Significant Coaching with Matt Rogers
š Leadership. Coaching. The Work That Actually Matters.
Significant Coaching with Matt Rogers is a weekly podcast focused on the craft of coaching, the responsibility of leadership, and the decisions that shape programs, people, and cultures in sport.
Hosted by former Head College Coach and Athletic Director, Matt Rogersāwho has led multiple teams to the NCAA National Tournament and helped over 4,000 student-athletes achieve their dream of playing their sport in collegeāthe show features honest conversations with coaches, athletic leaders, and professionals building teams and coaching individuals the right way.
Matt is a national motivational speaker and also consults with small colleges across the country, creating significant recruiting, retention, and growth strategies for athletic departments navigating a rapidly changing landscape. He is also the author of Significant Recruiting: The Playbook for Prospective College Athletes and the companion Recruitās Journal Series for baseball, basketball, soccer, softball, and volleyball.
This isnāt a highlight reel or a hot-take show -- Itās a behind-the-scenes look at how championship programs are builtāand how strong, confident, and healthy athletes become strong, confident adults.
Every week:
- Fridays ā Coaching & Leadership Episodes
Program building, culture, staff development, and leading under pressure. - Mondays ā Recruiting Episodes
Clear, practical conversations about todayās college recruiting process for athletes, families, and coaches.
š„ You can now watch the video version of every episode on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@CoachMattRogers
š Learn more at coachmattrogers.com
š New episodes every Monday and Friday
Significant Coaching with Matt Rogers
Episode #157: Traci Murphy on Recruiting
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In Part II of my conversation with Traci Murphy, Vice President for Athletics at NCAA Division II Daemen University, we dive deep into the college recruiting process and how athletic departments evaluate prospective student-athletes.
Understanding the college recruiting process can be difficult for families navigating it for the first time. Parents and athletes often focus on scholarships, playing time, and offers, but the recruiting process is much more complex than that. Athletic directors and coaches are evaluating character, academic preparation, leadership ability, and how a recruit fits within the culture of a program.
Traci Murphy brings a unique perspective to this discussion because she has worked in nearly every corner of college athletics. Her career includes experience in athletic training, compliance, student-athlete support services, and athletics administration, and she now serves as the President of the Division II Athletic Directors Association (D2 ADA) within NACDA.
Because of that experience, Traci understands the college recruiting process from the perspective of both coaches and administrators. In this conversation we discuss how athletic departments define championship culture, how coaches identify the right recruits for their programs, and what families should be observing during campus visits.
We also discuss several questions parents and student-athletes should ask during the recruiting process, including how to evaluate team culture, academic support systems, and the overall student-athlete experience.
If you are a high school athlete, parent, coach, or athletic administrator, this conversation will give you a clearer understanding of how the college recruiting process actually works inside an athletic department.
š§ Listen to more episodes of the Significant Coaching Podcast
https://coachmattrogers.com/podcast
š Explore recruiting resources, books, and journals
https://coachmattrogers.com
š¤ Schools and organizations can schedule Matt Rogers to speak about navigating the college recruiting process
š To Schedule Matt Rogers to speak at your school or organization, you can schedule a discovery Zoom session here: https://calendly.com/mrogers_significantcoaching/speaking-inquiry-w-matt-rogers
š Books & Recruitās Journals by Matt Rogers
Significant Recruiting: The Playbook for Prospective College Athletes
š https://amzn.to/3NbWP9S
Recruitās Journal Series (Sport-Specific Editions):
ā½ Soccer Recruitās Journal
š https://amzn.to/3M4PFDX
š Volleyball Recruitās Journal
š https://amzn.to/4qMLr2S
š Basketball Recruitās Journal
š https://amzn.to/4bxljEJ
ā¾ Baseball Recruitās Journal
š https://amzn.to/3ZGbCMQ
š„ Softball Recruitās Journal
š https://amzn.to/4qd4PFp
š All resources also available at coachmattrogers.com
Listen on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeartRadio, and all your favorite podcast platforms.
Did you like what you heard and want more?
New Podcasts every week. Remember to subscribe and follow wherever you get y...
