Tell us your weirdest college recruiting story

A coach called me consistently over the course of my first year at a different college. I literally ran against him a dozen times.

I got a handwritten letter that was addressed to me correctly, but in the letter, he wrote the wrong name the whole time.

About a decade ago a division III junior college coach handed me school brochures as I was standing at the starting line of the state XC championships. I had just taken off my warmups and was about to do some strides. Race started in about 5 minutes.

I was interested in running for a small d3 school and i ended up getting a nicely handwritten letter from the xc coach so i emailed him thanking him. Two weeks after my thank you email i received another letter from the school. This time it was from the baseball coach who was excited by my talent on the mound... sadly i hadn't played since t-ball. That was when i knew d3 wasn't for me.

we hosted a girl we were recruiting and she brought a friend with her. They were from a HS about one hour from campus.

The friend went freaking crazy that night and got insanely drunk. Puked her toenails up in a dorm room bathroom. Coach ended up signing them both.

This jacka$$ tool wanted to sleep over my house. Seemed weird and creepy

Recruiting trip at a top D3 school. Went to a party and ended up sleeping with the girlfriend of the XC team's top runner. Then the guys I was staying with on the visit told me how cool that was, because everybody on the team hated the top runner and they told me how well I'd fit in. I was like wtf I do NOT want to be on a team like this, lol. I told the coach I was more interested in testing myself at D1.

Our head coach went to the home of a Kinney champion and offered him a partial scholarship. Kid's parents told our coach to get out! He end up at a well known school in the northeast.

When I was a junior we hosted 2 kids from PA...their high schools were close to each other. The 2 PA kids were really excited about the basketball game with our big rival (we won!). We ended up taking all the recruits to the game. It was one of those recruiting weekends with a jackpot of kids were visiting. Several went on to do well at solid schools. None of the kids came to our school. PA kids later told someon that they just came on recruiting trip for the basketball tickets. F'em! No big feat (senior - freshman), but I beat one of the kids in the 10k the next year in our conference meet.

I heard Gags was recruiting a kid in upstate NY (early 80's) and had planned to visit him to confirm if he was worth a full scholarship. After landing at the airport he tried to rent a car/get a cab to the kids house. Didn't make it very far. Roads were a mess...18-24"+ of messy wet snow. He turned around and went back to the airport for an early flight. He later said "...if this kid trains in this sh*+ then he deserves a full scholarship..."

There was a D1 university I really wanted to attend, but I needed to make sure the coach actually wanted me there. He had some stupid policy against directly recruiting his athletes, so he sent his assistant coach and a few athletes to try to get me.

I insisted, demanding to be directly recruited by the head-coach. The next day, the assistant coach returned to my house with a copy of the college newspaper -- on the front page was a letter from the coach, inviting me to run for the university.

Later I found out he didn't write the letter himself.

It wasn't weird back then, but now...

I was recruited for football. Of the 5 recruiting visits, one was to Penn State. While I played both ways in high school, they were recruiting me to play defense, so I went to see the guy who was the defensive coordinator and who would have been my coach if I went there (I didn't):

Jerry Sandusky

Yes, I met him (not in a shower or a sleepover) and nothing unusual happened.

Head Coach from Swarthmore showed up at my doorstep with an offer of a full financial aid package, 100% paid education.

The catch: I lived in Miami, Florida.

I actually quit my senior year of track and field to train on my own. I guess a coach heard of this and onetime stalked me while doing a tempo run. I was doing it at 5:30ish pace and when I had gotten done I started to walk and cool down. This guy out of nowhere comes up to me and said "Damn kid, you made a massive improvement just based off that run I saw you doing." I said thanks and we chatted a bit and I found out he was from some d2 school, I forgot the name of it, but he thought I was going to be a talented runner, little known fact I have basically given up on running. I ended up running for a mile in the high 4:20s, for the 1600 I think it was a 4:25, that's when I got injured and been out of it since. He was interested in giving me a full ride I had told him I wasn't interested in doing the SATS which was a requirement he needed from me. I still wonder if I had just done it right and had my head in the game and just done what I needed to do in order to attend a decent university. I wish I had accepted his offer. I had a 3.0 GPA in hs, I just needed to score a 1500 he said and he'd been able to hand me that scholarship. Now I'm a bum living in my mother's basement with a 40 grand per year gig, fml.

My high school junior year of cross country, there was an older man at a number of my meets, who would follow me around after my race. When I would turn around and look at him, he would make eye contact and smile but not say anything. It was common for creepy dudes to prowl for young guys at the large park where those meets were held, so I thought he was one of those people and ignored him. Many years later, I was looking at a college web site where one of my club team mates had competed and was surprised to see a photo of the smiling man listed as Coach Emeritus. I had a good laugh about that with the coach of my old club; he said the rules at the time prohibited junior college coaches from starting conversations with high school athletes, but if the athletes approached the coach it was OK to then have a conversation. The protocol was if you noticed someone who looked like a coach smiling at you, it was a signal they were interested in recruiting you and you should start a conversation with them. Apparently they also were prohibited from wearing any school apparel or hats to identify themselves, they had to wear street clothes when viewing HS events. My HS coach was a total jerk, he had to have known who the smiling man was but he was envious of his very own athletes (always telling us how tough he was in HS and constantly heaping subtle psychological abuse on his better runners.) The JC coach moved to a large college three years after my high school non-encounters with him, with many of his JC runners following him. At the time I knew of his name and reputation but didn't know what he looked like, I wasn't considering competing in college and was completely clueless about recruiting and didn't compete my senior year of HS so avoided any recruiting. Turns out the college I did end up at was a better choice for me, but the "smiling man" is a good guy and I would have done well in his program. I think this is a funny story, how people's lives can end up differently depending on whether or not you decide to speak with someone who smiles at you.

I took a recruiting visit to a DI school over a weekend where I had been invited to participate in a series of meetings, interviews, etc. on a Saturday morning for candidates who may qualify for a significant academic scholarship. The plan was for me to stay with members of the Cross Country team on Friday night and then attend the interviews Saturday morning.

The guys on the team took me to an off-campus party (which I was fine with) though I told them I wasn't going to drink that night with the interviews the next morning. They asked if I was comfortable serving as the designated driver which I agreed to. I drank a bit in high school and, quite frankly, wanted to get a sense of the social scene at school so even though I wasn't going to drink, I was eager to check it out.

The guys on the team proceeded to pile 8 people in the car (clearly thrilled to have a DD) and I had to stop on the drive back so that 3 of them could get out of the car and puke on the side of the road.

A pretty strong showing. I started thinking it was the school for me!

Bonkers wrote:

I had a DI coach talk to me on the phone for over 30min about how he was remodeling his house. I remember him going into great detail about the fence that surrounds his property. It was pretty surreal.

Read an interview with a top Irish runner a number of years ago who was being recruited by Villanova. The kid lived in a small town, all farmers and working class and Jumbo Elliott shows up in the back of a huge black limo, dressed in a dark, three-piece suit and wearing a big hat.

All the neighbors started showing up.... they thought a family member had died, that he was an undertaker and the kid's family hadn't told the rest of the village, or worse, he was a British banker who held the mortgage on their home and was there to evict them.

I think he ended up at Providence.

Ritz wasn't recruited by Co. Wetmore told him he could come there and run... if he wanted to.

I went on a visit and Ian Edwards was there

ily