Episode #131: Mike Candrea on Recruiting

🎙️ Mike Candrea on Evaluating Talent, Building Championship Rosters, and the Future of Recruiting

In this episode of the Significant Recruiting Podcast, Matt sits down with one of the most respected leaders in the history of college athletics—Mike Candrea, Hall of Fame coach, eight-time NCAA National Champion at the University of Arizona, former USA Olympic Head Coach, and one of the sharpest minds in the world of athlete evaluation.

Coach Candrea breaks down what truly matters in the recruiting process: character, competitiveness, consistency, and the ability to fit into a championship culture. He shares how his approach to scouting evolved over 34 years, what he believes separates great recruits from good ones, how NIL and the transfer portal are reshaping college sports, and why self-awareness and maturity matter now more than ever.

Whether you’re a parent, a high school athlete, or a coach trying to help young people find the right college home, this conversation delivers clarity, wisdom, and a blueprint for navigating today’s recruiting landscape.

Learn more about Coach Candrea here:
 https://arizonawildcats.com/sports/softball/roster/coaches/mike-candrea/5249

Explore more recruiting tools and resources—including Significant Recruiting and the brand-new Softball Recruit’s Journal—at CoachMattRogers.com.

Transcript

0:09

Welcome back to The Significant Coaching Podcast. This is our recruiting segment. I'm your host Matt Rogers in part two of our conversation. Today's guest is someone whose perspective on recruiting is unmatched in the history of college athletics. Mike Andreas spent 34 years building the gold standard of softball at the University of Arizona. Eight NCAA national championships, more than 1800 career wins, and the resume that puts him in the same rarefied air as John Wooden. But what makes this conversation special isn't just his success. It's the way he talks about evaluating athletes, building rosters, identifying character, and understanding what truly separates a recruit who thrives from a recruit who struggles. Coach Kendra has seen the evolution of college recruiting from every angle, USA softball of the Olympics, the early scholarship era, and now NIL and the transfer portal. If you're a parent, a coach, or a student athlete, trying to understand what elite programs really look for and why it won't take long to see why Coach Kendra is one of the most respected leaders in all of sport. Let's get into this conversation with one of the true coaching legends in all Sports Hall of Famer, Mike Condre. Coach, I am really interested if I'm a parent of a teenager and Mike Kre walks into my living room, who's just won the Olympic gold medal and has all these national championships, what are you expecting when you walk into that room? Never really thought of it that way. But obviously you want, you want a positive reaction. You want them to be excited, about the opportunity that you're about to bring to them. But more importantly, the, my home visits were really more about. Finding out where the kid's coming from, right? The influence that parents have on kids is tremendous. And so the only way you're gonna find out what are the priorities of the parents, it's hard to teach, hard to tell a kid that you're giving them an educational experience. If education is not a high priority for the parents. So sometimes you're gonna learn a lot about the upbringing of the kid, and more importantly, I wanted to see how the kid treated their parents. Because if the kid did not treat their parents well, they're not gonna treat their teammates well. So I would I mean there was many times I walked into a home visit, kid had high skills. My biggest challenge was finding out about their character, and I walked outta the house and said, I don't want this kid, it's just not gonna be a good fit, right? Because I want kids that are gonna add to my program and are gonna make other people better. And that, that was a big part for me is going into the house and feeling. Where's this kid really coming from and is it the parents doing all the talking? Or is it the kid that I'm recruiting, asking the questions? And yes, is the kid playing the game because their parents want him to play the game and because they've invested in the kid? Or does the kid really enjoy playing the game of soft? All right. You and I could write a book on this next question. I'd be your ghost writer, but yeah, I, this is what is really interesting to me. How do you know what you're seeing and hearing is authentic? I know after all these years, you're listening, you're gut and you've got, yeah, a radar. But were you ever worried that what you were getting from that kid in that family wasn't, maybe, wasn't authentic? Was a bill of sales versus, being authentic. Yeah. O obviously off being authentic is important. And I think sometimes, I don't know, the more you do it, the more you get a feel on what people are like. I think if there's one thing that, that I think I was good at was understanding people.'cause I always wanted to surround myself with great people. And so you, you could can, you could, most of the time you could pick out