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- [00:02]
A
Dive into the dynamic world of high school sports. Whether you're a seasoned athletic director, a newcomer to the field, or simply curious to learn more about this exciting profession, this podcast is your go to resource for inspiration, education, and a deeper understanding of the game changing decisions that shape the world of high school athletics. Welcome back to AD360. I'm Greg Vanderbait and today we have a great episode for you today. Today we're going to be taking a look at national letter of intent ceremonies. This is a type of event that's changed quite a bit over the years, and there's certainly the addition of early signing date periods in December that kind of throw a little bit of a wrench in the works on top of your typical February one. So ads need to get their plans in place early. So we're really excited to talk through this one. As always, my co host Scott Rosenberg joins us today. Scott, I heard that you just got back from Austin yesterday. How was that experience?
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B
I. I try and get a Texas accent. Not gonna work well, though. It was great.
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A
We had it.
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B
I think it was really well attended. I planned on wearing like some cowboy hat. I don't have one, but we gave out these cool shirts. Austin. And some logo stuff on the background. And I'd be wearing this one, except it's wet from the washing machine. I'm that guy that comes home and throws everything in the wash, like right away.
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A
So I'm right there with you, pal, anytime I travel. Step one, go to the mud room, open up the washer and get it taken care of. Right.
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B
It's not allowed in the house. Um, but the, the. I thought the convention was great. I thought the group from Texas did an amazing job setting it up. Everybody who ran it, from like the vendors to the, the people setting up the electric everything, it was really well done. Austin's a very cool city. If you like country music, you're in good shape and just. We had a really, we had a really good time. The booth was. Was busy and I enjoyed every part of it.
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A
That's fantastic. Well, definitely good times. Anytime you're down in Austin, it sounds like you're around some great company. So really good to hear that you had a good time while you're down there. Well, I think that we'll go ahead and dive in and get back to chatting athletic director related items. You know, today's topic you and I had talked about, just from the timeliness of it, signing day ceremonies. I know some of that had just taken place a couple weeks ago. There's more that are on the docket for many athletic directors in the coming weeks. They're stressful times. You know, it's. It's something that has continued to grow, evolve, change. So I think that it's going to be a good topic for you and I to. To kind of go through today, and I'll start things off. First question I'm going to ask you. What are some of the key steps in the process when it comes to planning an NLI ceremony?
- [02:39]
B
Yeah, great question. A lot goes into it. I think first you even start thinking about budget at the beginning, like, how big do you want to go on this kind of stuff? I would throw out, I guess two perspectives on that. One would be cautionary, meaning if you do it once for one group, I can guarantee you that the subsequent groups coming up are going to expect the same or better. So like you said, that bar so high, it's hard, but you can't go backwards like that senior group. Got it. You think the junior parents, you know, are going to be seniors next year aren't going to expect the same thing. So it's not that you shouldn't set the bar high, but you just have to understand that, like, there's going to be an expectation level once you do. So you need to figure out who's spending money on it. Can you get into your budget? We talked about budget in the last couple weeks. The. We're going to get into a lot of this, I think, in the next bunch of questions. But like the technology side of things. Who do you invite? What time of the day should it take place to maximize who can be there? Do you want to have your entire student body there? Is this something that you want to celebrate with the entire school as opposed to just a few people? Maybe just the senior class, since it's really like, you know, their, their group or teammates. Do you have coaches that are outside of the district that you want to have there and making sure that they can get there because they may have day jobs and it may not be as easy for them to get there. Who's going to be doing the majority of the speaking? Who's going to be doing the majority of like the back end work, setting up and things like that. So I think there's a. A ton that goes into it. Again, even, who are you inviting? Like, what kids are you inviting? Is it just a D1 ceremony? What about the kids that are at the D3 level? Do you do that at a separate one or do you do them all together? Club coaches. An interesting one to talk about. Like, there was a time when I think that there was a lot of, you know, this be fighting. I, I got to say it out loud. There's just a lot of like, you know, infighting between club coaches and high school coaches. And I mean I think that's an old way of looking at things and you need to sunset that belief. But they've had a, probably a really big role in getting kids or most of these sports in a way getting kids into school. So are they invited to the school event? That's kind of stuff I would be thinking about. What did I miss?
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A
I think those are all great points. You know, like, first thing that I thought of was venues. What are you going to have available? Schedule conflicts. Are there certain events that are going to be taking place on signing day where maybe you can't get into your gym. You need to find a secondary venue. Something that always popped out to me was you kind of mentioned it. You know, you've got to almost reverse engineer it where how many kids are participating this and then the difficult piece of where do you draw the line and who's participating in this. Right. You know, and that's, that's a really tough line to, to really determine, you know, because you want to celebrate every kid. You know, there may be individual student athletes that are walking on at a university or they're going to a D3 as you'd mentioned, where maybe it is they're committing to play there, but they're not necessarily signing a letter of intent, if you will. So those are difficult decisions that have to get made. The timeline of it. I know we'll talk a little bit more on some of our questions we got for one another. Something that always stressed me out was just the timeline of it. How many kids are going to be participating in it, how long does each one get to have presented on, if you will, and which coaches are going to be speaking for them. So there's just so many elements to it. It's not as simple as just like, hey everybody show up in the auditorium. We're going to watch Scott sign his letter of intent. It's, there's a level of pageantry with it and you can't really, you can't go into half hearted and you have to make sure that you got everything lined up. The facilities people were always one of the first calls that I made to make sure that they could assist us in sign and setting up and everything like that. So great points and not trying to stress the 80s out, you know, as we're recording this, about to roll into that. That winter break, if you will. But many of them are going to have to start turning their attention to this as they get back in early January. Right.
