Big results in the small time
How do you attract high quality players to play at a small college? First you have to have the experience to guide a program. However, that alone will not guarantee success. The lifeblood of any college sports program is the quality of players you can attract to play at your university. The challenge at Ohio Wesleyan was how can you sell a $100,000+ education with no possibility of athletic scholarship to kids that could potentially play at the Division I level? The answer is you must sell them on the idea that you can develop them in a way that no one else can. That your resources and the opportunities available in your program are better than the competitors. And you have to be visual. In the increasing visual world we live in, kids are motivated first and foremost by what they see. The following are some examples of how we connected with current and future players.
This was my flagship idea that was the genesis for 365. It became our baseball program's identity. The baseball bicep was so popular I copyrighted it and marketed my strength and conditioning program and sold it to college and high school coaches.
Success breeds success. Once we showed we were for real everyone wanted to be a part of it. Players began investing themselves in a way they had never done before. Before long we were on top looking down at the competition. In 2007 we defeated then #1 nationally ranked Wooster College in two consecutive games to win the conference title and advance within one game of the College World Series.
Once the players were committed to what we were doing we then began a campaign to get buy in from the students. The Fall World Series was our way to create buzz for the baseball program right after school started (6 months before the start of our season). We split our team into a Red team and a Black team. The two captains drafted players from our roster and the two teams played a 5 game series. We had dime a dog days, Greek days and ladies night. The result was that we were the toast of the town, and we weren't even in season. By spring, no one could wait to watch our games.