the fakes, most of the time I could pick out the parent and the kid that had the visit scripted. Versus it just coming from the heart. This is what we're gonna talk about, this how we're gonna act. Yeah. I don't know. It's just, it's a feel that you get when you walk in and it was either, you know what. This is a really wholesome family that, number one has enjoyed watching her kids grow. Yeah. Is there to support the kid and not live their life through the kid. I think that's one of the things I looked at, is this a frustrated dad that, that maybe didn't make it to college, that is gonna live their life through their kid. Or is this a dad that's just really happy about their kid having the skills to be able to compete at the division one level and is looking forward to watching them play? That's right. Not coaching them, but watching them. Yes. Because that's the other thing I look at is can do, I have a kid here that the dad's gonna try to coach from the stands'cause that ain't gonna work. Do they have enough confidence in me that I can help their kid grow and get better? Right without them. Those little things are pretty important. There's something about a parent who you can just tell. They're grateful that someone appreciates their child the way they see them. The good qualities not just'cause they can swing a bat or throw a ball. But they see the teamwork, they see the character, they see the love of the teammates. There there's really, there's something special about that when you're talking with a parent and they're just grateful that you see their kid as a respectful kid. Absolutely. I always told the parents, I said, I can't guarantee your kid's gonna win a national championship, but I will guarantee that I will treat them like my daughter. And so family is a big part for me. Does this kid, is this a kid that I want my family? Yeah. Is this a kid that I would bring home and let them babysit my kids? Yeah. Is this a kid that I want to be at their wedding when they graduate? You know what I mean? We want high character kids. We want, and I wouldn't even be there if they didn't have the skills. That's right. So the skills are irrelevant if we're talking to you, we already know you can play. Absolutely. I just wanna know if you can fit into this culture and you can make our culture better. That's right. Because I always say there's four types of kids. There's kids that add to your culture, kids that subtract from your culture. Kids that divide your culture. Yeah. And then kids that multiply your culture. That's right. Kids that make other people better. Absolutely. And when you're at your level and you've had your success, I think families need to understand when a coach that's been winning is coming into your house or is calling you, calling your kid, they, they value the culture. They have so much. They don't, they're not gonna take any chances. You're gonna walk away from a red flag that you think is more than a red flag. I always say, people are your greatest assets. Yeah. And people are your greatest liability. Isn't that the truth? You get the wrong person, it becomes a liability and it can ruin you. So to me, it was about high character kids. It was about kids that were high energy, high output. And the third thing was low drama. That's right. I didn't wanna deal with drama. It's part three Cs. Yep. How much do your, the coaches that U of A use you as a resource today? Caitlyn is a kid that co that I coach, so I understand, but is she is she worried about that? Is, no, I handpicked her to take over the program, so she knows that I have a tremendous amount of confidence in her, so I have done the opposite. I've backed away from, I'm their support administrator. But I'm I don't want them to feel like I'm looking over their shoulder and I'm there for them if they need me. So I'm, there's been many times that, especially in recruiting, that they will want me to come and visit the, with the parents Of course. Which I think is a, which is great. Yes. We talk a lot. I have weekly meetings with them, but it's. I want to be the guy in the background that's supporting and helping these coaches be successful. And if, do we talk a lot about X's and O's? No. No. They're in a different world right now with the analytics. Yeah. Truthfully, it's amazing what they, it's wild. It's very wild. It's wild. The detail that they have Absolutely. For every pitch, for every inning, for every player on their team and the other team. Yeah. It's so much to absorb. You almost need two assistant coaches that's all their job is. Yeah. I told'em I'm not smart enough to coach at this stage right now with what you guys are using. You have a lot of tools, but at the end of the day, it's still about a gut feeling. Yeah. In the game. You have to understand that, that you can take all this information, but at the end of the day, when you make a decision it's gotta be what you feel is the best because that's how I coach I, I coached on my gut feeling. And I think even in major league baseball, there's people that are being challenged right now because either they're making decisions based completely on the analytics. Yeah. Or are they using the human approach to