On the latest edition of The Significant Coaching Podcast, a recruiting presentation of the coach, Matt Rogers YouTube channel. Available audio only everywhere you get your favorite podcast. I'm your host, Matt Rogers. Before we get into today's conversation, I wanted to share a quick story. And introduce a new segment we're adding to the podcast this week. The significant question of the week. I'm presently working with a great student athlete who, when we started his recruiting journey, was dealing with injuries to the point where he wasn't even sure playing in college was gonna be possible. He dedicated himself to his rehab, his training, and doing everything the right way to get healthy, enough to play his dedication and resilience paid off. And this past fall, he became an all-conference performer as a senior. Because of that work and the work we did reaching out to the right schools for him, he ended up with eight offers from outstanding schools across the country. This week, he's making the decision about where he will spend the next four years, and it has been incredibly difficult for him and his mom because their hearts are torn between three schools that all feel like great fits in three completely different ways. So as we introduce this new segment of the podcast, I want parents high school coaches and recruits to consider this week's significant question of the week. If you remove the sport from your recruiting decision, would you still want to attend that school? Because coaches can change, teammates can change. Sport careers can end sooner than any of us ever expect. But the school, the people, and the environment you will choose will shape the next four years of your life. Put your thoughts in the comments and let me know what you think. Now, today's guest is Tracy Murphy, the Vice President of Athletics at NCAA Division two, Damon University, and the president of the Division Two Athletic Directors Association, which is a part of nta, the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. What makes Tracy's voice so valuable in this conversation is that she has seen college athletics from almost every angle. She has worked as an athletic trainer. She's worked in compliance, student athlete support, and now as a division two athletic director and national leader helping shape the future of athletics after a thoughtful and very enjoyable conversation about coaching and leadership at the NCAA division two level. In part one, Tracy and I dove into the world of college recruiting in today's conversation, part two, because of her background across so many areas of college athletics, Tracy brings a level of knowledge and expertise about recruiting that you simply don't hear very often. She's direct, she's honest, and she doesn't sugarcoat her advice for parents and teenagers navigating this journey, listening to her about recruiting actually made me pause and ask myself an important question. Am I being direct and honest enough when I talk to parents and prospective college athletes about this journey? In this conversation, we talk about what championship culture really means inside a college athletic department, how families should evaluate that culture during the recruiting process, and why the right questions can tell you far more than the sales pitch ever will. If you're a recruit, a parent, or a coach helping families through this journey. This is a conversation worth hearing. Let's get into it. Here's part two of my conversation with Tracy Murphy. We're back with the fabulous Tracy Murphy athletic director, vice president. Thank you for your president for that. You are on the cabinet at Damon University. You're also the Division two a DA President of nta, the National Athletic Directors, collegiate Athletic Directors. And we had a great conversation about your world in part one. I wanna get into recruiting part two. Okay. I know you were an athletic trainer, and I know mm-hmm. You've done just about, everything including the kitchen sink and athletics, but you haven't had to necessarily recruit for your team. So I'm interested in how you evaluate your team's from that 30,000 foot mark and how a coach is recruiting. Not just the talent, but the character they decide to bring in. Mm-hmm. How they create that melting pot in their program. Mm-hmm. And I'm intrigued by kind of the nuggets you give them and advice and observation and how that affects your expectations of them. Truth be told, in today's age, we know we're recruiting every day. Whether we realize it or not, because retention is so important, especially in higher ed because of the cliff, and then just because, you know, of the dreaded transfer portal. Right. But I will say from a recruiting standpoint you know, when I get together with our coaches and our staff, we talk about the expectations of our department. I have been blessed with the opportunity that when, within the year that I got here, we were in, it was due for another strategic plan. So collectively with the staff at the time, we developed a strategic plan, and I included everybody. So in that, we had to develop six pillars. And in that we outlined with coaches what those, what are the details within those pillars. And one of them is creating a championship culture in terms of the people and your and your academic time. And just champions in everything and life, right? So because of the fact that I was able to do