Boston College Coach Explains What Parents and Players Need to Understand About Recruiting

Greg Sullivan Assistant Coach
Greg Sullivan
Assistant Coach

Greg Sullivan is in his sixth season as an assistant coach for the Boston College baseball team.  Coach Sullivan is one of the three primary recruiters on staff. He is also responsible for running the Boston College Baseball Camps.

Coach Sullivan discusses the difficulties of recruiting and provides a brief glimpse behind the scenes of college baseball recruiting.

Recruiting players is very hard. Recruiting is looking into a crystal ball and trying to predict how good a player is going to be in two, three, or even 4 years into the future. Present day success doesn’t always translate to future success at the next level. Coaches are trying to predict or project future success.

What parents and players need to understand is that sometimes college coaches are recruiting a player to fill certain a role within their program. Every school or program evaluates a player’s skills based of what they think fits into their program.

Additionally, talent never supersedes the intangibles of the player. If a player doesn’t play hard, is a bad teammate, a bad student, doesn’t respect coaches, umps, parents, teachers, or is an issue off the field then college coaches will walk away. A lot of times you will hear people refer to this as the “make-up” of the player. To determine the “make-up” of a player, college coaches will talk to everyone including coaches, umps, scouts, teachers and other coaches. Remember this, someone is always watching and coaches are always talking. The baseball world is a small world and everyone knows everyone.

Lastly, social media is becoming a great tool for coaches. We can use social media if we want to see who the player is off the field.

Coach Sullivan has been involved in recruitment for many years including his time at Boston College and Newbury College. He also worked with player recruitment when he was the hitting coach for the Manchester Silkworms of the New England Collegiate Baseball League during the summers of 2007-08, as well as with the Carolina Chaos of the Southern Collegiate Baseball League in the 2006 summer.

Follow the Boston College Eagles @BCBirdBall.

For more information on Boston College Baseball Camps, click here.

 

 

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