say, this is what I feel in this moment. Yeah. Pretty evident in this slash World series too. Yeah, absolutely. You could see the gut and where the analytics were at play. Yep. What, when Dave got outta that group, those last, forget about the$300 million payroll, what he did in those last four innings. Yep. Pretty remarkable with the response. Remarkable. Lot of luck there. But yeah. Yeah. I would say they were pretty damn lucky. And Toronto had numerous opportunities to win that thing. Sure. What was that? A half an inch, a half a millimeter at the plate. Exactly. Oh, that's a game. It's a game of inches. But I asked you about Caitlyn and the staff there.'cause I'm wondering'cause so much of your career recruiting was relational and very little transactional I would imagine. Now I'm guessing it's a lot more 50 50 than it used to be. How are they dealing with that? That's a good question. Good question for them. I think I think they're still trying to it's all about finding needs. Yeah. And then it's all about can I find my needs by signing a high school kid, or do I save the money and wait for the portal? See that's the difference is I never had the portal to, to fall back on. And I think the people that are successful right now are using a combination of the two. And so it, it is a little different. The whole approach is completely different. Mine was about building relationships. I'd start watching a kid when they were in seventh, eighth grade, ninth grade, 10th grade, and I remember the days when we used to. Colorado tournament would end and there would be a line full of coaches waiting to talk to this kid. That was the first opportunity you had. Yeah. Now it's completely different. I think I was at NCSA. And I think you called, I don't know who you were talking to, you called into one of our college softball coaches, and I think you were the one that said, I can't believe I'm doing this. Yeah. But we're looking I'm looking at sixth and seventh graders. Oh, god. That was frightening. Wasn't that you? That was frightening. Yeah, that was frightening. Yeah. I'll never forget, man, they would call my house to talk and I'm going, what in the hell am I gonna talk about, man? I don't even know what they're 13 years old. Yeah, exactly. And I think we made a lot of mistakes back then too, because when you're dealing with a female athlete, they change, I remember recruiting some kids getting early verbals from a kid when they were like in eighth grade. Fast kid slapper, and then all of a sudden now they start growing and next thing they can't run. That's right. You right. So I had to go through that spurt of decommit some kids, because they just weren't prepared to play at this level. Because they, yeah, they never got any better. Are there some mistakes that you made early on that really shaped. Who you were as a coach, that you're like I've got to be smarter about how I build this culture. And it's, even the parents. Are there things that you made that you look back down I made a thousand mistakes, I wish I would've done that differently. Yeah, no I think any coach that's coaching is going to make mistakes and it's a matter of whether you learn from'em and you adjust from'em and to me I always felt like this was a game of adjustments. And so yeah, there there's numerous times that I put all my money in a bag saying, this kid is gonna be great. And they weren't. And then I realized that there were kids that were late bloomers that, that, how coachable are they? I think that's the big question. Yeah. If a kid's coachable then the sky could be the limit. But if they're just talented. You're not coachable, then what is what you get. Yeah. And yeah I've made lots of mistakes in that regard, but I knew the character piece probably better than anything because that's the one thing I didn't want to disturb my program was a poor character. And I had made some mistakes there too. I used to recruit to the most talented kid. Yeah. So if you looked at my pyramid when I first started coaching, it was high skill. I'm gonna go out to the best softball player out there and hope they have all the intangibles. And as I got older, it flipped. The first thing I looked for was character. Yeah. It's so hard. I went through that phase where I was like, gosh. I almost convinced my kid that I convinced myself that the character was better than it was. Yeah. Because I wanted the talent so much. It's I don't think kids understand this. We go through that. We, gosh, I love the way you throw the ball. I love the way you play third base. I love your footwork. But then I meet you and I'm like, oh, I didn't like that. I watched you with your teammates. I didn't like that, but man, can you hit right? And then I think through your career, you start raising the bar a little bit to say, you know what what I thought was a great player coming outta junior college, I needed to get my eyes adjusted to see what a great player is gonna look like to win a national championship. That's right. It's a big difference. And so the more you get into that championship arena, the more you can, Yeah. What it looks like. Yeah. And I think that's a big part of it is you know, you have to know what it