On the March: Another NCAA 48 hours

(Editor's note: Scott Marchand is the pitching coach at the Air Force Academy. His journal about life in baseball will appear at Fan Fanatic Sports periodically)

If the summer recruiting schedule for coaches was busy, things just got even busier. After hitting up tournaments and showcases in more than a dozen states and visiting the homes of our recruited athletes, our coaching staff settled in for the arduous and critical process of gaining commitments from our most coveted members of the high school class of 2010.

I mentioned in earlier postings that I am always amazed by high school athletes that commit verbally to schools before they are even eligible to be recruited. Not only does it seem to me to be a decision that puts the “cart before the horse”, but I always wonder whose best interest the commitment supports? In the case of our recruited athletes, I always enjoy the pensive family unit that encourages the athlete to visit multiple schools to formulate a final decision. In fact, I encourage kids to visit with other programs, although I am confident that ours stands out as something truly special. The bottom line for me is that these kids have to feel confident that they are up to the challenges that the United States Air Force Academy presents and that they are comfortable with the players and coaches they will spend copious amounts of time with during their collegiate careers.

So, after months on the road and scores of phone conversations, emails, contacts, evaluations and good old fashioned postage, recruits begin NCAA sanctioned official campus visits at the beginning of the fall semester of their senior year. On official visits, the NCAA allows 48 hours for recruits to meet representatives from the coaching staffs, teams, and academic departments in hopes that they will be able to formulate an accurate picture of the institution and reach an educated decision that will impact the rest of their lives.

Right.

The 48 hour contact window places enormous pressure on coaching staffs, as well as on families and recruits. The pressure is intensified at the Academy, as a glimpse into a life in the military has to be provided with as much clarity as possible. A typical official visit to the Air Force Academy for a recruited baseball athlete consists of the following: Thursday is monopolized by flights to Colorado and a dinner with the coaching staff. On Friday, recruits are ushered through a litany of meetings with coaches, players, academic department representatives, military personnel, admissions counselors, and athletic department staff. The grand tour culminates in a rather heavy-eyed group dinner and individual meetings with the coaching staff. Respite can be found on Saturday, as everyone attends a team tailgate party and an Air Force Falcons football game.

On their return flights, I always imagine that parents and recruits hold deep discussions of the benefits of becoming a cadet at the Air Force Academy. More than likely, that conversation is put on hold until dinner on Sunday night, in favor of a few hours of sleep at 35,000 feet. When the conversation happens, though, I know that we have shown our recruit everything the Academy has to offer, albeit within a 48-hour window of time. We cross our fingers until the national signing date in November…

On the March: Life on the recruiting trail

(Editor's note: Scott Marchand is the pitching coach at the Air Force Academy. His journal about life in baseball will appear at Fan Fanatic Sports on a weekly basis)

Friday, Saturday, Sunday Night Lights

For college baseball coaches, these are the days that mark the true beginning of another summer. With regular college baseball seasons over, coaches and high school players disperse throughout the country; the former to find new players to carry on the traditions of their programs and the latter to showcase their talents for the seemingly countless keepers of radar guns and stopwatches.

There are many ways for coaches and players to connect during NCAA recruiting periods: personal inquiries, colleague recommendations, and a review of yearly statistics are only a few.
Don’t be fooled.
Every college program has a long list of players that they would like to get to know a whole lot better once they become eligible to receive mail, email, and phone calls. Summer tournaments and showcases put on by organizations such as Perfect Game and Premier Baseball provide the perfect venue for these two parties to begin a courtship that ultimately leads to a player’s signing a National Letter of Intent (NLI) during one of the official signing periods.

Our Air Force coaching staff had already visited northern California, Florida, and Minnesota, before I touched down in Houston, Texas, last week. Armed with a list of potential candidates for our program, I prepared to attend the annual Houston Heat Invitational Baseball Tournament, held just outside of the metro area in Brenham, Texas. The tournament officially ran from Friday through Sunday, and included 20 teams from Houston and surrounding areas. Texas is not lacking in baseball talent, and it is heavily recruited as such. It amazes me every year how many kids are already verbally committed to schools before they enter their senior year of high school. Coaches really need to have their fingers on the pulse of Texas high school baseball to be sure that they give themselves a chance at landing a few blue chip players.