the strategic plan with everyone, it was very clear to everyone what the expectations were for our division. So it, it's more of a, everybody knows what we're looking for. We know we have, we defined what a student athlete for Damon looks like. Now each coach discerns that per sport, but we know what that athlete is. It's good character. It is strong academic foundation. It is athletic ability. Now, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that they are, were the studs. My coaches don't just look for the best of the best. They also look for the diamonds in the rough because you know, as a former coach that. Most of these kids that are coming into school haven't even matured all the way physically yet, right? They're not even into their full bodies. They don't even have their muscle weight, especially at the guys, their muscle weight isn't even there yet. They're not defined. Their strength isn't even there. So what, where do they think they can develop? They know their strengths as coaches. They know if they're very good at developing whatever and so they, I trust them. To meet the expectations of what a student at Damon is like and what the expectation is. With that comes, then they need to decide, they've already defined the culture of their program, so they need to make sure that they're doing their homework on the culture aspects right? And then they need to look at make sure, of course the first thing they'll always look at is the academic piece because of NCAA eligibility. So those are kind of the things that I am kind of. Expecting from them in terms of their recruitment looking for those things. And they helped design it. So it's not like I'm asking for something like they all have to be left-handed or something like that. It's not like I'm asking, it's not like we design something that's bizarre right now. You asked about evaluating. Now funny you say that because I did something in my opinion, kind of unique. I took our strategic plan and I turned it into a six tab spreadsheet. Okay, and every year it's broken down into the different. Action items within each pillar. So each tab is a pillar, and then there's action items and in the action items. So it says, you know, Hey how many freshmen did you say you were gonna bring in? You said you brought in seven. How many did you actually bring in? You only brought in six. Okay. But did you bring any transfers or grad students in? Okay. You did. All right. So you said seven, you brought in seven, you brought in nine. Hey, overachiever, love you. Okay. That type of stuff. And we do this at the end of every year. The sports supervisors sit down after they have completed this spreadsheet and we look at retention rate, graduation rate, who they said they were recruit, who they brought in here, did they have any do we have any documentation from behavioral issues? Do we have anything that came from student affairs? Do we have any issues financially? Do we have any. Did I, did any of us witness anything or did they get in lots of, would they always get technicals during the games? Like how many red cards did they get? I mean, all these things are in front of us and I did that'cause I wanted them to see it. Yep. And I'm not. And I'm not. And in there, there is a page where you put your wins and losses. You put non-conference, regular season. But that's not what I'm paying. I'm not staring at that. I'm looking at You brought seven kids in. The seven kids were happy. Nobody went into the transfer portal. Yep. You had great season. You had less red cards. Whatever it, I look at it all, it's because that's. It's a holistic, it's a holistic opportunity that we're providing here. It's everything. It's not just black and white X's and o's. It's all of it. It's are they on time for their athletic training appointments? Did they go to the team doctor, like they said they were going to, are they showing up for physical therapy? All those things matter. And that's what we all said we were looking for, and that's what we all said that we wanted. Because if we have a well-rounded student athlete, we can do a lot of things with them. Lot. It must make your job, it must make your job searches your vacancy opening so much easier when you have that, when you have a rubric like that and you kind of you're not always gonna get that person that fits all those check marks, but to know this is what we're looking for. Yeah, the character can be whatever it may be. We wanna be surprised, but. We want somebody that can talk about these things at a higher level, right? Yes. Yes. They've thought about it, they've put effort into it. Yes. Right? Yes. Yes. And the coaches are developing,'cause I have some that are newer than others and they're developing habits and routines so that. It's getting easier for them to spot the right kid at the right time. Yeah. And it take it, you don't learn that in the first three, four years. No. Gosh, no. Takes time to understand that. Yeah. And you gotta do your homework. And I, I mean, what I think one of the things that I should probably add down the line is I should ask everybody to tell me, in June, what their June one, how many people are in their contacts? Not who they are, but just how many people in their contacts? And then by May 31st, what's the number? Once we hang up, I've got a rubric to show you that I'm building. I'm building a brand new athletic department for a college in