HARRISONBURG — Assistant men’s basketball coach Tim Johnson was walking through the James Madison campus a few weeks ago, making his way to a tailgate party at Bridgeforth Stadium before the Dukes football team took on Elon when somebody hollered in his direction.
“We were just walking and a student yells ‘JMU basketball, you guys are killing it in recruiting,’” Johnson said. “We had already gotten three commitments, but the fourth guy was here. So the kid was really excited that the fans are invested and paying attention.”
Until they sign a national letter of intent, coaches can’t mention recruits by name, but the fourth and final piece of the Dukes’ 2019 recruiting class, Michael Christmas, a three-star small forward from Virginia Beach, announced his commitment to JMU a few days later, joining fellow high school seniors Quinn Richey, Michael Fowler and Julien Wooden.
Over the course of three weeks, the JMU coaching staff hosted four players on official visits and landed four commitments. A high school prospect is allowed to take five official campus visits paid for by the schools, so getting a player to pick your school for a showcase weekend is key. And the Madison coaches seem to have come up magic formulas, carefully tailored to address the whims and fancies of each visitor.
Or have they?
“There’s not a lot of fluff to what we do,” Dukes head coach Louis Rowe said. “We do the same thing every weekend.”
Friday morning at 10:30, one of the coaches will knock on the hotel room door to take the player and his family to breakfast, starting the clock on the NCAA-mandated 48-hour visit period. From there, the visit goes about how one might guess. There’s a campus tour and opportunities to meet students and faculty in a major of interest. They visit on-campus housing, usually the dorm room a current player is living in. Meetings with academic advisors and then some lunch.
“We always like to align the time we arrive in the cafeteria when class is letting out so they can get a feel for how many students there are,” Johnson said. “That transition kind of shows school spirit, especially the weekend of a football game.”
Friday afternoon, recruits observe practice and possibly another practice Saturday morning. Football games on Saturday afternoon, a steak dinner, a chance to socialize with players at night.
All pretty typical stuff. So why is JMU, as the helpful student put it to the Christmas family, “killing it in recruiting?”
“Sometimes a campus can speak to you,” Christmas’ father, Sean, said.
It’s true both literally and figuratively. The ever-expanding JMU campus can take visitors by surprise with features like the new D-Hall food court and broken ground on the Union Bank & Trust Center Center sure to impress.
“When people hear James Madison, if they aren’t from this area, they don’t understand how nice a place this is,” assistant coach Rob Summers said. “People are definitely surprised.”
But while the majority of the recruiting work is done prior to that weekend — unofficial visits, in-home visits, frequent scouting of high school and AAU games and communication via phone call and text — the official visit is key to showing what life at JMU would be like.
That means getting recruits and their families to talk to as many people as possible, and there is no better place for that then a gathering of 25,000 enthusiastic Dukes supporters.
“The football team is good and doing what they do,” Rowe said. “Everybody knows and there is excitement here on campus. It absolutely helps. Winning is a fun environment, but you also get to meet more true JMU people.”
The football experience certainly helped sell Richey, who hails from suburban Atlanta, on JMU.
“The football game was great,” Richey said after watching the Dukes beat William & Mary earlier this season. “I got to hang out with the players quite a bit. It’s a great environment and I really liked it.”
Still, some of the schools the Dukes recruit against also boast fun gameday atmospheres. In the end, the official visit is the biggest opportunity to show the totality of what the school and program have to offer. The coaches spend months, and often years, developing relationships. For instance, JMU associate head coach Byron Taylor watched nearly every one of Christmas’ AAU games during the summer evaluation period.
“It really is the legwork they do before,” Sean Christmas said. “It wasn’t like the official visit was a game changer.”
For a player Christmas’ caliber, the recruiting battle is intense. Christmas had offers and interest from high-major programs, but narrowed his list to JMU and Old Dominion. His official visit to ODU happened to coincide with the Monarchs football team’s historic upset of Virginia Tech.
“Both places were very similar, other than ODU having that great, amazing game,” Sean Christmas said.
Perhaps fortunately for the Dukes, the Christmas family had a rule. No discussing a commitment until at least 24 hours after a visit ended. The emotional high of seeing ODU fans celebrating in streets wore off. Christmas took his visit to JMU two weeks later and even though the Dukes were upset by Elon on the gridiron, the true value of the official visit came from getting to know his future teammates.
“It all starts with the coaching staff,” Sean Christmas said. “Without the coaches I don’t know if he would have considered going there. But maybe the biggest thing was getting to spend time with the players. They seem like great guys. It’s a competitive environment, but with no animosity.
Michael got to know players like Matt Lewis and Darius Banks and there was no thought about fighting for minutes or anything like that. Everything just sort of clicked.”
