Leatherneck Nation

Again this year Western has a very low rank in the Summit sports standings:
Commissioner's Cup- 7th out of 8
Men's - 7th of 8
Women's- 8th of 8

If you look over the past number of years, this low achievement by WIU teams is nothing new. Why can't Western attract a higher quality of student athletes? Sounds harsh to say, but if a business territory continually ranked this low in a sales performance year after year, major changes would be considered. Is our scholarship formulas a problem, location, little money to adequately recruit? Our athletes work hard and are great students, however, there's a reason for not being able to be a major player in the conference.

I think the biggest downfall is the lack of facilities suited for a DI School. After the west stands remodel the only true DI facilites will be football, baseball is decent and softball is decent for a mid major. Definitely need a new arena for basketball and volleyball programs with state of art sound and video. I know they have it on the master plan though it may be a decade away, I think that alone would be a huge boost to the schools DI status. I heard the new arena was supposed to be around 6,000 seats I hope they reconsider and are able to move that up to about 7,500 seats and use this for not only basketball, but concerts and all kinds of events to support the Western Illinois area.

Leather, location is the major hurdle. What does every other Summit League team have that we do not have? A major interstate highway running by the front door. The other main factor is also location-related. We are one of many DI institutions competing for the same student-athlete.

Facilities are not there yet and won't be for a while. We really have only one alternative and that is to out-recruit, out-smart, out-coach, and out-train our competion. Hire and keep the smartest and most-innovative coaches and trainers that we can find. Even the smallest details cannot be overlooked (e.g. what food what we put on the training tables). Incoming student-athletes have to know from the get-go that this is the plan and they are major part of making it happen.

Question, if we dropped tennis would that help or hurt our Cup standings? How does the Cup point system work? Not everyone has the same set of sports in their arsenal.

I am very glad that the school has started creating facebooks for all the sports teams (though I still do not think there is a Mens BBall one that is used??) and they have required coaches to start using twitter. If you want to reach players in this day and age you better be up on your technology and be able to do everything from video conferences down to tweeting and texting. I am a little disappoint coach Neilson does not have a twitter just to help with recruiting and what not though he seems like an old school type of coach.

WIU0812 wrote:I am very glad that the school has started creating facebooks for all the sports teams (though I still do not think there is a Mens BBall one that is used??) and they have required coaches to start using twitter. If you want to reach players in this day and age you better be up on your technology and be able to do everything from video conferences down to tweeting and texting. I am a little disappoint coach Neilson does not have a twitter just to help with recruiting and what not though he seems like an old school type of coach.

A coach does not need a twitter or other social media account if he takes the time to reach out in other ways. I will never forget as long as I live about the Warren County school Superintendent Verne Conway who would take the time to send a rather lengthy personal hand-written note to each every elementary school kid in the county who read X number of books. He would also send along a nice pen and pencil set. Not sure if or what a coach can send to a recruit these days but a little token of appreciation can go a long way.

Possibly related. Can some insider let me know what the housing policy is for student-athletes. Are freshman required to live in residence hall, etc? I think we have a lot of athletes living off-campus too, right? Is that a privilege that must be earned by keeping grades up, etc. I would be very much interested in this kind of thing if I were a potential student athlete.