For men’s soccer coach George Tarantini, traveling around the country, and even internationally, is crucial in finding the right players for his system.
Football coaches see it the same way. Though the recruiting game in football is much more publicized, coaches still work behind the scenes, traveling from coast to coast to find athletes who will play for N.C. State.
Recruiting is an aspect of college sports that has grown in publicity in recent years. From Web sites dedicated to the latest in prospect rumors to scouting companies that cater to specific schools, recruiting has become a business of sorts.
The public nature of recruiting is the aspect Jerry Petercuskie, the football team’s recruiting coordinator and special teams coordinator, has seen change the most in his 33 years of coaching college football.
“There’s so much out there now, and you’re trying to track all these kids through the Internet,” Petercuskie said. “People are calling them and putting different articles on the net, so we have to be aware of all that.”
While the coaching staff spends the majority of its time now with the week-to-week game preparation of mid-season, the coaches also have to be out on the recruiting trail. From Sept. 1 to Dec. 1, the coaches have 42 evaluations, visiting players during their high school or junior college games, that can be spread out between the nine coaches. After Dec. 1, Petercuskie said the coaches have the opportunity to hit the road and visit prospects once per week.
The staff typically first hears of prospects through mailings between coaches and recruiting services, identifying players to keep an eye on and detailing each one’s speed, size and academic standing. Once the staff finds the players they’re looking for, they send questionnaires to get to know each player better.
The coaches get tapes of each prospect, evaluate them, and hopefully, get them to attend State’s football camps.
“There’s some kids that do enough on tape [to be offered a scholarship],” Petercuskie said. “But we always like to see them in person in terms of physically what they look like.”
Like football coaches, Tarantini does plenty of traveling. Whether it’s junior college tournaments in Tyler, Texas, down the road to a local high school or international meetings between coaches, Tarantini said he has to always keep his eyes open.
“We have between 1,000 and 1,500 players to deal with on our list,” Tarantini said. “And it’s more complicated than just being a good player, there are so many factors involved.”
The first thing Tarantini has to notice about a player he’s scouting is that player’s ability to play with the ball and use it differently than the other players on the field.
“We want [a player] who shows you something different than anybody else can, somebody who plays with passion and is intelligent,” Tarantini said. “At the end of the day, if you have that feeling, then you follow that person.”
Both the men’s and women’s soccer teams are forced to compete locally with some of the best schools in the nation, as the ACC is arguably the top conference nationally in both sexes. Tarantini said the competition is high, but that makes the recruiting process more fun.
The men’s soccer team has a tendency to feature an international flair. Tarantini, a native Argentinean, has formed relationships with coaches overseas and uses State’s soccer camps as tools for networking and finding new players.
Right now, the coaching staff has a great relationship with a coach from Venezuela, who knows the players on the country’s 17 national teams and can give Tarantini leads on which players to target.
“We listen to the things he and other coaches have to say very closely,” Tarantini said. “We’re blessed to have so many coaches and players coming to our camps.”