Oregon. They've never had athletics and I, okay. It's just, it's making me feel so good.'cause everything you're talking about we're literally building it for the ad. Yeah. Because she's never been in AD before and she's so lost and wants to work so hard and do things right. So I've literally building her rubrics so she can. Well, that makes sense. Yeah. I do need to be asking the coaches about that. Yes, I do need to understand their plan for this and what their executive function skill looks like. Yes, yes yes. And I do let them organize and administrate their programs, but. When they hit a road bump, they have to share, they have to share the road bump. Okay. And they have to talk us through what they did. That's right. And make sure that their plan is good. Like I make them, in most cases, they can wait 24 hours. So especially the newer coaches, I say, listen, you know what? Hear it. Call your sports supervisor. Go have a conversation, dwell or sleep on it. Come in the morning. A lot of them can figure it out if they just sleep on it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. But what the, one of the things that I absolutely love and I think the working on the strategic plan and just who I am and how I promote our division and how I talk with everybody and how I see us as a collaborative unit. My team, doesn't matter who, but my team, when they walk in, any of our senior admin's offices, they don't come in just to dump the mis the I issue. They come in with, here's the problem, I have some suggestions. What do you think I should do? So they're coming in ready to problem solve with potential solutions. I love that. I mean, I think. I'm able to do so many other things because I'm not necessarily putting out fires every day because other people are thinking for themselves. I'm impressed. I love it. Yeah. I give them the autonomy to do so now they have to talk to us to make sure that we're following university policies and division policies and stuff. But empower them. They're your coaches. They're running this organization of that team. Yeah. Empower them. We, I talked about this with another ad yesterday. If I have to be your boss and your mom, we've got a problem now that I'm your boss. But if I have to act like it, yeah. That's where the problem comes. Yeah. I have my own two kids and I am Yeah, I do too. Yeah. And my own issues. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Let's call and we talk about work and we talk about work life balance, right? This is part of it. You've gotta be able to, somebody else has gotta be able to problem solve. It can't just be all on you. Now, granted. The athletic director's responsibility is that oversight, you know, from the 30,000 feet up. And we, our net is extremely, it's cast very, very far. Yeah. But I do trust my coaches and my staff to work through the problem and then they'll double check with me before it goes through to make sure that they're doing the right thing. And yeah, go for it. That's why I'm a consultant and a podcast host because I was terrible at that 15 years old. That life work balance thing. I'm a parent. And let's assume there's parents. Listen to this because I know I have hundreds and hundreds of parents that listen to this, that are high, have high school kids. They hear the phrase championship culture, and that's what you're trying to build. Mm-hmm. Every one of those parents is gonna have a different perspective on what that means and how their child mm-hmm. Fits into that. Mm-hmm. How do you define that with your coaches? Because we, it's real easy for us. Athletic experience, traders experience. What's that? Experience. Experience, the experience that they're having. Okay. Is it first class, top-notch? Are they getting the development on the court, for example, in their sport? Are they enjoying the team culture? Are they getting the support services they need to be successful in the classroom? Do they have the support from the coach when there's conflicts with exams? Study groups, et cetera. Are they getting the care of their health and safety covered by nutritionist, mental performance coach and athletic trainer? It's everything. It is not just winning games, it is not, this is a life. This is life. This is their first life experience with guardrails. Said. Now here's where I want you to take this, because that's mm-hmm. Your philosophy as an athletic director. Mm-hmm. Your job as the leader of your division is to make sure your coaches and your kids can be the best versions of themselves. It's your job to create that foundation. Mm-hmm. We, they don't have to worry about why isn't the bus here? Why don't, we've got an ankle injury and we don't have an athletic trainer. Mm-hmm. We're in the middle of a basketball game and we don't have any water. You, those types. Mm-hmm. Your job is to make sure those thoughts don't have to be had that they can coach. Right. They can play, they can be teammates. Yes. They can be healthy, they can be happy. Mm-hmm. Now, let's look at that from a recruiting standpoint. Okay. Because I bring in the wrong kid and that's affecting the culture that we're building. And it's affecting everybody's job. It's affecting everybody's world. Mm-hmm. If I'm a parent, how does my child fit into the Damon Championship culture and how do I know my child doesn't fit that culture? That's where all those questions come into play. That's why all of