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Recruiting Youngstown & Success Outside of Football

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go guins:
I occasionally make the case that the football and mbb programs suffer with the penalty of having downtown Youngstown OH to offer as a location.  I'm pretty sure none of us vacation in Y-Town, so it's a point I'm sure we can agree is pretty negative. 
I still believe this is true, but it doesn't seem to affect things like men’s golf, softball, women’s bb both track & tennis programs and cross country.
Anybody have any observations/theories to offer?
The other point make occasionally on this blog is the local talent pool is too think and we have to recruit nationallly.  That appears true in football and mbb too, but again, not in any of the other sports listed.  I don't get it. 

IAA Fan:
Sure go guins. Women's sports and minor men's sports have only recently seen serious scholarship dollars. In the old days, football players came on scholarship and played baseball as something to do in the spring to get out of off-season training. Now baseball is specialized like all other sports & require their own budgets. Title-IX has made the cutbacks in minor men's sports scholarships even worse; so there are a great number of premium male athletes out there (in minor sports) & any time they can get a DI offer, they grab it. So a school like YSU gets a much higher caliber of minor men's sport athlete (track & field, golf, tennis, etc.) for their dollar. Likewise, the sports that are hurt the worse are those men's minor sports that require large numbers of players ...Track and Field, Swimming & Diving and Baseball. This is why YSU dropped men's Swimming & Diving, came one vote shy of dropping baseball just a couple years ago ...looking for a way to funnel dollars into men's basketball. Indoor track in particular (which requires many less athletes than outdoor competition). As much as we hate to admit it, MBB (as compared to FB) is a minor men's sport at YSU. Sure we can offer enough MBB scholarships to build a team; but not a deep team offering all the "bells and whistles".

As to women's sports ...the DI minimums under title-IX are so much more than a school like YSU can afford; but everyone else is "in the same boat" and as so many schools were non-compliant with Title-IX deadlines approaching; the government and NCAA felt the need to help out. Notice how we really do not do as well in the larger women's sports either ...softball, swimming and volleyball; but tennis and track have been stellar, with solid success in WBB as well. Note there was a long period of time (as a DI program) where we only had ladies diving and almost no swimmers. Yet we were very, very good in diving. Anderson has done a very good job resurrecting our program with just a handful of scholarships ...8 top-5 finishes in swimming and 5 top-5 finishes in diving last year. That broke a record that we set the year prior. My hat is off to coaches Anderson and Gavolas.

In short, there are less scholarships for those sports you mentioned and a large number of athletes that do not care about the downtown over a chance to obtain a full DI-scholarship. I mean let's be real ...there are not too many FB players happy to receive strictly COT or COTB. (Cost of Tuition / Cost of Tuition and Board). This has far more to do with the downturn in your FB program than the loss of Tressel, the hiring of Heacock or Wolf. This is also a reason why your women and minor men's athletes have the highest GPA's ...grab a kid that is smart and he does not take up an athletic scholarship ...he can have an academic scholarship.

Sorry to tackle 6 topics in one post.

go guins:
I don't buy your arguments.
What you say about YSU applies equally to every single 1AA program in the country.  We are far more competitve in the sports I listed than in the big 2, (MBB and FB)  Anythiing you say about fewer scollarships etc. applies to each of our league competitors equally.  We have -0- advantage over any of them and yet do much better even without a strong track record.  (good grief we only started track recently, we have -0- history)  And what about local talent? 

ytownchief22:
The talent pool has diminished some in the past couple years around this area, but there are still some solid ball players. Bo has taken on more local kids in his 1.5 years then Wolf probably ever did so we will see how it works out.

Wick250:
Go Guins,

Your thesis about the impact of downtown Youngstown does not hold up.  During the 1990s, downtown was a mess, suffering the full impact of the loss of those steel mills.  Boarded up buildings everywhere.  Yet the 1990s were the Golden Age for YSU sports: four football titles, three women's NCAA appearances, even a conference final for the men.  In fact, the 1997-98 academic year was the single best sports year in our history: the fourth football title, the women beating Memphis in the tournament, the men under Dan Peters playing for the conference title but losing.  Today, downtown Youngstown has reinvented itself.  New government buildings, the world class business incubator, the additive manufacturing center, the Covelli Center, new apartments and gentrification, an artistic colony, cultural venues, and various watering holes.

Obviously, we are not going to recruit the kid that places a high priority on going to a party school.  But beyond that, location and facilities are secondary to the relationship between the recruit and the coach.  We are successful in track and women's hoops because we have good coaches.  We lose in men's basketball and other Olympic sports because we have bad coaches.

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