Soccer Season Kicks Off After Productive Recruiting

Written By: Jacob Luzcek '15

Published October 2014



Productive recruiting brought many new faces to the RC Women's Soccer Team
Photo courtesy of RC Athletics

What is the new formula for the Randolph College Women’s Soccer Team? This year is made up seven first-years, twelve sophomores, one junior, and one senior. Let me just repeat that last part: ONE junior and ONE senior. This is partially due to few juniors and seniors on the team to begin with and those who were part of the team left for various reasons. It is safe to say that Head Coach Kevin Porterfield put a great amount of time and work into recruiting for the Women’s team the past two years.

Recruiting is a major part of the job of being a head coach and “probably the most important thing we do,” says Porterfield. Even at the NCAA Division III level, coaches spend an enormous amount of time traveling, making phone calls, sending emails and text messages, and giving tours. They give up holidays, weekends, and family time all so that they can spend the fall completely consumed by the game. Most coach’s recruit all throughout the year, but their sport determines when their busy period and easy period is. For soccer, the busy period comes almost immediately after the season. “Every major holiday means that there’s a tournament,” says Porterfield, who spends a large amount of time away from his wife and two children. Thanksgiving is not on his side as he is usually away from them. “It is a commitment on the family as well as the coach,“ Porterfield says, “My wife basically turns into a single parent for about three to four months in the fall.”

The obvious question is: With everything a coach has to give up, why would he do it? “I think for me, having families on campus is what I enjoy the most,” says Porterfield, “you get to interact not only with the prospect, but you get to know their family.” This also helps develop a more personal connection.  

Having only one junior and one senior on the team “…pushes some of the younger girls on the team to step up and take leadership roles,” says midfielder Hunter Robinson ‘18. There are 19 of these younger girls, seven first-years and twelve sophomores. Robinson also states, “Since we are such a young team, we are excited for the years to come because of how close our team will be.”

This begs the question; will the high number of recruits continue? Forward Brittany Hammons ’15 says, “We have been a continuous growing team and we were really fortunate to receive the numbers we did last year and this year.  I think in the future the team will continue to not actually grow with numbers but grow stronger in experience and knowledge as well."

The Men’s Soccer team has had a full or nearly full roster for the past five years. Throughout these recent years, the team change in team members lost and gained has greatly fluctuated. In 2010 there were 19 first years on the team; the highest number of first years recruited. In 2014, the team lost 14 players who graduated; the highest number of graduates the team has had at one time.



After losing fourteen players this spring with graduation, RC men's soccer needed flexible recruiting strategies.
Photo courtesy of RC Athletics

This flux in the size of each class presents Men’s Soccer Head Coach Bryan Waggoner with a different outlook on recruiting; the more players he needs to complete his roster, the more the style of recruiting changes. “It depends on the year,” says Waggoner. “Usually in the smaller classes we are looking for some specific things to help improve our team,” says Waggoner. These specific traits could be speed, size, or technical ability. “We really look at what we feel the [opposing ODAC] teams weaknesses are and bolster those areas with smaller recruiting classes.” For Waggoner the larger recruiting classes don’t require the search for such specificities. “For the larger classes we are looking to recruit pretty much a little bit of everything,” says Waggoner, “We are looking for players that meet our standard academically and athletically.”

Through all of his various recruiting tactics Waggoner likes to keep a sense of balance, explaining that, “Balance, like in soccer, is very important in recruiting.”