looks like. Yeah. We talk to our kids about work ethic, what a lot of kids don't know what work ethic looks like, but if you can give them examples of done, this is what work ethic looks like, then they start to developing that. That mindset of that, consistency. Grit. Can you, grit is a huge part of that grit. Knowing that can you win today with an 80 20 high school transfer model where you're gonna say, I'm gonna bring high school kids in. We're going to keep developing, and then we're gonna bring in a kid. One or two every year to help fill some of the gaps. Can you win like that anymore? I don't know. I think it's I think it's more challenging right now because there's, because of the acceptance of transfer if that makes sense to you. I think back in my day, the transfers were only transferring for a particular reason and they had to sit out. Was there a red flag with a transfer in your eyes that they were, maybe they were unhappy. They weren't part of the problem, right? Yeah. They weren't fitting into the culture. There was times when I would encourage a kid to transfer that they, I don't see a future here for you. Yeah. Today. I think it's shocking sometimes when the portal opens up and you lose some kids that you feel like you poured your blood, sweat, and tears into. Yeah. And they were successful. Yeah. So there's some things you, I don't think you, you could control everything today as much as I knew what was on my plate. Yeah. I don't think a coach today knows exactly what everything that's on their plate. It's like you said, outside influences. It's like you said in the first segment, once you went from junior college, four year, you fell in love with the four year model because you got to be, you got to build that relationship. You know there's nothing better when you've coached a kid for four years. Oh, and you're part of that senior night and you get to see them graduate and you know you're hugging mom and dad'cause you know them so well. It's just a different world now it's back to that junior college mentality. If I get you for two, three years we've done something good. And it's become acceptable. Yeah. That's the difference. It is, and I have I'm still struggling with it. I have to learn to accept it. I used to say. In my days, I used to say a kid's transferring. That means that there's something wrong, right? There's a reason why they're transferring. It's gotta be hard to accept as a coach when they're I stayed away from, I stayed away from transfers, right? I really knew the background on the kid, but today. It is like a shopping spree. Yes. Here's my needs. I gotta go look for something in the transfer portal, and the only thing that scares me is are, do you have enough time to do the homework that you need to find out about the person? Coach, I appreciate you so much. Yeah, absolutely. I'm so thankful. Can we finish this segment with a piece of advice to those kids that wanna play college softball out there, or any sport? Yeah. What would you tell them about their journey if they're 16 years old and wanna play at the next level? Y I think the biggest thing for me is to, to try to develop a passion for what you're doing and if you have the passion and you work hard and you understand that it's not a perfect game, okay? You're, you don't have to be perfect to be good, right? You just have to put in the work. You have to make sure that you have to dedicate your, the time and the effort to perfect your skills, to perfect your mindset, and then at the end of the day, to be the greatest teammate that you can be. And if you can do that, then I think you can be successful. But you, it's, you gotta understand that it's hard. If anyone tells you it's not hard, they're crazy. It is hard to play at this level. So make sure you learn how to do hard better than others, right? Yep. Make sure you understand that there's gonna be challenges, there's gonna be roadblocks, but you know what? You can get through'em. And you just need, you need to believe in yourself. You need to work hard, you need to work smart. You need to you need to stay positive. I think at the end of the day, man, if you can fail forward and stay positive, then who knows what can happen. And at the end of the day, control the controllable. Yeah. You know what, can you control your attitude, your effort, your focus? I always tell kids, if you can control your attitude, your effort, and your focus every day. And get 1% better. That's all I can ask. And your kids bought into that? Yep. Nobody else. Same advice for parents who've got a 16-year-old going through this. What would you tell them? I'd tell, I, I would tell parents, number one is forget about wins and losses until your kid gets old enough to understand that. So early on, try to develop their skills, develop their appreciation for the game, develop their passion, and have fun. At the end of the day, they better have fun doing what they're doing. That's right. Because if they don't have fun, they're not gonna do it. So you gotta make it fun. You gotta make it real. But at the end of the day it's about development, it's about the process. And don't be surprised if your kid walks up to you one day and goes, dad, I'm