Road trip
A quick update.
This previous weekend was my first official recruiting trip. I went to Seattle and visited a couple of programs, and picked up two of our racing shells from Pocock.
Driving solo with the 40 foot trailer was a bit unnerving at first. I don't have much experience driving trailers and while I did drive the trailer to IRAs last year, one trip hardly qualifies me as a driver. I think my total attempts driving are under 10. Still I managed to make it to Seattle without any incident and outside of struggling to back the trailer into the Pocock facility in Everett - thank you John Tytus for taking over - it wasn't that bad.
The return trip was a bit more adventurous. I-5 between Fed Way and Tacoma managed to bounce a shell loose despite being secured by the correct number of straps, requiring me to pull over onto the shoulder. There's nothing like cars zipping by you at 60 mph while you tie down a boat, but thankfully it went quickly and I was back on the road. Unfortunately I lost the running lights outside of Olympia and had to spend the night in Portland. I didn't feel comfortable making the final run into Corvallis. But outside of that, the trip was easy.
Recruiting was interesting. I spoke with the coaches and let them know what we were looking for. Right now it's a holistic approach where we value academics, and character as much as we value the raw scores. It was interesting showing up as a coach vs. being the coach taking a collegiate coach around in the launch. It was fun catching up with a couple of the coaches I've known for several years and I believe the trip was fruitful and helped start a conversation for the programs going forward.
This previous weekend was my first official recruiting trip. I went to Seattle and visited a couple of programs, and picked up two of our racing shells from Pocock.
Driving solo with the 40 foot trailer was a bit unnerving at first. I don't have much experience driving trailers and while I did drive the trailer to IRAs last year, one trip hardly qualifies me as a driver. I think my total attempts driving are under 10. Still I managed to make it to Seattle without any incident and outside of struggling to back the trailer into the Pocock facility in Everett - thank you John Tytus for taking over - it wasn't that bad.
The return trip was a bit more adventurous. I-5 between Fed Way and Tacoma managed to bounce a shell loose despite being secured by the correct number of straps, requiring me to pull over onto the shoulder. There's nothing like cars zipping by you at 60 mph while you tie down a boat, but thankfully it went quickly and I was back on the road. Unfortunately I lost the running lights outside of Olympia and had to spend the night in Portland. I didn't feel comfortable making the final run into Corvallis. But outside of that, the trip was easy.
Recruiting was interesting. I spoke with the coaches and let them know what we were looking for. Right now it's a holistic approach where we value academics, and character as much as we value the raw scores. It was interesting showing up as a coach vs. being the coach taking a collegiate coach around in the launch. It was fun catching up with a couple of the coaches I've known for several years and I believe the trip was fruitful and helped start a conversation for the programs going forward.
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