those questions are important. I, it's it's so commonplace for me. It's hard for me to put words. I know, I know. I mean, I mean, it's hard for me to identify exactly what to tell a parent, but to ask the questions. And that's, and I'm asking'cause that's not trouble. I mean ask questions. Ask questions. And I know this is gonna sound weird and I don't think it's I mean, I did compliance for a while. I don't think this is a rule, but you know it when you're invited to go to a game. Go with your young person. Yeah. And find where the parents are sitting. Find where the parents are sitting. Listen, you don't necessarily have to engage with them, but listen if they're I hate to say this, but if they're Yay, yay. And about their coach, or. They're grumpy or ask them. Say, Hey, is your son or daughter on the team? Oh, great. How do they like it here? Sure. Ask them. Observe. Watch how your young person interacts with the coach. Watch how your young person does. Pick up with the team. Watch, watch. Stream a game. Watch how they play and see. Try to figure out where your son or daughter maybe fits in that list. Remember what the coach said about their role and responsibility. Talk to your son or daughter and make sure they understand what the coach meant by role and responsibility. You know and then when you're on campus, have your son or daughter attend a class, ask them to audit a class. Either go with the student athlete to a class or audit, something that's in the major that they're interested in, see if that person feels like that professor's gonna relate to them and vice versa. I know that's not what anybody's thinking about'cause all they're thinking about is winning and being part of a team and the championships and all that. And playing time. Yeah. But again. You're gonna leave there in four or five years with four years or five years of eligibility, and you're gonna leave there with a degree. Yeah. And so it, it all does, in my opinion. It all does. It all is part of it. And then the parents, again, the parents need to ask all kinds of questions to the coach. If I have a problem or I have a question, will you take my phone call? Parent needs to ask that on the front end. Agree. And I'm hoping that the coach says no. I'm hoping the coach says, no, your son or daughter can come to my office and we can call you together. Yeah. Okay. I am hoping that's what they say. Yeah. The, okay, what if my son or daughter gets injured? What do we do? And ask the coach that don't just go to the training room and ask the head athletic trainer. Ask the coach. Because what you want to hear is the support that the coach is going to give and the direction the coach is going to give if you send them to. To, if you have an injury and how you go to the training room Hey I'm gonna come catch you at an away game. Am I gonna be allowed to eat with my son or daughter or am I gonna be able to hang out at the same hotel? What am I know these are tiny little things and they're not something that you think of when you're talking about recruiting, but all the information from all these little things matter because you need to hear about. Mood and vibe and expectation. Coaches you get an expectation from the co The coach tells the parent, no, I won't take a call. Yes, you can call me, but I won't talk to you about certain things that needs, that tells you that, that coach is, it's important for that coach to, for your son or daughter to grow up. Be mature and handle their own situations. And you need to expect that coach to help your son or daughter do that. Yeah, exactly. And it I'm sure you've heard a lot of the same things over and over again, and I'm probably trying to find things that are a little different because. I just think we're at a time now where things do need to be a little bit different. You do need to ask a lot of questions. You should be asking how many kids transferred out last year? You should be asking how many people are you bringing in this year? Don't ask about playing time. Don't ask about that. Ask about how many kids are, how many kids are you anticipating to transfer? How many kids are you graduating? Those are good questions to ask. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm curious, Tracy. You go down the hallway with your coaches? Mm-hmm. How many of them can answer those questions the way you would expect them to? And how many of them? All of them. Is that because of the conversations you're having in staff meetings and individuals, or is that because you know what you're hiring both. The coaching is never ends the conversation. No. Of who we are. No. What championship culture means. How we get there. Yeah. Who we bring into that culture never ends. Yep. Yeah. No, I mean, yes, I talked about the strategic plan. That's why I made our end of the year evaluations. A model image of the strategic plan because it's always being reinforced. We reinforce it during staff meetings, which are once a month. We reinforce it at the end of the year. When you do your evaluations, we talk about it at our kickoff. Yeah, we talk about it at our end of the year. At the end of the year meeting. When we're offsite and we're hanging out and we do something fun. It's all connected. This is something that we have to weave throughout our division the whole time because otherwise it's it's harder for the coaches to. We all have to believe this. I mean, all boats, we