Episode #107: Heather Pavlik on Recruiting

🏐 Heather Pavlik on Recruiting, Character, and Building Champions 💯

What makes a recruit stand out beyond stats and highlight reels? Juniata College Head Women’s Volleyball Coach Heather Pavlik—fresh off leading her team to three straight NCAA Division III National Championships and earning 2024 AVCA National Coach of the Year honors—shares her perspective on what truly matters in the recruiting process.

From evaluating athletes for more than just talent, to guiding parents on how to best support their daughters, Heather blends toughness with compassion in a way that helps young women grow into champions on and off the court.

✨ If you’re a student-athlete, parent, or coach, this episode is packed with lessons on what it takes to get recruited the right way.

👉 For more episodes, my book Significant Recruiting: The Playbook for Prospective College Athletes, the Recruit’s Journal series (including the new Volleyball edition), online classes, and weekly blogs—visit CoachMattRogers.com
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Transcript

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I don't need to see your highlights. Highlights are fine. They're good. They have their place. But send me some unedited video because I wanna see when you make errors, what do those look like? Yeah. And how do you respond? That's really important. A full set. Yeah, A full set. Great. Maybe not like a five setter game, but maybe a full set though with some live play is really helpful. And you're making 10, 12 touches in a set. If you're a setter, there's 30, there's a bunch. Yeah. Yeah. I think it helps because you really do want to see what happens when they make an error. Why did they make the error, but also how they respond to it. Welcome back to the Significant Recruiting Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Rogers. On the coaching episode, we talked about Tata's three straight NCAA championships and how Heather Pavlik has built one of the most remarkable dynasties in college volleyball. Today we shift the focus to recruiting. Coach Pavlik has seen it all. All Americans, national players of the year, and young athletes who have come to Juta and grown into champions. In this episode, she shares what she really looks for in a recruit and what parents need to understand and why. Division three opportunities like Jutta can be life changing. And if you're on this recruiting journey, don't forget to check out my book, significant Recruiting, the Playbook for Prospective College Athletes and its companion book, the Volleyball recruits journal@coachmattrogers.com. Alright, let's get into it. Here's part two of my conversation with Jutta head, women's volleyball coach Heather Pavlik. Coach Pavlik I want to dive into recruiting with you. I asked you about how you handle practice planning. Now I wanna talk about recruit planning. What does that look like?'cause you told me 11 o'clock you bring your staff in to talk practice planning. What does that recruit planning look like? That's a good question. I think it's more freeform. I don't think it's as formal. I think Casey and I actually have an office where we share a door between us. So we basically have an open office for the two of us, and Erin has a table in my office, so we're all here all the time together. And so I think it's a little more organic. When it comes up, we split it up by position. Casey will handle maybe anyone who passes the ball. The outside hitters, the RAs, the dss. I handle recruiting, setters, opposites, middles, and so we just compare notes every single day. Hey, I talked to last night. Here's how it went. Here's our depth chart. Here's where we're at. Or, Hey, somebody decided to go elsewhere. How does that change what this looks like now? Based on what we need. So it, it's pretty organic and happens daily. Do you have an actual board? Do you have a recruiting board or do you have it on? Yeah, I do, I like visual things, so I make a recruiting board on my computer so that I can see and I can move people and do that kind of stuff. I think Casey does it his own way and I am perfectly fine with however he wants to do that. I think what, whatever works best for him is what I want him to do. Erin's great about jumping in and if she's seen someone at a tournament,'cause she coached club, so she would see people. But it's very organic. We talk about it daily and I think we talk about what we really need versus some numbers and the school will talk to us a little bit about numbers they'd like to see from us too. I think in any division three department it, you are an extension of the enrollment. And the enrollment building and the enrollment staff. And we talk a little bit about that, but I think overall we are very much all on the same page all the time, which is great. That's awesome. And we just don't recruit people unless we can see them at some point. Yeah. I feel like it's live. It's tough to do. Yeah. It's very tough to do from video, so see them live. Yeah. But let's get into video just because I know you're getting bombarded with it. Yeah. How often are Casey or Aaron coming to you and saying, Hey, watch this film. I want you to see a kid every day. Every day. We're trading films back and forth. Yeah. I'll get some and I'll, if it's an outside hitter, I'll say, Hey, Casey, take a look at her. I like her, but what do you think? Or he sees, he