READY OR NOT: Schools and coaches try to help kids get recruited, but parents and athletes still must shoulder responsibility

Thirteen members of the Hilton Head Christian Academy 2007 graduating class signed to play college athletics this fall.

But the one Eagles football coach and athletics director Tommy Lewis is perhaps proudest of is a 14th who abruptly left the school in the middle of his senior year and never graduated from the Christian Academy.

Marcus Salters was a two-sport star for the Eagles, playing receiver and defensive end for the 2006 state championship football team and earning Island Packet-Beaufort Gazette All-Area honors in basketball. However, the Savannah resident left the school shortly after he was dismissed from the Eagles' basketball team this past winter, after an argument with a teammate.

"I tried to stay in touch with him," Lewis said. "He got his GED because he didn't want to go back to Savannah public schools. That really limited his options, and it became a matter of what school will take a kid with a GED. That left junior college."

With Lewis's help, Salters signed with Louisburg College, a two-year institution in North Carolina.

Salters said he was being recruited by several Division I schools, all of which backed off when he left the Christian Academy. He hopes to transfer from Louisburg at the end of the year but is grateful for the opportunity there ... and grateful Lewis helped him secure it by trying to assure college coaches he was worth the risk.

"That's just the type of man Coach Lewis is," Salters said. "And it wasn't just him. ... I was back on the island recently, and it was just remarkable the community was still there to welcome me back and forgive me for what I did. I didn't deserve it because of my actions, but they forgave me."

High school coaches can use their knowledge and connections to steer their athletes toward college opportunties, as Lewis did for Salters. However, some caution there is a limit to how much a coach can reasonably be expected to do for a kid, particularly at larger public high schools, where many have more athletes to tend to than their private-school counterparts.

"It's not the coaches' job to get the kids recruited," said Bluffton High School athletics director and former football coach Dave Adams. "Some parents think the coaches and the school should do all the work. But signing your kid up to take the SAT, for example?

"That's a daddy job; that's not a coach job."

And unfortunately, parents might not be as prepared for that job as they should be, an Island Packet questionnaire suggests.

The 25-question survey was given to student-athletes, parents, coaches and guidance counselors and was designed to test their knowledge about the recruiting process and college academic requirements.

Collectively, parents answered fewer than half the questions correctly, and student-athletes themselves were the only subgroup that did worse. Only a third of responding parents knew how many core curriculum credits their children would need to meet the NCAA's initial eligibility requirements. Only 11 percent knew what jobs a recruiting service can provide under NCAA rules. Eighty-nine percent falsely believed the writing portion of the SAT could be used to help a prospective student-athlete meet NCAA Division I's sliding scale requirement.

The parents' performance doesn't surprise Hilton Head Island High School athletics director and boys basketball coach Greg Elliott. After all, NCAA regulations governing recruiting and academics can confuse coaches, too, he said.

"It's a lot of information and it changes every year," he said. "You can put the Ten Commandments on an index card, but this thing is big as a phone book. How are you going to keep up with that?"

Elliott answered his own question in part by bringing in outside recruiting consultants to educate student-athletes and their parents.

Last year the Seahawks' booster club paid about $900 for a visit from Dynamite Sports recruiting service, which conducted a seminar attended by about half the school's coaches and about 20 parents, Elliott said. The fee also included an instructional DVD and handbook that are loaned to parents and a reference book for the school's guidance counselors.

Adams has arranged similar seminars, and Elliott has suggested holding an annual program for all southern Beaufort County high school athletes, with sites rotating from school to school to spread the cost.

"You've got to get those kids in an auditorium. You've got to have somebody come there and speak to them by their sophomore year," he said. "It can be a guidance counselor or a college coach, doesn't matter. The earlier you identify those kids, the better off you're going to be."

Sufficient commitment?

If such programs become reality, guidance counselors and coaches might do well to sit in the audience, not on the dais, a former Bluffton football coach suggests.

Russell Holley is now on Ridgeland High School's coaching staff. While with Bluffton, he was the unofficial recruiting contact for the school's football and track teams. He called college coaches, combed transcripts and ferried athletes on visits to college campuses.

Holley had some success directing track athletes toward scholarships, but he was frustrated that the football team didn't have more of its players signed by major programs.

This past February, for example, at least four Bobcats drew attention from Division I programs, but none qualified academically. According to Holley, in some cases, that wasn't because the kids weren't making the grades. Rather guidance departments hadn't identified them as potential recruits during their freshmen year, and the students were put in courses that would not count toward the NCAA's core requirements.

"That was the case at Hilton Head (which the players attended as freshmen, before Bluffton High School opened), and that was the case in the first year at Bluffton," said Holley, who went to Ridgeland after he was not retained by new Bobcats football coach Jeremy West. "Having seen the ins and outs in the whole situation now, I think there needs to be a deeper commitment from the entire staff, whether it's the coaches, the teachers, the counselors."

But one Beaufort County Board of Education member and former Hilton Head High football and basketball assistant said he thinks most coaches and guidance counselors do an adequate job of identifying athletes with college potential and informing them what they'll need to do to get a scholarship.

"There's no question in my mind the athletes are told over and over again what the requirements are," Bob Arundell said. "What I can't speak to with the same percentage of certainty is how much they pay attention. You'd be surprised the number of kids who we've told, literally over a period of years, they would be recruited more highly if their grades were better.

"Still, some don't get it."

Where the lines are drawn

Beaufort County School District policy implies schools have some responsibility in the recruiting process. For example, its "Athletic and Extra-Curricular Activity Guidelines" adopted earlier this year require a student-athlete contacted by post-secondary coaches to inform their high school coach and athletics director.

"It is vital because of the intensity of some recruiting efforts that students and their parents do this to avoid violating recruiting regulations, which may impact both the students present and future eligibility," the document states.

However, nowhere does it suggest coaches bear responsibility for getting their athletes recruited. An evaluation form for head and assistant coaches includes space for evaluators' ratings on teaching techniques, understanding of rules, caring for uniforms and equipment and arranging transportation. The words "recruiting" and "scholarship" are not to be found.

If the district's guidelines are vague on the role of coaches in the recruiting process, perhaps that explains how Adams has so different a take on the issue from Holley, who was one of his key assistants.

Adams said he does not believe coaches are without obligation to their recruitable athletes, only that the people who will benefit most from an athletic scholarship ought to assume the most responsibility in securing one. Parents, it follows, must let guidance counselors know of their kids' college plans and check to make sure they're in the right classes, he said.

Whether they agree or disagree with that stance, mom and dad would do best to assume they'll have to do all the work, according to Hilton Head High baseball parent Jamie Harrison.

"It just behooves you to do it yourself," said Harrison, whose older son, Brian, signed with Furman last spring and whose younger son, Greg, a junior, verbally committed to the University of South Carolina last month. "We weren't going to wait on Brian's coach to lead him by the hand."

The father of Hilton Head High graduate Brian Janiak, a sophomore football walk-on at Villanova, said he wishes the school had done more to help his son get a scholarship.

"Not to whine or complain," said Peter Janiak, "I just thought there would be a little more involvement there."

Nonetheless, "In terms of promoting your kid, there's no better advocate than mom and dad," Janiak said.

Unless, of course, you have a coach like Lewis.

"And if it wasn't for Tommy Lewis, I wouldn't be where I am today," Salters said.