all have to row in the same direction, right? And if I don't, if we're not all on the same page I'll tell you one thing. When you have a coach that isn't in sync like that, it's real obvious. It's really obvious. It hurts. It hurts, and it is very painful. It is hurts because it's not a bandaid that you can rip off. Yeah, it, no, it's not. And listen, and I'm also I wouldn't, I don't know, I'm, I also try to rehab, I mean, that's the old train. I try to rehab people. So like, if I can't get necessarily somebody to if they're off a little bit or they're focusing too much on one thing and then I don't know if on another I have to redirect. And we do that. And we'll evaluate it and we'll redirect and I have some that. Like I said, I wanna teach them grace, and they're very hard. I have some that are very hard on themselves and I'm trying to tell them I'm not, please, I'm not, I can talk to Lumbo in the face and they still, it doesn't matter. I mean, yeah. It's, I, it's, yes they can all do this. And it's not just because of the strategic plans, because we talk about it all the time. We all do. I mean, and that's we're a family and we're all in this together. And it sounds like, and it's. I'm very proud of what we have done here and in my tenure, and I am very, I am one of the luckiest people to have the coaches that I have. I'm telling you I am so lucky. I, I can't they love what they do. They wanna do what they do. They love every part of their job. And they don't take it for granted. No, they, and no, they do not. And it just they make it worth, besides my student athletes are I love my student athletes. That's probably the point. But speaking of my coaches and even my senior staff. That it makes it worthwhile to come to work every day and every conversation I have on campus or off campus, it is so easy to advocate for them. It's not for me. I'm advocating for them. That's right. And I'm advocating for Damon and I, I love it. I don't know how much longer I'll, I mean, I don't know how much longer I'll be here. You, your voice becomes, yeah. Kind of drowns out after a while because, but I am, I'm very fortunate you don't want to hear this, but it's the sign of great leadership when you it's, yeah. No, I wouldn't expect I know I'm uncomfortable. I've been in, I've been in places where I didn't feel that. I didn't feel like we were all rowing the boat the same direction. And there were times where we didn't know what that direction was. Mm-hmm. I just spent a year as a high school coach a couple years ago. We never had a staff meeting. I still can't tell you who the other head coaches are on that staff. Oh my gosh. The only ones that I met, the ones that came through my gym during practices. And introduce themselves. I have no idea. And a lot of, and we shared kids, we shared athletes, but we never had a staff meeting. We never shared ideas, we never shared worries or concerns. And this was at the high school level, and it was part-time job. I show up at three coach, but still, but that's how I felt. I show up, I do my job and I leave. This isn't a culture, this isn't a family. I'll tell you this, I've got a friend who's a D two basketball coach down the road here. And I went to his practice a couple weeks ago and I sat in a chair they were already in practice, and I just sat in a chair over on the sidelines, and throughout the next 20 minutes, I never saw the coach point at me. I never saw the coach acknowledge the boys one by one. Mm-hmm. They would come over and shake my hand and ask me my name, tell me who they were, where they were from. Mm-hmm. And they were polite and they were kind and they were curious. Mm-hmm. And I was just like, Jeff, I've known you for 10 years and I'm so thankful that you're still doing this. You know? Yeah. I have. Well, that's, I'm telling you, I have, because if they're doing that for me, every recruit and parent that comes in, yes. Those kids are doing the exact same thing. I have that in one shape or form. I have that. I have. I'm just, I can't get over how I am. Very, very lucky you are, you know, and they're lucky to have you. Well, I appreciate that. Give a piece of advice for a young coach out there that wants to be a college coach. Try, just keep trying talk. You know what, networking is really important and I guess that's really what I want them to understand. Networking and observing and watching and getting and talking to a very, a variety of people, good and bad will make you better. Yeah. I mean, what you see in terms of leadership from me, that is from 30 years of working with very good and very bad leadership. And so from this, I have been able to identify. What, who I wanna be and how I wanna lead. And that's what a young coach should be doing too. They should be watching mannerisms of their coaches they're working with. They need to watch, they need to listen to how they're communicating. They need, I'm not talking X's and o's, I'm talking leader style, management style, communication style. Those three things. And they should be spending any free moment they have. Observing that in a variety of areas. E even if you're a men's coach, you can go observe women coaches. If you're a women's coach, go observe men's coaches. There's a lot more similarity there than there are differences, and you should find a balance regardless. And I think that all that stuff is gonna make, it's gonna help you develop your