done. I've had enough of this. I had that happen with my daughter. She got eighth grade, said I've had enough. What, whatever you do, just, you support them, guide them and stay positive. And the other thing I'll say about parents. When you go watch their game, be a spectator, and when they get in the car, be kind to them. Enjoy the moment, okay? Because it goes very quickly. I'll tell you what it seemed like yesterday when I first started coaching, and it's over. Yeah. It happens very quickly. So enjoy it and make sure your conversations are built around the wellbeing of your daughter and not what she didn't do in the game. Yeah. Be very kind to them about that because that will keep them from wanting to play the game. And so just have fun. Yeah. Celebrate the small victories. From a parent perspective, how much weight do you put into the fun part compared to the work ethic and understanding that time needs to go into this? If you wanna start, you want, yeah. You want what's comes from that glory. Where does that weight for you begin and end? I think when fun, I don't mean. I guess my definition of fun at that is that I'm enjoying the process. Exactly. I'm enjoying what I'm doing. I look forward to going to practice. That's right. There you go. I look forward to going to practice. I look forward to going to games, and I don't feel like I'm, I have to do something. I never played a day in my life where I felt like my parents told me that I had to go out and do it. Yeah. And I didn't do it for my parents. My parents didn't watch me play all the time. It was because I love the game. Yeah, me too. I love the Batten Ball game. And so the more you can get kids to follow their passion, the easier that process is gonna be. I don't love running polls. But I love doing it with my team. I love, yeah, I love the challenge of doing it, maybe being in the lead of those when we're running poles, yeah, absolutely. I think that's where my point came from. I think we talk about, we put too much weight into what fun is. Yes. Talk to any great coach, any great athlete, any great artist, any great musician, and they'll talk to you about the grind and the failure and the pain. To do what they loved and because they wanted to be great at it. Absolutely. And I think there's a point as a parent where we have to accept our kid just doesn't have that love of the game that we want him to have. And that's okay sometimes. Yep. And sometimes this game is a game of monotonous repetition. Yes. Of fundamental skills. You have to build your foundation. The foundation in our game that we play is fundamentals. That's, it's being able to play catch, yeah. If you can't play catch, you can't play this game. That's right. So it can't always be, that's got, somehow they've gotta look forward to doing that. Yeah. They've gotta look forward to accepting the challenge and meeting the challenge. And yeah, we're not talking about giggling and smiling and laughing. That's not what I'm talking about when I'm talking about fun. Yeah. I'm talking about embracing the process. I knew what you were talking about, but I know there's a couple hundred parents out there listening that didn't, and I felt like we just needed to define that, right? Because I, I think it's so important to get there and understand that completely. Coach, I know you talked about it goes so fast, and I know you're not in that uniform on the sideline anymore. But I'm so thankful to what you've given. Us coaches in the world of sports. I'm so thankful that you have so much more to give. And it is just, it's an honor to talk to you and I'm thankful that I got the chance. I appreciate that. Yes. And I still look forward to having my foot in the door and being able to share information. That's, please do Everything that I have, I've stolen from someone else because I was a student of the game. So just be a student of the game. And this game's in a great place right now. I can't wait for the Olympic team to get back and bring back that gold medal that that we want so badly. So yeah, the college game is at it at its highest. We've got some pro softball going on. Yeah, athletes unlimited, doing great. So yeah, the future's bright. So if I'm a young kid I'm pretty excited about my opportunities. Thank you for everything, coach. You bet. Take care. That's a wrap on today's episode. What an incredible opportunity to learn from one of the greatest to ever evaluate talent and build championship rosters. Coach cadre's, humility, and decades of experience remind us that great recruiting isn't just about finding players, it's about finding people who fit your culture and your standards and your vision, and. Kids, you just want to be around. If today's conversation helped you, you can find even more tools to support your journey@coachmattrogers.com, including my book, significant Recruiting and the brand new softball recruits journal created to help athletes stay focused, stay organized, and confident throughout the recruiting process. Thank you for listening, and thank you for investing in your growth as a recruit, a parent, or a coach. Until next time, stay focused on what you can control. Stay humble and keep chasing significance.