settling? Are you looking for a kid that their shoulders are calm? What are some of those things that get you excited about that service? Receive. I think it's like the, a calm and early platform. Yeah. I think that's the biggest thing for me. Nice, steady calm, but early platform and just that nice smooth movement that's just, nice and level. Okay. And reads well. I love it. I wanna play for you. I'm 16 years old. I wanna play for you. I'm doing all the right things. How do you want me to reach out to you to say, coach, I want to, I wanna play for MIT, I wanna play for you. Yeah, I think it just starts with an introductory email, right? And making it easy, there's so many recruiting services and everything else out there, and kids are going through recruiting services and then I. If you're gonna email a coach, email'em directly. You go through the recruiting services, the chain the email chain starts over every time that they do. So if I'm looking back and I wanna look back on our conversation, I can't to remind myself of whatever I think, having that individual email, I think having it, it making it as easy as possible for the coach to access the information that you want me to have if I have to jump through several hoops and. Get a, make an account somewhere and do all this to see your film. I'm not gonna do it. I just don't have, we don't have that kind of time. Yeah. So I think, a YouTube channel is great. You can just upload it. You have it, and you can take ownership of it and say, Hey, I have a new, I have new highlights from this tournament, and here's the link. And then I can just hit on that. So I think having, so having some highlights and having some academic information what year you are, what position you play. I think is that gets get you, you want to make it so that we wanna see you play live if we can and continue that conversation and transcripts. Well, yeah, the academic side is big for us. Yes. Obviously, yes. The transcript is key.'cause that's the next thing I'm gonna ask for anyway. Yeah. And what classes you're, you're taking and things like that. Yeah. And then as. Obvious as it may seem like when a coach emails you read the email carefully and give them the information they're asking for. It's amazing how many times I'll send an email and I'll say, please send me this, and this. And then they send me only two of those things and then I have to come back and say, can you also send me this? So yes, make it. Make it. We're so busy and we have so many emails to work with. And we don't have, a huge staff, so I think at the D three level. So I think making it as easy and really being accurate with what you're doing and making sure you're reading through emails before you send them and make sure it's the right school name and right coach's name and all of that, and make it personal. If I get a thing that says, dear coach, then I am that's coming from a service or it's a blanket email, like I want, if my name's on it, that's okay. I'm definitely gonna answer that email. Love it coach. Thank you so much for your time. It's an honor talking to you. Oh, my pleasure. It's so impressive what you've done there. I will scream it to the moon, how hard of a job you have and to do thanks at the level you've done it year after year for it, almost 30 years. It's so impressive. Thank you for the conversation. Feel free to reach out anytime, just to talk volleyball or whatever. I may tick you up on that and if I'm ever up in, in that area I'm gonna call you and see if you'll let me come watch a practice. I'd love to learn. That'd be great. Love it. Would love it thanks. It was a pleasure. Thanks again to Coach Paul Dill for sharing his insight and experience. His perspective on recruiting student athletes who lead with both intellect and integrity is something every family should hear. If you have it yet, be sure to check out significant recruiting, the playbook for prospective college athletes and the Softball Recruits Journal. Both available now on Amazon, and if you're looking for more personalized guidance, you can schedule a free coaching or recruiting session with me@coachmattrogers.com. As always, keep showing up with purpose, lead with integrity, and pursue significance over status. We'll see you next time.