Today was the first day back to school for students at Ferris State.  Our players had physical testing at 7:00 this morning.  That aspect is handled by other members of our staff. Not being a natural morning person, I gladly sat that one out.  I did, however, get up at 7:30 to get things ready for the day.  Before making a quick breakfast, I checked my email and dealt with some recruiting emails that needed to be addressed.  Then it was off the work out at 8:30.  I was finished with my workout and into the office at 10:00.

    To start my day in the off-season, the first thing I do in the office is check my email for recruiting related correspondence.  At this time in the season, not only am I working on ironing out the exact recruiting schedule for the next several months, I am also setting up phone calls with various recruits on our shortlist.  NCAA rules allow us to call recruits one time per week after June 15th of their junior year.  However, if a recruit calls us, we are allowed to talk to them.  Since making a personal connection is so important in the recruiting process, it is my goal to get our prospects on the phone as early as possible.

    About 11:00 I met with Tia, our head coach, for about 20 minutes.  The meeting covered a variety of topics including player academics, scheduling notes for the upcoming week and semester, NCAA interpretations regarding using players as demonstrators for my upcoming appearance at the Premier Volleyball Club Coaching Symposium, etc..  

    After that meeting I went back to working on recruiting paperwork.  We use a web based software program to organize our recruits called Front Rush.  Front Rush is the best thing that happened to my job at Ferris.  We first started using the software last January and it has more than proven itself worth every penny.  The story behind the creation of the company is pretty cool, too.  Last month, I actually had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Front Rush Co-Founder Brad Downs.  If I ever find myself without a coaching job, I wouldn't surprise myself to end up working for the company.  

    Anyway, all of that is for a later time.  Back to the day.... I spent about an hour writing emails to recruits, tagging them for easy recall, organizing our shortlist and reviewing the grades of our players from the fall semester.  I finished calculating our team GPA before leaving for the next part of the day.  One of the bigger responsibilities of my job is serve as an academic monitor for our players so these grades mean a great deal to me.
    
    At around noon I left the office to go to a hair appointment.  Hey, I've been out of town for almost a month, this WAS an absolute must!!  This was followed by a great  lunch with one of my favorite people in the world!  It was great to catch up and just chat about some coaching stuff and just life in general.
    
    From about 3:00 until 6:30 I worked on several tasks.  90% of them were in some way related to recruiting.  The other 10% included directing our 3 student workers on their current projects, catching up with a player who stopped in to say hi, and filling out a travel request for the upcoming weekend of travel to Ohio.  

    So you might say this sounds just like a regular office job.  Much of the time, it is.  There is a difference in that, tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. I'll be able to mix that up by spending a lot of the day in the volleyball arena.  Much of the reason I was so drawn to coaching as a profession was the variety it included.  I love being in the gym, but just like anything else, it loses its novelty at times.  It's a great balance to have responsibilities in an office setting as well.  

    My job is not quite done for the day.  When I finish writing this, I will spend about an hour or so on my recommendation for our spring setter training plan.  I enjoy the planning part of it because it allows for vision and creativity.  It requires me to know exactly what the team needs from the setters and what the setters need from the their touches on the ball and feedback from the coaches.  This part of coaching allows us to focus on building the house from the foundation up.  It's an exciting journey that we'll begin tomorrow.  The results won't be truly known until the end of the 2010 fall season.

   Finally, before going to sleep, I will work on my personal development.  Traditionally, I am reading a few books at any one time.  The one I am most focused on working through right now is The 8th Habit by Stephen R. Covey.  I'll spend some time talking about some of the content of it at a later time.  Until then...thank you for indulging in my day!