gets a middle, he gets an email from a middle, he'll shoot it my way so I can take a look at it. But I think it's daily, many of them daily. I was just talking to the coach at Virginia Wesleyan softball, and while we were having our conversation, I think he got 28 recruit meals, just 28 recruit emails. Oh, I won't be surprised if I have that many when I get off of this zoom. How are you dealing with that? How are you disseminating all that information? I think we try to respond to as many of them as we can. Because they need to make decisions too. And if it's somebody who isn't a great fit, fit for us, I think we try to say, Hey, we might not be the right fit right now based on who we have in this position. But if you want some thoughts on what the video look like and who you might wanna talk with, let us know. Yeah. I think because you wanna help them get to the right places. I'm a big believer that's a huge role of, as us as college coaches,'cause we're, we are the master coach and master teacher of that community, whatever we're in and there's so many coaches, there's so many families that are just looking'cause they have no idea how to evaluate. How to evaluate themselves. So they rely so heavily on us to just give them a sense, are they on the right page? Are they moving in the right direction? Should they be going a different direction? And it's so hard now. 20 years ago, I would get a VHS tape in the mail three or four times a week and then it became CDs. Now it's so easy to send an email and everybody's been taught, this is how you do it. I don't know how you do it anymore. I don't know how. Is there something, it's tough. Is there something you're seeing in the subject line that may go, I'm gonna take a look at that one. Oh, not necessarily in the subject line'cause you get a lot of different 6 4, 4 0.0. That helps. Even that you need a lot more information there because also six four sometimes is means six one. That's right. And sometimes six foot is five 10. So you gotta do your homework there too. But I think that somebody who maybe within the first line of an email knows a little bit about why they wanna look at you. Yeah. Okay. Oh, I wanna be, I say you have a great environmental science program. That's what I wanna study. And I've played for this club and I talked to someone at my club and they said, you really should talk to Juliana. Yeah. Now I'm a, now I'm okay. This speaks my interest. Because there's reasons why they're sending an, it's just not, they're not just bombing 200 different programs, but even those who are bombing 200 different programs with emails, if they're not right for you, it's easy to say, Hey, you might, we might not be the right fit for you. But let me know what kind of school you're looking for and I'll try to maybe point you in the right direction because we know so many coaches. Yeah. And you wanna get them to the best person you possibly can. Absolutely. Do you like having a link that you can click where you can see video, you can see schedule, you can see classes, you can see grades? Yes. Yep. Parents information. Very helpful because you can figure out very quickly then, is this person definitely someone we're interested in? Is this someone who would not fit at all or is this someone in the middle that maybe we could see live sometime and decide? Yeah. Yeah. I think all those links are very helpful. I have a very rocky road history with recruiting services. So I can go from to, gosh, it's so necessary and what I try and teach families is. You don't necessarily have to pay for a recruiting service, but to have something online that a coach can go, where was that email? They don't have to do that. They can go, oh, I already know your name. I can go to that site and just throw in your name and I can see what your new film is. I don't have to worry about you sending me a new email every time you have a new film. Is that helpful for you? Yeah, I think it is, and I think I, I say the same thing to people when I talk to parents or club directors or anybody about recruiting services. Sure you can use it if it makes your life easier and the money's not a problem for you. But there's some families who can't do that. That's right. And I just say, listen, send us, send the people you're interested in email. Tell them what you wanna study, attach some video, and please attach some unedited video. Yes. I don't need to see your highlights. Highlights are fine. They're good. They have their place. But send me some unedited video because I wanna see when you make errors, what do those look like? Yeah. And how do you respond? That's really important. A full set. Yeah, A full set. Great. Maybe not like a five setter game, but maybe a full set though with some live play is really helpful. And you're making 10, 12 touches in a set. If you're a setter, there's 30, there's a bunch. Yeah. Yeah. I think it helps because you really do want to see what happens when they make an error. Why did they make the error, but also how they respond to it. Yeah. I've been having this conversation a lot'cause I got in this argument a club prep school coach. I don't usually get on internet and in social media and get upset about anything. It's a rule that I don't do that. But this guy really upset me about D three coaches making offers. He was upset that one of a D three coach made one of his kids an offer. He goes, how can they call it an offer when