How to deal with Jake

That kid Smiggles comes to mind 😆

I wouldn’t say our biggest worry is what he knows about our recruiting class (unless he knows names or too much info to put together who they are), but rather what he is telling kids. I am not saying to negative recruit, because as we know, it doesn’t work (and if you are, stop, it will hurt more than it helps no matter what you think), but somehow the truth needs to be shown. Things he has mentioned to me about Harden make me 100% positive he put down our education program of getting a masters by saying it will be harder to find a job in state with a masters than with a ba. I see this as BS, but i don’t know for certain.

He has also, on several occasions, has tried to convince me the olivet education isn’t as bad as i think. Their average ACT score is rising (it was a 19 in 2006 per the Princeton Review which has since been taken down from the website), their pre-med program does get a pretty high percentage of people into med school, etc, etc. While I know better than to believe him, high school kids are pretty dumb and don’t. They see this:

Both schools are Liberal Arts
One school is 15K less

We can’t do much about price, but any of us with real world experience have sold products that were more expensive. What’s funny is that in the business world, no “good” company wants to be the cheapest because everyone wants to “add value”. Olivet is getting by based on being the cheapest and somehow we need to expose their flaws, even if it’s through brutal honesty.

Luckily, I think we are only crossed on 1 recruit, but it’s a good one, Jeff Shade. We can’t let someone as intelligent as him throw away his future at olivet. I would rather lose a recruit to hope (as much as that pains me) because at least it’s a decent school.

I think we need to be more careful with what we tell him. He is definately a great recruiter, and I’m sure he finds a way to downplay the whole part about the average act score, etc. Look at Kinsey. He ended up going to olivet after we thought he was sold on k. And with Harden, we didn’t even know he was really looking into olivet…

I’ve never trusted the guy and I still don’t. I like the disinformation idea.

Smiggles is a perfect kid we can use. We can play up the OLY card on Taber and say look at Dekker and the time he dropped. I’d rather sacrifice a kid we don’t want than someone like Shade…

@KG from KZOO wrote:

Smiggles is a perfect kid we can use. We can play up the OLY card on Taber and say look at Dekker and the time he dropped. I’d rather sacrifice a kid we don’t want than someone like Shade…

We have his info right? Have him fill out a questionnaire

Is this kis really that bad? He’s pretty fast.

Yes, he is terrible and if we get him we won’t have another shot at an OLY kid for another 4 years…

Here is all I could find:

Email: redswimmer@hotmail.com
Mobile: 248.535.6615
Land Phone: 248.340.8932

(thank you facebook)

is any of this even legal?

@El Duderino wrote:

is any of this even legal?

Unethical? Immoral? Perhaps. Illegal? Dude, this is d3swimming, not Indiana Basketball or the New England Patriots..

I think this is funny because Jake used to complain about Olivet’s underhanded recruiting techniques when he was at Hope.

I was looking at the notes Pfau and Groth sent me last year and Olivet had not even entered into the picture for Kinsey and Harden until late — and it was down to us and MSU I believe.

One other thing we have going for us when recruiting against Olivet is Nationals. We can state we focus more on nationals than league meet and point to how well we finished at nationals compared to the other MIAA teams. Every high school swimmer sees himself on the national team.

I was just told this weekend about an OLY kid that was recently pulled off the bottom of the pool during practice and revived. The kid spent time in the hospital and has been fitted with a pacemaker. He will never swim again. I was told he did visit K. If this is the Smiggles kid I would hope you wouldn’t have him be the center of any disinformation effort with Jake. That would be reprehensible and if it ever became known that you did use him in this way it would do permanent damage to your future recruiting efforts and the program.

Wow, I think someone mentioned he had a seizure, but I had no idea it was that serious. New suggestion: despite him being an annoying kid, it would be a great PR move for a couple of the guys on the team, maybe even a coach to call him and send a “get well soon” card — that kind of stuff gets around, as well as being simply a nice thing to do.