Courtship series: Recruiting hard work off court for players

Former Notre Dame Regional High School basketball player Matt Helle admits there are moments when he questions why he went out of his way to make his life a little more difficult.

Helle, a former starter for the Bulldogs, averaged 7.5 points and 4.5 rebounds a game last season. They were numbers that did not attract all-conference or all-district recognition.

But Helle often stood out for the simple reason that he was one of the taller high school players in the area. But at 6 foot 7, the senior only could coax a scale to reach 175 pounds.

Helle could be a force at times with his height, but he struggled with consistency and had a tendency to wither when banged around by bulkier opponents for an entire game.

And when it came to playing basketball beyond high school, the prospects looked lean, too. There was no line of college recruiters waiting for Matt Helle.

When the Bulldogs' 2009-10 season ended with a loss to Sikeston in the Class 4 District 1 title game, it looked like Helle's playing days also might be over.

But through perseverance, hard work, an all-star game, basketball showcase and AAU play, Helle's dream of playing college basketball has come true.

"It was me contacting coaches and getting my name out there," Helle said.

He now finds his days swamped with classes and basketball at Williams Woods College, an NAIA Division I school in Fulton, Mo. Helle, who is being redshirted, attends classes from 8 a.m. to noon, then has a personal workout for his position for 45 minutes, then returns for afternoon classes before making his way to practice. Studying comes later.

He said precious free time means crashing in bed.

"All the hard work goes somewhere," Helle said. "There are times though, when you get done -- coach got mad and you're running your butt off -- and you're like, 'Wow, I wanted to do this?' But then being with the guys makes it all worth it."

Getting seen

There are myriad of routes that lead to a spot on a college roster.

Some players, like Helle, have height and untapped potential on their side, while others may excel at shooting, ball handling or running an offense. But unless a player's a top talent, there's an accompanying flaw -- possibly size or quickness -- that can make the recruit as much suspect as prospect.

And when colleges aren't knocking, players often have to go door-to-door in an effort to get attention.

Players send out game and highlight videos to colleges, attend college camps and clinics and play AAU basketball.

After his final high school game, Helle parlayed an appearance in the B.A. Sports All-Star Extravaganza in Dexter, Mo., to an invitation to the Shawnee Showcase in Ullin, Ill., which led to his encounter with a recruiter from Williams Woods.

"I knew I couldn't be a step behind because you never know who's going to be there," Helle said of the all-star game for the top high school seniors in Southeast Missouri. "It's just an all-star game, it might be just mostly family, but I found out later the Shawnee [Community College] coach was there and he was impressed with how I played."

Helle attended the Shawnee Showcase the day after his prom.

"I was a little concerned how I was going to be, since I was going on about five hours of sleep, but luckily I did well," he said.

Helle, like other local players, found it's often putting yourself at the right place at the right time.

Spencer Goodman, a 2008 Jackson High School graduate, is playing Division I basketball at the University of North Dakota.

Goodman was a two-time all-conference and all-district player for the Indians but was not recruited much.

"I always wanted to play basketball when I was little, play in college," Goodman said. "I never really cared how far it would be away from home."

Goodman went as far to raise his profile as recording a slam-dunk video set to music, complete with special video effects to accentuate the dunks. Goodman said he picked about 20 to 25 colleges and sent out a game tape along with the dunking tape before his senior year.

His videos didn't receive any two-thumbs-up reviews from colleges.

"Either they wouldn't send you anything back or they sent a letter saying all their scholarships had been taken for the year or something like that," Goodman said.

AAU basketball

While tapes weren't setting the world on fire, Goodman had better luck in the world of summer AAU basketball tournaments, which has evolved into a mecca for college recruiters.

The major AAU tournaments, which take place during July, are loaded with college coaches, who can view the best basketball talent in the country in one location. It's a smorgasbord for college coaches who are granted two 10-day evaluation periods in an NCAA recruiting structure that otherwise restricts recruiting days and periods, as well as number of visits.

As Southeast Missouri State coach Dickey Nutt tweeted last summer: "I was in Indianapolis, Dallas, then over to Tulsa all last week. Lots of talent and young guys are just getting bigger and bigger. July is a great month for college basketball coaches. It's summer time and it's all about ball. AAU basketball is all day, every day."

Goodman found out that by playing for the St. Louis Gateway team, along with former Notre Dame standout Ryan Willen. He played in the high-profile national tournaments in Las Vegas and Houston.

The team requires a major commitment from local players, who have to make two trips a week to St. Louis for practice. Then there are what Goodman estimated to be 40 to 50 games during the summer.

In Las Vegas, the big schools were there to watch the talent of the likes of 2008 Gatorade Player of the Year Jrue Holiday of Pump and Run Elite, who turned out to be the 17th overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft by the Philadelphia 76ers.

"They always sit on one side of the gym," Goodman said. "You could always tell who were the coaches and who weren't because they would always wear their university shirts."

It was at one of these tournaments after his junior year that Goodman caught the eye of North Dakota.

"They called me when I was on my way home and offered me a scholarship to play there," Goodman said.

Coaches from the school attended a couple of his games his senior year, and Goodman, who kept the door open to more attractive offers that never materialized, signed in April 2008 before his graduation.

Willen, a 2008 graduate of Notre Dame, estimated 250 coaches were watching when his Gateway team played Holiday's team in Las Vegas after his junior year, and he hooked up with Division I Lafayette after the tournament.