there's no scholarship attached? What does sc, what does an offer mean to you? An offer just means you're offering a ro, you're offering a roster spot. But that's it. But there's great value to be a member. I'm being asked by junior out volleyball Agreed. Be a part of their program. Agreed. And I get to get a great education, and I get to be a part of a team where maybe 93% of the high school kids in the country will never get to be a part of that college team. Yep. An offer from a D three coach to me is huge. Yeah. And I think in this day and age, you have to use that word a little bit, right? Yeah. You have to use that word because it's what they're, it's, they're what they're used to. It's what they're looking for. So I try to make sure before someone leaves here on a visit, if it's someone we really want, Hey, I just want you to know I'm making, this offer to you that if you wanna come here, you've got a roster spot, period. And if we're not sure, then you don't make that right. You wanna make sure they know that you want them and there's a place for them. That's right. Yeah. I, and that's all it needs to be, and whether you use the word offer or not, but let them know you want them. And that Yes. If you decide to come here, there's a roster spot for you. Yeah. Just, it's just what you said. We really want you here, but you've gotta want to be. But we're not telling everybody else we want them to be here. We're telling you that we'd like you to be a part of it, but this has gotta be the right fit for you. You've gotta feel that this is the place where you can grow and we can make the most of you. Absolutely. It's just so important that kids hear that. And if you're not getting an offer, this is this. Yeah. Hey, we're not gonna offer you, yeah. We're. We've got four outsides, we got three setters. We're good. I just don't have another spot for you. Or maybe a great player that you really want leaves here and thinks you feel ambivalent about them in some way. Yeah. You don't want that. You want them to know exactly how you feel about them. Yeah, exactly. Let's talk a little bit about what you, what gets you excited when you see a recruit? Because I, I loved Olivia the way Oli, we talked about this in the first episode how you approached Olivia when you were recruiting her. And I was like that because for me, when I realized I wanted a kid. It's when I was already thinking about how I was gonna coach them, how I was gonna, when I couldn't stop thinking about how I could make them better I knew I was locked in. Are, is there something similar for you when you watch a kid play that triggers you? Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I go, oh yeah, I want this person, is that competitive piece, right? Yeah, because we wanna win here. We wanna win, we wanna compete for national championships, we wanna be spoken about in that top grouping of teams in the country all the time. Position ourself that way. And I think the number one thing you have to be as competitive. Yeah. You have to be a great competitor. And so when I watch a player, yeah, you can see their skills easily. That's the easy part. I think the first thing that draws me in is the competitiveness. And maybe that's how they respond after an error. That's what I'm saying. Show us more. I think that is really important.'cause great competitors want the ball right back. They want the ball right back. They wanna touch it again. They're not afraid of making another error. They're just very aggressive and go after it. And I love seeing that. I think that draws me in immediately. I think somebody who is really good with their teammates, and when I say that, I don't mean just, oh yeah, you're great. Who will walk over to a teammate who's struggling, put an arm on her back, or, and maybe give her kick in the rear when she needs it? That's right, because both things are valuable. Who understands how to deal with other people and has a really good emotional intelligence about the people around them. Yeah. You just can't have enough kids that have it in'em, that by the time their sophomores are juniors, they're gonna stop a practice. This isn't good enough. It doesn't have to be you. They've got it in them to say, we're better than this. Say that out loud or you are better than this, or I gotta be better than this. And it's so cool when it's not the same person all the time. You bet. We've had that happen a number of times over the past couple weeks and it was different people in the group and I thought, okay, this is coming together nicely. This is good. This is really good. It's lovely. I keep, I'm gonna keep bringing back Olivia here'cause we had such a good conversation about this. I was really impressed with, we talked about visits when kids come to visit you guys and you play. And she just said, she goes, I'm probably wasn't that person, that coach wanted me to take somebody on a tour or take them to the room. But we had four or five girls that were really great at that. Self-awareness. Self-awareness. Self-awareness is a big deal. She's I just can't get enough of this kid. Where are you with that? When we're, when you have a kid come in, typically you want them to play with the girls in the off season, I would imagine. We don't. We don't. Don't. Okay. You've seen Now we get them, stay with them. You've seen enough. Now it's, let's see how they react and how they, and the only time they'd be able to do