While the recruiting process has changed over time, the lengths
to which coaches will go to entice recruits has not.
Years ago, the perception existed that college coaches lured
prized high school recruits with material gifts and financial
benefits.
The NCAA hammered down on such violations by creating much
stricter recruiting laws designed to limit the contact between
coaches and recruits.
Today, the concern of what a coach can offer a recruit is
rivaled by the unease of what a coach can tell a recruit.
Never having dealt with it personally, UCLA women’s
basketball coach Kathy Olivier has heard in her sport’s
circles that coaches have outed other competing coaches as lesbian
in order to obtain an edge in landing a recruit’s
services.
“I’ve had people talk to me about that, and
I’ve heard that it has happened,” Olivier said.
“If some coaches think that’s going to make them
look better in a recruit’s eyes, I think they’ll do
anything they can, and I don’t think that’s a good
place to be.”
How effective such a strategy is able to persuade a recruit one
way or the other is uncertain. Yet Ronni Sanlo, director of
UCLA’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center,
has heard that coaches who adopt the approach of capitalizing on
another coach’s sexual orientation have been relatively
successful.
“I was talking to a women’s basketball coach at
another university and she said that it’s very common for
recruiting to be affected if a lesbian coach is open about her
sexuality,” Sanlo said. “As a result, (the competing
coaches) get the recruit because some parents do not want their
kids playing for a lesbian coach.”
Since there has been a trend of parents exerting a greater
influence in determining where their child goes to college, coaches
must not only sell their prospective recruit of the team’s
potential, but the recruit’s parents of the team’s
atmosphere.
As a result, according to Jay Coakley, a sociology professor at
the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, coaches are
flaunting their moral values to female athletes’ fathers in
order to get a leg up on the competition. The subtle strategy of
catering to a father’s likelier trust of male coaches in
female sports, Coakley says, has attributed to the success of
Connecticut’s women’s basketball coach Geno
Auriemma.
“If you look at most women’s athletes, the person
who has become their agent is their father,” Coakley said.
“When it comes time to look for schools, it is their father
who is most involved.
“Some coaches make it very subtle. There’s never any
explicit mention of sexuality. It’s always something about
the wholesome climate or religious beliefs.”
Olivier believes that coaches who out other coaches and players
are not doing so out of ill-will. In women’s basketball, a
sport that has garnered increasing media coverage and fan
popularity over recent years, Olivier feels the coaches who already
have established that competitive edge have both eyes fixated on
the expanding financial possibilities in their sport, and will
protect their position at all costs.
“I think it comes up because of the business, it’s
huge paying jobs now, you’re making big money and I think
coaches resort to anything to get a player,” Olivier said.
“Without the horses, you’re not going to be very
good.”
With reports from Adam de Jong, Jeff Eisenberg, and Bryan
Chu, Bruin sports senior staff.