"One of the assistant coaches was just watching a game in Vegas, didn't know anything about me, just watching me play," said Willen, an all-state player who led Notre Dame to the Class 4 championship his senior year. "I guess I did something right, something he liked, and he told coach [Fran] O'Hanlon, and he drove out and watched me play one game.

"From there they kind of convinced me to come up, take a visit and look at the school."

Willen, who also was getting interest from North Dakota, Western Illinois and OVC and MVC schools, found the Pennsylvania school was a good fit. He helped Lafayette reach the championship game of the Patriot League tournament last year and was selected second-team all-conference.

According to the Gateway website, five of the nine players from the 2008 team went on to play Division I basketball, while one played at an NAIA program and another at a junior college.

Current Notre Dame senior Jacob Tolbert, one of the top prep players in Southeast Missouri, played for Gateway this past summer.

Bobby Hatchett, an all-state point guard who helped Scott County Central to the last two Class 1 championships, played for another AAU team, St. Louis Eagles, which boosted his exposure.

"We had a real good year," said Hatchett, who is playing for Midland College, a premier junior college in Midland, Texas. "I got a lot of looks from that."

Other avenues

Darren VanGennip, an all-state player and 2009 graduate of Leopold, played area AAU ball until his sophomore year. He never saw the big-time AAU tournaments like Helle, Goodman and Willen.

VanGennip, a shooting guard, said he heard from seven or eight schools his senior year, but saw minimal interest after a potential arrangement with Meramec Community College in St. Louis fell through.

"I was pleased with the colleges that were recruiting me," VanGennip said. "I just wish I didn't wait so long to make a decision."

Like Helle, he ultimately used a spring college prospects showcase at Shawnee Community College to stir interest.

"That's a great place to get noticed," VanGennip said. "It was a bunch of kids and they'll split you up in teams and you'll play like seven games and there's scouts there and they watch you."

VanGennip ended up signing at Shawnee, where he played last season before moving on to Division II McKendree University this year.

"I wanted to go there for a year and then go to McKendree," VanGennip said. "That was my mindset because I wanted to go to McKendree out of high school, but that didn't work out."

Kendal Deason, a 2005 graduate of Kelly, played basketball for two years at Three Rivers Community College, starting his sophomore year as a shooting guard.

"In this area, it's really hard to be seen because it's really not a big city," Deason said. "A lot of coaches tend not to flock to some of the smaller schools because they think maybe the competition is not as good."

Deason, a two-sport athlete, played summer baseball, which kept him from playing AAU basketball.

He attended Three Rivers camps and also went to a Duke Blue Devils camp while in high school.

"I knew I wasn't going to be recruited by Duke," Deason said with a laugh, "but it was a real good experience because there was a lot of D-II schools there that the coaches would help with the camp.

"I got some information on some schools like that, but I wasn't wanting to go anywhere 8, 10 hours away to a D-II school. I'd much rather go to a pretty good high profile junior college and maybe make my way to a D-I level because a D-II school was four years."

Deason's familiarity with Three Rivers, an upper tier junior college basketball program, paid off when he was offered a full-ride scholarship. He said he later turned down some full-ride scholarships to remain close to home, enrolling at Southeast Missouri State as a preferred walk-on for then men's basketball coach Scott Edgar. He played one year at Southeast and later played baseball for the Redhawks.

Lessons from the signed

Playing in front of a full gym of college coaches will not get a player on a college roster. Only the most attractive players will move on since college basketball is for a small percentage of high school players.

According to the NCAA, there are approximately 156,000 high school senior basketball players in the country. There are 20,083 scholarship opportunities at all levels (NCAA Division I, II, III, NAIA, junior college) -- this does not include non-scholarship Division III, which has 7,138 players -- according to ncsasports.org, a recruiting website. If 25 percent of the 20,083 scholarship spots are filled by incoming freshmen, then only 3.2 percent of high school seniors will be offered basketball scholarships.

That reality does not leave room for complacency for those athletes trying to play after high school.

"The main things to work on in high school are skills and fundamentals," Willen said. "You have to be able to make plays. When college coaches come to watch you play, they know you're good. It's not showing off that gets them to say, 'Hey, I want to recruit this kid.' It's doing the little things right. It's making extra passes, taking the shot when you're open and not taking the shot when you're not.

"I feel like a lot of players try to do too much when coaches come to watch them play, and they don't play as well as they can."

And in some of the remote locations of small schools, it may be hard to lure one college coach through the door, let alone several. But in a high-tech era, it's easier for a player to become visible from remote locations. There is the video approach and online recruiting services that players can join that serve as a network between college-seeking players and colleges. Recruits can build personal profiles that can be reviewed by colleges.

"For kids around this area that may not get seen a lot, I'd definitely have your mom or dad maybe videotape your game and sent it in to some of those schools that maybe you're looking at or wanting to go on and play," Deason said. "I was going to do that, but Three Rivers started to recruit me and it was so close to home and I got in with a really good program, so I didn't even bother with that."

Goodman is all for going to where the coaches are.

"I'd say probably playing on an AAU team in tournaments is the best way to do it," Goodman said.

But in the end, it may come down to a bit of chance. And being prepared when that chance arrives.

"I'd tell them the harder you work, the luckier you get," Helle said. "I definitely believe that. I always felt for what I lacked athletically and talent-wise, I could always make up with hard work and determination."