Recruiting Q&A with San Diego State coach Carjay Lyles

September 7, 2011 by David Pickett
Filed under News

Recruiting 101

About a year ago, we caught up with San Diego State coach Carjay Lyles to get the inside scoop on recruiting. Lyles, an All-American triple jumper during his tenure at the University of Tennessee, had a lot to say about the recruiting process. As one of the youngest track coaches in Division I, Lyles has had a lot of early success in recruiting national caliber athletes. One of his prize pupils, Karoline Koehler earned All-American honors in both the long and triple jump at the 2010 NCAA Indoor Championships.

WNCPrepTrack.com: Recruiting-How does it work?

Carjay Lyles: The recruiting process is a simple yet extensive process. I know that sounds like an oxymoron but that is probably the best way to describe it. After initial contact between the coaches and student-athlete seeing if the student-athlete; is a qualifier, meets admission standards, fills the necessary need for the team, fits the program’s structure, believes in the coach, and is a NCAA-clearinghouse qualifier tend to be the next few steps that happen. The organizing of scheduled visits and trying to manage the scholarships that will be available with the influx of interest has been, for me, the most trying part. I have tried to recruit athletes who I don’t mind spending the next three or four years coaching. I love to coach and I love track and anything that hinders that, I don’t recruit. So adding that factor makes the process simple yet extensive.

WNCPrepTrack.com: There has been quite some confusion of the difference between a walk-on and a scholarship athlete. Can you please explain the difference between the two?

Carjay Lyles: The main difference between a walk-on and a scholarship athlete simply boils down to performance. Like anything in life performance usually opens more doors. Track is one of those things that you have to judge and reward scholarship money based on numeric rankings. It’s hard to reward any or a lot of scholarship money to athletes based on potential, because sometimes the results are not returned on the investment like many coaches would hope for. There are great athletes who do come out of high school without all the accolades that some of the people in the same recruiting class may have acquired, and that kind of thing will continue to happen, it’s just very hard to be discerning enough to shift thru the masses of athletes in each event area every year to find it. With only 12.6 scholarships to offer on the men’s side and 18.5 on the women’s side in order to build a successful program, head coaches have to be smart with the percentages offered every year.

Carjay Lyles and SDSU head coach Shelia Burrell (two-time Olympian in the heptathlon)

WNCPrepTrack.com: How should parents understand the recruiting process?

Carjay Lyles: The athlete and parents should probably understand the issue of scholarship offers the most when going through the recruiting process. Each year a program only has a certain number of scholarships available, and that is dependent upon the recruiting efforts of the previous years, so as every coach tries to fill the voids in their roster to maximize their potential as a team every kid recruited will not be able to receive a full scholarship. Understanding this small fact would help coaches out across the country so much.

WNCPrepTrack.com: How should an athlete go about getting recruited?

Carjay Lyles: An athlete can grab the attention of college coaches by simply contacting them via email or telephone. Some athletes are usually on the radar for some college coaches depending on their previous performances and or national ranking. But to reiterate, yearly there are always a large number of athletes set to graduate so contacting a coach to let them know of your interest in their program is usually the best way to get to the attention of college coaching staffs.

WNCPrepTrack.com: What was the recruiting process like for you?

Carjay Lyles in his days as a jumper at the University of Tennessee. Photo Credit: Kirby Lee

Carjay Lyles: When I was being recruited out of high school, I was blessed enough to have had the chance to come into contact with a lot of various coaches, from the biggest conferences to the smallest. Some of those coaches who till this day I maintain contact with and learn from. I have incorporated some of the ideas that I thought were good when I was being recruited(which I won’t go into, don’t want to give away too much info ) and the ideas that I did not like, I make sure as a coach and recruiting coordinator for SDSU, I don’t do. When I made my first collegiate decision, I made it on the wrong reasons and I paid a price for that; having to transfer twice to get to a place where I could be productive and at peace with my team. I think the one thing that I learned was to be myself. The coach’s who were genuine during the recruiting process have become mentors now. When I recruit, I am simply myself. I do not try to put on any fronts or tell any lies. I believe that has been a key for me thus far. Parents and athletes are starting to become more discerning when dealing with coach’s on a collegiate level. With coach’s leaving and going to other programs because of money offers, saying it’s for ‘family reasons’ and then you deal with coaches who are one person when they are recruiting you but a totally different person once you arrive on campus, I make sure I do not do or say anything that will make a recruit or their family feel I in anyway misled them. I am very picky when recruiting. I like to surround myself with good people who just happen to be good athletes. If I can’t hold a conversation with you and your parents, or the motivation to handle your business (school, track, and personal) is not there, then odds are the chances of me recruiting that particular athlete are slim. I’m very prayerful and careful during this process. I remind myself all the time, that I will have to work with this athlete every day for the next couple of years and if I don’t think I can do it, I’ll simply let them focus on their other options. Its only one thing worse than an unhappy athlete, and that’s a miserable coach!