that anyway when they're playing on their own.'cause when we're in our training block, they can't, it's illegal. Yeah. But. I think the biggest thing is, and I love what Olivia said there, because she's a hundred percent right. She's pretty hardcore and. I don't know that she would've wanted to keep people. And I think that's the biggest thing, first and foremost is if we're gonna ask you to keep a recruit, you have to be somebody who wants to keep a recruit. That's right. If you're someone who doesn't wanna be around other people very much and don't like to be around people you don't know, not a good candidate for that. So yeah, I think you figure out pretty quickly who the people on your team are who love doing that and enjoy it.'cause if they enjoy it, the recruits can have a better time anyway. You don't have to use names or anything, but do you have certain players that you count on to give you their opinion of that visit and what they thought of that girl? Yes. And you're right about that. It's not everybody, but it, there are a couple people Yeah. We can go to and say, okay, how did that go? What did you think? Yeah. And most of the time, I must say most of the time it goes very well. And they're like she was really nice or she was a little quiet. But then when it was a smaller group and it wasn't 18 people in her face, she was actually really good one-on-one or in a small group. Because they're gonna learn things that we're not going to that, that. Recruits are gonna share things with them. Yeah. Are going to do things with them that they're probably not gonna share with us. And so I think the players are invaluable. And then every once in a while you get one. Not often, where the players come in and say, no, absolutely not. Yeah. And here's why. And that's what I wanna know. Why. Yeah. What was it that didn't sit right with you? And that's where you have to be careful about who you're talking with, because. Teams need different personalities. They need different kinds of people to be diverse and successful. And and we get players from all over the country with all kinds of different backgrounds, different places. But why did it not go well? And there's a few things that they'll say where you go, okay, I agree with you. We're gonna, we're gonna back off that one. I'll let her know. Yeah. I remember having a, I had a senior captain that would come in and just say, coach, I know you brought this kid in. I know you really like him, but. Here's a couple things I saw that I'm really worried about and he was never gonna play with this kid. Like he was gonna be long gone. But he would say, I just, I don't think he fits our team and I don't think he fits our culture. There's some things that he said that I just turned me off. And I love that. I just love hearing that because there, how you gonna know that when you've seen a kid play twice in a game and you like their attitude and you like, but you don't know who they are when they step off the court? We had a captain the last. Three years. Abby Les she was a captain or sophomore, junior and senior. So voters as a captain, as a sophomore. So I think that says something right away. That a time. Yeah. Very mature. And I talked a little earlier about that emotional intelligence. I think that was her superpower. Amazing with people. She understood people's motivations. She understood the differences with people. So she's someone we could always go to, whether it was something inside the team or whether it was with a recruit who came, Hey, how did that go and how was she? And I always very much trusted the answers that got there because Abby was always on point. So nice to have. And it goes back to recruiting. You wanna recruit those kids, you wanna recruit those high EQ kids and she always had the team's best interest. Yeah. Very selfless human being. Yeah. And she would be thinking about the future and she cared about whether, she might never play with this person, but she cared about whether the program was getting a good person. Yeah. You've been at the point where. You probably have on an average year. Tell me if I'm wrong. I would say five or six kids that could probably play D two or higher. Absolutely. Without it. Without it, I think most of our roster. Yeah, most of our, okay. Where are you at with recruiting kids that want that D one, want that D two That's important to them, you can probably give them more outside of that dollar amount that they're hunting for that label that they're hunting for. How do you handle that? Yeah. I think that's the norm for us, actually. That's where we live in the recruiting sphere, so I think we do that on a daily basis, and I think the biggest thing is to get them to see us play somehow. Whether they come in to watch a match or whether they look up an old video somewhere online. We're playing at a really high level, and you probably wanna take a look at this. But I think the other piece of that is we gotta find the right people. And so if somebody isn't interested in a smaller school and a smaller town that has great volleyball then they're not the right fit for us. But I think there's lots who just aren't, don't understand what we are. We're a strange animal to understand. Most grade volleyball, even in division three, does not live in tiny towns in schools that are 1300 students. So we tend to be unique and we just try to talk with them about that piece of it. Come and see