philosophy and your foundation. And when you believe, when you take it all in and you start to do those things, you will begin to believe it and then you can articulate it. That's the biggest thing that I look for when we actually have the, maybe part of a zoom, but at the on in person, it's the articulation and I should be, you should be able to articulate, and I should be able to suspect that this is a variety of influences that have brought you to my chair. Yeah. Into my office, in the chair, in the hot seat for the interview. Yeah. I know it's not one word, but No, it's great. It's ideal advice. I put you in a room with 300 parents and athletes. They all want to play in, their kids all wanna play in college. How, what would you tell'em on how to go about the recruiting process if they wanna play it Damon, what should they be doing? Oh. As soon as possible, they should be sending your, the young person, not the parent. Thank you. The young person who wants to play should be sending an email to the coach, providing them stats, film, even if it's just one clip, and then their home schedule, or wait their game schedule. And that should go to our coach with a very nice opening that has been proofread. That flows well that says, hi, I am and tell them why you're interested in Damon. So if that means you gotta go spend 30 minutes on our website, then do it. Don't just cold call. Make it seem for any school that you're looking at, make it seem that we're, you're interested in us because, and I would put in there as much information as you possibly can regarding that. Yes. And then you add all of your athletic acumen. Okay? And whether you cut and paste your stats or you attach your stats or there's a one video in there, and then your schedule and say, I would love for you to come watch me play. This is the club team I do. I'm gonna be, or Hey, you're gonna be in town playing, blah, blah, blah. Let'em know that. And you know what? If you really wanna come here, keep emailing. That's right. You're helping me sell a lot of books. Tracy, thank you very much. Oh, that's great. You're going. I'm glad. Where's my cut? You'll get it. That was chapter six. You just explained it to a t. Thank you so much for doing this. Oh my gosh, my pleasure. Thank you. I gotta tell you, I, it's like Conan O'Brien, you know, he's always looking for a friend. I am collecting friends through this podcast, and I'm so thankful to have you in my life, and I'm so thankful. You are in the world of athletics, sharing your knowledge and your love and compassion and and fighting and advocating for student athletes and coaches. It just, it fills my heart and I'm just so thankful to know you. So thank you for doing this. Oh, Matt, thank you for this opportunity. This has been so much fun. A lot more fun than I thought. Not that I thought it wasn't, but i've just enjoyed the conversation and the topics and I'm so glad you are now on my network. I am very excited. So you've got me whenever you need me. If I can help in any way or if you just ever wanna talk about life and coaching and administrating I'm always open to it. I miss it. And and this is what I miss. This is, I miss. To walk into your office and go, Hey, I got something I'm dealing with. Let's talk about it. So this has been great. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. Oh, my pleasure. Absolutely. I've enjoyed every second. Thank you. What a great conversation. Before we go, I just wanna say how much I appreciate Tracy Murphy for joining us today. Her perspective on recruiting is incredibly insightful and valuable. I especially appreciated her honesty about what championship culture really means and the importance of families asking the right questions as they navigate the college experience. And don't forget this week's significant question of the week. If you remove the sport from your recruiting decision. Would you still want to attend that school? I'd love to hear your thoughts, so make sure you drop them in the comments and let me know what you think. Two quick reminders before we wrap up. First, make sure you follow along on my Instagram account coach Matt Rogers, where I share weekly about present and past guests from the Significant Coaching Podcast. There are so many great leaders in college athletics who have been generous enough to share their wisdom on this show, and Instagram is where you can learn a little bit more about them and their journeys, and a little bit about me and my journey. Second, check out my Instagram post this week about my speaking tour. I'll be doing this spring and summer. If your school, your club program, your college or your community could use someone to talk with your athletes, parents, and coaches about how to approach their college journey the right way. I'd love to come spend some time with you and your community. You can learn more about all of that@coachmattrogers.com and you can schedule a quick discovery conversation with me over Zoom there as well. As always. Until next time, stay focused on what you can control. Stay humble and keep chasing significance.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
Be Significant
Beth Cook and Matt Rogers
Performers on the Rise
Demi Agaiby
Worth It
Ryan Dyer
The School of Greatness
Lewis Howes
The Unforget Yourself Show
Mark and Katie
NATIONAL SIGNING DAY PODCAST
Coach Martin
The Performance Psychcast
Greg Parry & George Mitchell