At most tournaments, each day begins early, around 8 in the morning, when the first teams begin to stretch and throw before the first game. Parents are usually the first in the stands, as travel weary coaches and scouts amble into the park and exchange handshakes and laughs and prepare for a competition of their own.
Coaches either settle into a seat behind home plate, or stake their claim on a patch of chain-link fence near an on-deck circle. Then, the game begins, and everybody watching, watches. Some watch intently and scratch notes about every player they see, and some focus on those players they know will be a good fit for their school and program. Those coaches are the ones that have done their homework. With so many players to evaluate, there is really no such thing as being over-prepared. The more coaches know about guys before they see them, the better.

As the first games end, coaches scatter to attend games scheduled at other sites. The Heat tournament used three fields located within a five mile radius. This arrangement was atypical, but convenient, as most large tournaments use multiple fields that are often spread far apart. The late morning and early afternoon games took on a character identical to that of the first of the day, with more coaches, more players, more sun, and more bottled waters purchased from the concession stands. The late afternoon game represents the time of day when most everyone hits a wall. But as the sun fades and field lights begin to burn for the late evening and night games, coaches and players seem to get a second wind. There is something mystical about summer baseball at night, especially in Texas.

Henry Kissinger compared our country to others in pursuit of utopia. He felt that, “for other nations, utopia is a past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.” Baseball perfection is found, for some, beneath the buzzing light standards towering above diamonds on summer nights in America.

On the March: Strasburg has golden arm

(Editor's note: Scott Marchand is the pitching coach at the Air Force Academy. His journal about life in baseball will appear at Fan Fanatic Sports on a weekly basis)

SLIDERS AND…

To steal a line from former NFL coach Dennis Green, “They were who we thought they were.” Or, in this case, “He is who you thought he was.” HE is Stephen Strasburg, junior right-handed pitcher from San Diego State University, and the prohibitive favorite for the No. 1 draft pick in tonight’s Major League Baseball’s 2009 First-Year Player Draft. Strasburg is who everyone thinks he is, or at least he was, on that night.

On a beautiful California evening this past May, my Air Force Falcons visited the friendly confines of Tony Gwynn Stadium to take on the San Diego State Aztecs before a sold out crowd of nearly 4,000 Southern Californians, sprinkled with a loyal contingent of Falcon faithful.
We were greeted with our traditional scheduled round of dusky batting practice, performed on a flawlessly manicured field amidst the sounds of baseball fans lazily walking to their general admission seats. Instead of spreading throughout the stadium, it seemed that most fans chose to fill the left field stands first; the seats closest to the Aztecs bullpen.

Strasburg emerged from the third base dugout, to the wonder of the fans, and jogged briskly to the angled corner in left field. There, he began his warm-up routine in the same fashion he had for every other start of his storied junior season. Pitchers are creatures of habit, and Stras was no exception.
A lengthy stretching routine and arm care regimen completed, he began his series of long toss throwing drills with an Aztec catcher. However, his game of catch had the unique quality of angularity. Strasburg didn’t play long toss in a straight line away from the foul line. He would run out of room. Stras played long toss BETWEEN the foul poles, to afford him enough space to fully air out his whippy right arm.

The lineups exchanged and the Anthem performed, the first pitch of the series whizzed through the night air and off the backstop; a 101 mph fastball, and a foul tip. I thought, while crouching in the first base coaches’ box, “We are gonna hit this guy.” And we nearly did, until he showed us the slider.

After we batted once through our lineup, Strasburg unleashed breaking ball torment on our Falcon hitters. Sliders in 0-0 counts, sliders in 1-0 counts -- slider, slider, slider for strikes one, two, and three, until his final number totaled 17 free trips back to the dugout for our hitters. Our guys had a great approach on his fastball, but the introduction of and the willingness to throw the slider in any count was baffling enough to make the San Diego State defense work for only 10 of the game’s 27 outs. We posted no hits.

The next day, our bus arrived at the stadium, and we emerged to get ready for a late morning BP session. We sat and watched the Aztecs finish their rounds, and there was Stephen Strasburg, one night off of his first no-hitter and a few weeks away from getting paid to play a child’s game, manning the outfield bucket filled with shagged flies and grounders ready to sprint into the mound to fill his BP pitcher’s ball cart. Stras took time to approach our players and ask them questions about their lives as Air Force Academy cadets, and to thank them for what they were doing for our country.

On Friday, Strasburg showed why some have called him the best college pitcher of all time. On Saturday, Strasburg was just another kid, playing the game of baseball.