Photoessay #481 - Coach O

In the past Coach O would refer to Coach Oglesby, Susanna's excellent high school coach. But now, I'm referring to Coach Ochoa, a coach with the local (well not so local) team that Dennis and I help with

Shown seated in this picture.

The annual recruiting meeting held for the 14U, 16U and both 18U teams. Players and parents. Subject: college recruitment. I speak at this meeting, Dennis speaks at this meeting. This year we had several former college coaches including Eve Gaw speak.

But it's too much information (TMI?) for people to understand. College recruiting is complex yet so short and compressed. Important yet overblown at the same time. Full of secret information and hidden agendas. Big opportunity costs for the athletes. And a ton of smoke blown everywhere.

How all of these student athletes end up signed and playing in college conferences somehow seems a great mystery. One of my kids did it, turned out very successfully. I steered a lot of the recruiting activity out of a position of semi-ignorance.

When it's done, you think, Oh, now I get it. Charactersitically, I want to share that information with the people coming up. Let me help you so you don't make the same mistakes I did.

So TMI for the parents and kids at one setting but you are not going to be able to get those groups together very often. This team does as good a job of helping families through this process as any.

Maybe trivial to put up the NCAA recruiting process as one of the great mysteries of our time....