Matt Wolfenbarger, the head baseball coach at the Mississippi University for Women, often has to dispel misconceptions when he’s talking to players he wants to become future Owls.
“Sometimes they don’t even know that we have sports, or they don’t even know that we have a male baseball team, or they don’t even know where Columbus, Mississippi, is at,” Wolfenbarger said.
But when Wolfenbarger brings in players on recruiting visits — where they spend two to three hours touring the university grounds, eating lunch and learning about the school and the baseball program — the questions and the hang-ups tend to fade away.
“A lot of times, once they get there and they see everything that happens, the campus kind of sells itself,” Wolfenbarger said.
Lately, though, he and his fellow coaches can’t rely on that tried-and-true method to sell the school to recruits who can’t come to campus and fall in love with the school. The W, a provisional NCAA Division III member, is currently prohibited from in-person recruiting contact — including on-campus visits — through April 15 amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
That led to a new idea the school recently came up with: a virtual tour to be filmed and sent to recruits in every sport. Wolfenbarger said MUW will hold a staff meeting Thursday to discuss the idea further, but the school’s plan is to film the video professionally, potentially using a drone for aerial footage.
“I know our staff and the rest of the coaches at The W, we’re all utilizing everything we have to get by and to make it just as presentable a place as it was when kids were still on campus and we were able to have visits on campus,” Wolfenbarger said.
He said the video will include footage of dorm rooms, the school’s dining and athletic facilities and the rest of the campus. It will also provide information about all the Owls’ sports teams and links to reach out to coaches and current players, as the school aims to capture the feeling of an in-person tour for recruits who don’t know when they might be able to come to town.
“We’re trying to do that without being able to do that, if that makes sense,” Wolfenbarger said. “We’re trying to show them as much of the campus as we can, as if they were there with us in the golf carts and we were giving them a tour.”
MUW men’s basketball coach Brian Merkel said he’s seen other colleges employ a similar tactic for recruiting. What the Owls are doing, he said, is an attempt to succeed during a “unique situation.”
“Anything helps at this point, and that certainly is a resource that we will use and look to help expedite the process,” Merkel said.
But video tours aren’t the only thing MUW is doing to keep up the recruiting process in a world of uncertainty. With a ban on in-person contact, coaches are relying on traditional means of communication: phone calls, texts and emails. While the latter often wind up in a recruit’s spam folder or go to a mistyped address, a text or phone conversation can take less than five minutes and inform a player about their potential collegiate destination.
“It’s a good chance for you to kind of sell yourself and to gauge a kid’s interest and try to see if it’s a place the kid would like to come play as well,” Wolfenbarger said.
Unable to come to games to watch potential targets finish out their senior year, he has had to rely on highlight videos sent by players and coaches in order to evaluate players.
“Any time you recruit, whether you see them or not, you kind of take a gamble,” said Wolfenbarger, who pointed out that a high school player who stands out with a college coach in the stands may never have a game that good in college. “It’s all a gamble, whether you see a kid or you have video of a kid or you take a coach’s word for it.”
He said several recruits had pledged to attend Owls home games at Columbus High School, but with the spring season on indefinite hold and “highly unlikely” to resume, those plans are off.
“It will hurt a little bit, but if you do your job right and you’ve established that connection with the kid and you’ve recruited them in every other way, coming to one of your games at this point hopefully shouldn’t make or break whether they decide to commit or not,” Wolfenbarger said.
He was optimistic about the 2020 season, which the Owls started 7-4 as they played just 11 games of the 39 on their schedule. With many of his players planning to apply for an extra year of athletic eligibility — already granted by the NCAA — Wolfenbarger thinks next year could be even better.
“We know the way we were going and where we were headed this season, and I just hope and I have confidence that we’re gonna pick up right where we left off a couple weeks ago and start bringing it Day 1 in the fall,” he said.
Merkel, whose season ended a few weeks before the virus began to spread in the U.S., said the spring is usually a top time for basketball recruits to come to campus. Normally, he’d be hosting players on their second visits or out scouting at AAU tournaments, but not this year as high school sports have been similarly disrupted.
“I feel for high school seniors right now, because not only is the recruiting process different, but they don’t get to finish out their senior year on campus — different things like that,” Merkel said.
As the Owls continue to adjust to their new style of recruiting, Merkel offered a reminder that things have changed for every team and every sport in every stage of collegiate competition.
“It’s new for everybody,” he said. “It’s something that every level is experiencing. It’s not just Division III or Division II; it’s Division I as well.”
For now, he and his fellow coaches will keep doing what they can in a rapidly changing environment.
“We’re just kind of taking it day by day and trying to make the best out of it,” Merkel said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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