By Amanda Fletcher
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
There is no question that UCLA has a great athletic tradition. Nearly every team the Bruins field is competitive in its conference and is a national title contender. Much of this has to do with incredible coaching and training, but behind these factors lies the first step toward creating a winning team – recruiting.
Recruiting is what brings young athletes full of potential to UCLA and allows them to become legends like Lew Alcindor, Marques Johnson, Gail Devers and Lisa Fernandez.
UCLA spends between $500,000 to $1 million annually on its recruiting efforts. With the program’s 82 NCAA titles overall, it’s easy to say that the money is well spent.
But how is the money spent? The recruiting process is long and complicated. Director of Recruiting Michael Sondheimer calls it “an ongoing four-year process.”
Coaches travel the country attending every major event in their respective sports. Baseball coaches go to the Area Code games, where they find many of their recruits. Tennis coaches attend the hardcore under-17 and under-18 tournaments.
And sometimes the coaching staff just spots them. Men’s volleyball found out about Kevin Morrow, an opposite, when he came to watch his older brother Scott play middle blocker for the Bruins last season.
“The dad kept bringing the 6-foot-9 kid to the matches,” Bruin head coach Al Scates said. “It was kind of hard not to notice him.”
The UCLA athletic department also receives over 100 letters a week from high school students wanting to compete for UCLA. Often these letter are accompanied by highlight tapes. That’s how men’s basketball head coach Steve Lavin stumbled upon one of his top recruits.
“They were watching the tape and the kid was really good,” Sondheimer said. “It was one of those cases when everyone else missed on him.”
That was also how Scates came upon Jonathan Acosta, a 6-foot-4 outside hitter from Puerto Rico. “He sent us tape, and I was very impressed with him,” Scates said.
The men’s volleyball team, with 12 recruits, pulled in possibly their best recruiting class ever. Most of the class also signed in the fall before the Bruins won their 18th title in May.
“I don’t know why,” Scates said. “Maybe because they want to play at UCLA and win national championships and get a great education.”
The coaches and their staff only look at the top ninth- and 10th-graders in the country. They are tracked into the 11th grade and official recruitment begins Sept. 1 of their junior year in high school.
“Usually by the end of summer coaches know who they want,” Sondheimer said. “We get letters from seniors in high school, but by 12th grade it’s too late.”
Formal recruiting begins July 1 of senior year. This is when athletes are invited to go on recruiting trips to UCLA. They are taken to a game or match, shown the dorms and the fields, and introduced to the team. This is where UCLA gets them.
“We have a lot going for us,” Sondheimer said. “Few schools can match us academically, athletically and socially.”
With its combination of great athletics, the sunny Southern California weather and the excitement of L.A., for many athletes seeing UCLA is love at first sight. This is what happened to Olympian Natalie Williams of the women’s basketball team.
Heavily recruited by USC, she was brought by the Trojans to UCLA to watch a game which pitted USC against the Bruins. Williams liked UCLA so much that she returned twice; once on a recruiting trip and then permanently to play basketball wearing the blue and gold.
The youth sports camps that UCLA holds every summer are another way in which future Bruins are spotted. Volleyball first learned of outside hitter Gray Garret when he came to a summer camp. “Gray came to camp when he was a junior,” Scates said. “He’s gotten a lot stronger since then.”
Forward Maylana Martin, who starred for four years on the women’s basketball team before graduating last year, also came to one such camp. It was there that she got to know the coaches and had a chance to showcase her talent, long before regular recruits could.
So although there are many ways to get noticed by UCLA coaches, only an elite few will become Bruins.