Corey Reese
Published: February 22, 2006
The rosters for Pensacola Junior College’s athletic teams contain players from the Pensacola area all the way to places like New York, Illinois, Canada, and even Europe. How do the players find a place like PJC, an area that’s just a speck on the national map? Local players know about it growing up around the school. The rest of the players though are recruited by the coaches.
Baseball, softball, volleyball, and basketball all recruit players from all over country and the world to fill out rosters and create the best possible team. Recruiting isn’t just going out and getting the best players. Budgets, blending with returning players, and even the players’ input, all affect which players the coaches choose to represent PJC.
The process of recruiting starts at different times for each sport, but the process is pretty much the same for all coaches. They start by identifying the needs of their teams.
“When I start the process, I always look at need versus talent,” volleyball coach Pete Pena said. “I am always on the lookout for my position needs first then whatever else I need.”
Baseball assistant head coach Doug Martin, who handles recruiting for baseball, takes the same approach.
“We determine our needs, such as pitching or a shortstop, and then focus on those players,” he said.
Finding players who played at the local high schools is easy. Most are less than an hour away. Scouting the players from outside the state is more difficult. The way that PJC’s coaches find non-local players are different for each coach.
“We go to these big district tournaments that have 20 to 30 teams in them and that’s where we find most of our out-of-state players,” Martin said.
“We find a lot of our players at summer basketball camps in July,” men’s basketball coach Paul Swanson said. “We see the most players for the smallest amount of money and time.”
All the coaches are in agreement on one thing though: they all feel they have a responsibility to recruit in the local area first and then they spread out to the rest of the country and the world.
Some of the teams have players that come from outside the country. The ways that the coaches find these players are different but the issues with bringing these players over to the United States are the same.
“Contacts at USA Softball help keep me in touch with some international players,” softball head coach Brenda Pena said. “If they see a player that they think can play, they will contact me and tell me about them.”
“There are international tournaments all over the country where teams from Europe, South America and other places are the only teams that are allowed to compete,” women’s basketball coach Chanda Rigby said. “We go visit one to scout some international talent. The toughest thing about bringing in international players is getting passports for them to come into the country.”
Recruiting budgets are limited for all sports. Budgets mainly affect the amount of travel the coaches can do. The coaches understand the budget limitations and do the best they can within those limitations.
“Our budget is the smallest of all sports, so I don’t have the luxury of making too many mistakes. I look for good athletes as well as good people when I recruit players,” Pete Pena said.
Returning players have some say in who the team offers a scholarship to. The coaches understand that if their current players don’t feel comfortable with the recruit, then they may want to look at someone else. Likewise if the players give the recruit a bad impression of the program then it’s likely the recruit will say “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“My players have been great with recruits. I think they are the best recruiters for the program. They believe in what we are selling and they sell it to the recruits better than I ever could,” Pete Pena said.