what you think. You might be surprised and we can compete with the places you're talking to. Yeah. They're without a doubt. We can compete with people you're talking to in most cases. And you really, this would be a different animal. This is a place where you're gonna get a lot of balance. Your academics are gonna come first and you can let the academics come first and still win national championships and play at a really high level. Because here the two things actually work really well together. The way Junior is set up with our academics actually helps that because we're done with class at four every day, we, they can be done with their academic day shift gears come here. So that ability to have some balance to be part of something more than just be a student. Be an athlete, but be able to be part of a club or two, do some of those kind of things. And there, there are more student athlete prospects who want that than people think. Yeah. When they start thinking about their life, what is this going to look like in college? I think a lot of them don't want it to be volleyball. Volleyball first. Volleyball first, all the time. Yeah. They wanna get an education. They wanna get a great education. They wanna experience college a little bit. And so I think we tend to get people who are really great players and could take a scholarship to many places, but I think they want a little more balance than that. Yeah. And they still wanna play on a great volleyball team. Yeah. I was gonna ask you this first segment, and I forgot to ask it, so I'm gonna bring it up now. Wash U has a, I don't know what they have now.$12 billion endowment. They do. John Johns Hopkins has, is world renowned for their medical school. Everybody across the country knows Johns Hopkins'cause they've got such a great medical program. Hope is hosted, I don't know how many years of national championships, of different sports and has one of the best Yep. Gyms in the country. MIT is world renowned for their science and math. You're a small town, D three private college. How in the heck have you done it? How. You know what we tell people, you know what we're known for? Volleyball? Yeah. Volleyball. Yeah. And they're like, oh, wait a minute. I'm like, everybody in this town cares about volleyball. Yeah. We're gonna get top billing on everything. Yeah. This gym is gonna be full. People are gonna know you when you stop in at the local sheets. You're gonna have people saying, Hey, great game last night. You have no idea who they are. That's the allure. Yeah. And I think once they get reeled in with the volleyball, they start doing a little homework on the school and they start realizing, oh, it's a really good school. Yeah. A really good academic with that, really great academic programs, but undoubtedly it's the volleyball. And Larry worked his tail off. Early in the years of this program's existence and made them part of a national conversation that in some ways they had no business being a part of. Yeah. I think we were like a badge of honor. We used to go to Wash U every year, back when Terry Clemens was at Wash u Larry was head coach here. I was his associate head coach. And we would drive to St. Louis in a mini bus and we would stop in Terre Haute, Indiana. Yeah. And then. On the first leg, and then we would go the rest of the way the next day. We would play Friday night, usually against Wash U in front of a packed crowd. And then we would play two on Saturday and then we would get back in our little mini bus and we would drive home through the night. And we wore like a badge of water. Like we will do things other people will not do. We were much hard, much more hardcore. Yeah. And I think we've owned that for years. We're like the little engine that could, yeah. I, it drives and that's how we function best. It drives me crazy when coaches plan a Susie Cake's pre-season schedule. It just drives me crazy. I wanted my players, I wanted my players to play against the best talent we could find.'cause when it got to conference it's still to this day, if you wanna make nationals, you better win your league.'cause there's no guarantees. Oh no. And especially with things changing yeah, it, you gotta win your conference for sure, but you gotta be ready for those guys. I always say to Mike, we go to these big, beautiful gyms, right? Yeah. And ours is a good gym, right? Yeah. It's just a good little gym. But we go to these big, beautiful gyms and I'll just say to our players, you know what the best thing about this gym as? And they're like, what? I'm like, when it's silent while we're playing, and they're like, oh yeah, coach. Two questions to finish. Piece of advice for a student athlete that wants to play in college and wants to get recruited on how to do it. And be proactive. Be proactive. Do your homework. Look at the places that have what you wanna study, because in the end, you gotta get a great education. So look for the places that have what you wanna study, and then be proactive. Reach out to the coaches because you would be surprised like. Names. We start recognizing names. We see them. Oh, may. Yeah, next time we go out we've gotta make sure we check this kid out. She's written to us three different times now. She's been updating us, Atan. Let's see what she looks like. Her video looks good. Let's see her live. So I just think being proactive, but do your homework. I don't think you wanna blitz 300 places