Diary of a DI Recruit: Sten Jernudd's Recruiting Timeline

To many parents, coaches, and players, the recruiting process to play college Lacrosse is challenging- almost daunting.  I thought it might be beneficial if you heard it from a recent recruit who went through the process, and had solid results.  There are plenty of additional suggestions/recommendations, but have a read, and see how Sten did it...

Hey everyone, my name is Sten Jernudd and I’m a junior and I play for Lakeside (although I haven’t really yet this year.  I hurt my foot badly during basketball and it is just now starting to get significantly better). But I’m here because Freddy asked me to talk to the young guns about the recruiting process. Basically, choosing a school is one of the most important decisions you will ever make. It’s four years of your life, and picking somewhere you know you fit and where you can see yourself is really important. But this is basically a timeline of how I came to reach my decision, and hopefully it can help some of you guys when it comes to reaching yours.

Summer 2008

The summer before your junior year is probably the most important time in the recruiting process for you to get your name out there to college coaches, especially being from the West Coast. Traveling back East is really expensive, but besides some tourneys in California that draw coaches, it’s basically (in my experience) necessary. Once you get to these tournaments, playing well is of course important, but you also should do everything you can to make sure you conduct yourself well. Coaches probably don’t want a kid who screams at his teammates and doesn’t play defense. But if you make an all-star game at a tournament or two, just relax and have a good time…enjoy the moment! Those are a ton of fun, and a really good opportunity to show your stuff to lots of coaches and meet other laxers from around the country. You’ve already made it to the all-star game so as long as you just hustle and play hard you will do great. I remember being super nervous before the all-star game at the Denver team camp, but Caldwell Rorbach offered pretty those exact words as advice and it really helped.

September 1st 2008
September 1st is the first day coaches are allowed to email you, and the emails you receive are usually letters introducing the coaches and their programs. I didn’t have a ton of emails in my inbox, but I had probably 5 emails from different D1 coaches. I responded to all of them, and some asked me to come visit, but I decided I would wait on visits until the end of the fall tournaments. I kept up contact with these coaches though and sent my PSAT scores and my academic transcripts to the schools that asked for them.

November 2008
I played in two tournaments in November, one with the West Coast Starz team in Maryland and one with the Seattle Starz team in New York. Both of these tournaments were really important for me. I played pretty well in both of them and after the first day of the West Coast tourney, I had emails from Duke, Cornell, Hopkins, Penn, Ohio State, Army, UMBC and more. After that weekend, I researched the schools that had contacted me and responded to all of them. I told the schools that I was really interested in that I would love to take a look at their school and program, and then to the schools that I wasn’t as interested in I sent polite emails thanking them for looking at me as a potential student-athlete. All in all, I had heard from around 30-40 D1 programs in November. After doing further research and talking to the coaches some more, I decided to visit Penn and Drexel in November, and then Cornell, Duke, and Army in January.

Penn and Drexel Visit, November 2008
After flying in to Baltimore, my dad and I drove up to Philly and stayed outside the city Friday night. Saturday morning we drove in to the city and I met with Coach Voelker at Penn. Coach Voelker is a great guy and Penn was really nice. Later that day I went over to Drexel and met with Coach Bates, who was a really good guy as well. Drexel was great too as I toured the campus and the athletic facilities with Coach Bates before sitting down with him in his office. That night I left Philly impressed by both schools.

Cornell/Army Visit, January 2009
Over Martin Luther King weekend I headed out to upstate New York to visit Cornell and West Point. I flew out Saturday and arrived that night at Cornell, where I stayed overnight with fellow Washingtonian, Shane O’Neill. The next day I went to breakfast with Shane, Coach Tambroni, Coach DeLuca, Coach Georgalas, and Dr. Carroll (a professor at Cornell and one of the academic advisors to the lacrosse team) and his wife. Then I toured the campus with the coaches and met with Coach Tambroni in his office. I loved absolutely everything about Cornell! The guys were awesome, the coaches were great, and I really could see myself there. But I still had two more visits, and after leaving late Sunday, I arrived at West Point. West Point was really cool as well. I didn’t know what to expect going in, but Coach Alberici and his staff were welcoming and the lacrosse players at West Point (especially my host, Tyler Oates) were awesome. I really liked West Point too, and after touring the campus, meeting with Coach Alberici, going to practice, and hanging out with the team for a day, I left feeling really impressed. I flew out Tuesday morning, and after taking a nap on the plane, I grabbed some McDonald’s for dinner and went immediately back up to school to play in our basketball game.

SATs January 2009
In the middle of January I took the SAT, which is a huge part of the college process. Coaches can’t really recruit you or offer you a spot or scholarship money until they see your SAT scores. If you can, sign up for an SAT prep course at your school. If that isn’t an option, just get an SAT book at Barnes and Noble or something and take some of the practice tests in there. It is important you do well, although you can take it as many times as you like if you aren’t happy about your score.

Duke Visit, January 2009
On the weekend of January 31st I visited Duke for their junior prospect weekend. They were hosting about 10 or 11 juniors, including my West Coast Starz teammates Dax Cohan and Rob Emery. We watched Duke scrimmage Bellarmine and then had a barbecue with the team and the coaches. Then, we toured the school. Then Sunday morning we watched practice and each had individual meetings with Coach Danowski before heading over to Cameron Indoor to watch Duke play Virginia. Visiting with all the other juniors was really cool because I met the guys who could potentially be future teammates, and so if you get invited for a junior weekend definitely consider doing it. I am now good buddies with a defensemen named Matt Kunkel from Ward Melville (in NY) who I met during the junior prospect weekend and became instant friends with.  I walked away really impressed with Duke, and I realized I had quite a decision on my hands.

Big things I looked for during my visits
How were the coaches? Did I like their coaching style and/or philosophy?
How were the academics and the academic support for the athletes?
How did I see myself fitting in with the team?
How did the players like it?
How would I like the school if you took lacrosse out of the equation?

Post-Visits
After I finished up my visits, I sat down with my dad and weighed the pros and cons of the different schools. I liked all the players, all the coaches, and all the schools. But I absolutely loved everything about Cornell! The school, the guys, the coaches, the location, everything! I also felt really comfortable with Cornell because of Shane and how great his experience there has been so far. Cornell was really the place I knew I wanted to be, and so in February I committed to Coach Tambroni and the Big Red!

Advice
Visit, Visit, Visit! It is by far the most important thing you can do in terms of feeling out how you would fit in at a school.
Put the time to get your name out there before your big tournaments, while you can definitely stand out on your own it is easier if you contact coaches first. Stay overnight.  Ask questions about how many kids they are bringing in and for what positions in your class.
Don’t decide when you are there…reflect later on your experience there.
GRADES GRADES GRADES. Coaches can’t recruit you if your grades aren’t up to par, so put in work in the classroom.
Dress nicely during your visit…odds are coaches don’t want a kid who walks into a meeting with basketball shorts, a cut-off t-shirt, and flip-flops on.
Enjoy the process!

Basically the recruiting process is really fun but it also can be stressful. Enjoy it, and take the time necessary to research and decide where YOU really want to be! Good luck!