when a hundred of them don't even have the academic industry you're looking for. That's right. That's right. Or you're gonna be miserable in the environment. You want four seasons, you're not gonna be happy in Arizona. Yes. You have to be real with yourself about what it is that you're looking for in those four years. How you learn, man you, you don't want a 300 class person classroom when you learn better one-on-one with a professor, with 14 kids in a student. Or, we always say to people here, if you're looking for nightlife, Huntington is not your place. If you love the outdoors, we're fantastic. That's but nightlife, there is none. Yeah. I would've not known that wanted that at 17, but boy, I will love that right now. I would love that. We always say the biggest challenge is getting them here, but once they get here, they focus on the right things because there's not, there's not all the distractions. That's right. We don't have a, we don't have a major city to attract them, but we also don't have a major city to distract them. That's right. There, there's nowhere to go on Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, but on campus, hang out with your friends on campus and they meet tons of people and they have a good time. And those kids have the better memories than the kids that live close to Chicago and Detroit and Miami. And because they, yeah, there's a closeness and a community that builds there. And this place, I know a lot of people community's kind of a buzzword, right? Oh, we have a great community. What does that mean? Here it means that people will look you right in the eye and say hello to you. If they have never seen you before, they don't care. That's how I grew up. That's how I grew up. Yeah. Yeah. I get my, my, my kids tease me all the time. I just, I wave at everybody and say hi to everybody. And I did parking duty with my kids' school today and I love giving every kid high five of, they get out of the car and, it brightens their day. So I love that attitude. Same question, but for parents, what's your advice to parents going through their recruiting process? What do you think they need to know? Help your children be proactive on their own. Don't do it for them. Letters from parents, things from parents, I don't think we paid much attention to. Yeah. Because in the end, if there were, if a coach is recruiting them, you're not going to be there during those four years. So encourage your student athletes to be the proactive people. Reaching out, having the conversation, yes. On the first phone call when you call. Sure. You can be on, you probably have lots of questions of that coach too. That's perfectly fine. Maybe don't be on every conversation, not every call. I think there is a piece of a student athlete and a coach connecting on a phone call that student athlete has to be okay communicating with the coach, not the parents. So I think it is really important to let them have a little bit of ownership for it, take some ownership and do some things on their own through the process. But certainly not all of it. But I think once in a while let them do their own thing there. Yeah. Par parents still need to be parents through this process, but they Sure. You're the one that's gonna be coaching them. They need to learn how to have that conversation with you. And at a division three, like Giata, the parents absolutely are part of the equation because there's a bill to be paid. You're talking about a scholarship. And so they have to be part of the conversation, but there's also a relationship that needs to develop between the student athlete and the coach. Where the parents aren't part of that, because that's what the four years is gonna look like. You're gonna see the parents maybe every other weekend. Yeah. I want to thank Dr. Jim and Olivia for guilt tripping you to come on. I really appreciate it. No problem. I have, I've been trying to get you on for months, so I, it means the world to me that you did this and I'm such a big fan. I love watching your team's fly. I just, I love watching. Oh, thank you thank you. I was division three coach for 12 years and I know how hard it is to win a game, let alone. Conference championship, get to the nationals to do it three times. So keep doing what you're doing, keep doing it with your heart and you're doing it the right way'cause you're doing it the way you want to do it. And man, it's awesome. Thank you. I appreciate it. That was Jutta head volleyball coach and three straight national championship coach Heather Pavlik. Hearing her perspective on recruiting is really fantastic. She's not just a evaluating skills or stats. She's looking for character accountability and the willingness to grow, and that's why she wants to see more than just your highlight film. It's the same toughness and compassion she leads with every day in her program, and it's why junior out volleyball has become a national powerhouse. If you found this conversation valuable, make sure to subscribe, favorite, and share the podcast. That support keeps us going. And helps us to continue to grow this community of athletes, parents, and coaches who want to approach recruiting with purpose. And don't forget, you can find my book Significant Recruiting the Playbook for prospective college athletes and the companion book, the Volleyball Recruits journal@coachmattrogers.com. Until next time, stay focused. Stay ready, and stay significant.