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B
We always talk just kind of like about celebrating the good stuff and trying to put the perspective of parents into this and like families and I mean, this is a culminating activity, right? Like, this is a culmination of probably kids who are at least D1 kids, like probably participating in that sport since they were in kindergarten, maybe before. So, like, it's a really big deal and I wouldn't want to put pressure on anybody either. But you need to do it right. You need to figure it out. It doesn't mean it has to cost a lot, but I think you need to, like, do it right and figure out ways to get it done. And we talked a million times about if you don't have the ability to do it, hey, you're not a great slideshow guy. You're not a great this, you're not a great that. You've got people in the building, you've got kids. I guarantee you, if there's a. There's a kid in a senior class right now that would be thrilled to death if you would ask them to help you with something like this, and they're probably way more talented than you.
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A
Absolutely. Maximize the resources at hand and get your community involved, right?
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B
Absolutely. What would you say are some of the best practices for coordinating with families and coaches for these events? Like that first step of figuring out dates and times. How do you communicate that out?
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A
I think, number one, plan early. These are discussions that should be taking place well in advance of the signing day itself. Something that was a best practice that I've seen is as you're kind of having those, let's call them the onboarding meetings for the season of sport, start planting that seed. You know, hey, we're going to have some discussion about signing day periods. Those of you that have seniors that are looking to go next level, be on the lookout for communication from our office to let you know what's going to be taking place. And that that planning early too is you can kind of set some expectations. You know, I think that early on, if you're letting them know, like, hey, this is kind of our standard format for our signing day ceremonies, then it gives you something to go back on. If you start getting some pushback from families that are wanting to be a little bit more elaborate or do bigger things than maybe are a within budget or B within timeline. Right. So I feel like the planning early is a big piece of it. Collaborate with your coaches. Make sure that your coaches are a part of this. Whether to your point, I really like mentioning the, let's call them the off campus coaches, those club coaches, those are coaches that are a big part of their, of that student athlete's life. And in some sports the club element is heavily recruited and that coach may have played a significant role or the largest role in helping that student athlete get to that next level. So make sure you can collaborate with your coaches and have them get an understanding of what they're going to speak on, the time frame in which they can present on know. Kind of you would like to think that they would know what's appropriate and what's not appropriate from a storytelling perspective. But also make sure that they have a little bit of knowledge as to what would be deemed as appropriate for, for stories for these types of situations. Other pieces that always come to mind. You want to organize some media coverage, get in contact with your local papers, make sure that you're publicizing this. It's not only about celebrating the kid, it's about celebrating your sports programs too because when they their successes are your athletic department successes. So find ways to get local media engaged. And then I'd say the last piece, as you're kind of coordinating this with your, with your families and your coaches, make it memorable. This is for the kids. This isn't for the coaches. This isn't for, even for the moms and dads, yes, it's a big part for them, but ultimately it's for the kids. So you got to try and find ways to make it memorable. And in those early planning periods, kind of drilling that home and communicating it to the families and coaches that this is what is important. This is an experience for the student athletes, a culmination of what they've done. Let's highlight it. Let's make sure it's a great memory for them. What are your thoughts though on that, Scott?
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B
Great answers. I mean listen, let's start out with the very basics. You better make sure you have all the kids on your list that are. Yes, like you know, who are going to be playing at college. Especially if you're going to be going down to like that D2, D3 like you know, where maybe they're not even having an official signing. Like you can't miss a kid. And so I, I think like you need to communicate out like in school if you do announcements, if you have sign boards up throughout the building. Like, hey, contact AD Rosenberg here. If you're planning on playing college sports next year, early their senior year, they may not have an answer yet. They may not where they're going, but like, you need them on the radar. Can you imagine missing a kid and don't think it hasn't happened and probably happened to me. I'm not going to lie, you know, especially if, like you don't have that coach who's really the promoting kind of coach who's in your ear. So like, you can't miss that. So send stuff home to communicate. Home early. Listen, if your child is playing on playing college sports, please fill out this form. Please get in touch with me. Like, let's shift some of that responsibility to other people just so you don't miss something. Like, that's probably the most basic thing to say. But I swear, I bet people miss that. And I understand, especially if it's a newer ad. Yeah, there's so many crazy situations that can come up. Here's one for you. Think about. I mean, this is me. I lived it in two different ways. One, a situation where you don't offer the sport in the school. The kid goes to your school and is signing to go on to college. Is that kid invited to the signing ceremony? I'll take it one level further. What if a kid goes to your school, plays a club sport that you offer but doesn't play it in your building, just plays the club sport. They're your kid in your school. Do you do something for them? Right. Like those. Both those situations came up for me over the years. I'm not going to tell you my answer until you tell me what you think you know.
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A
And it's funny because the ones that come to mind, exact same scenarios happen to us too, you know, because you would have these student athletes, both scenarios, A, they participated in the sport, Southern California gymnastics. Not, not necessarily offered in the section that I was in. Right. Was one example. And then another example to your point, you know, they play this sport that you offer, but they don't play it for your school.
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B
Both.
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A
Both came up and honestly, both of which we allowed and celebrated them because they were signing a letter of intent. We wanted to celebrate the student athlete. They were still a member of our campus community. They may not have been directly involved with our athletic department, but they were involved within our campus community. So we wanted to celebrate that for them. But it certainly does kind of open up Pandora's box. And you've got to be a little bit careful with that because Say you have whatever your guidelines are, whatever your rules are for your signing day ceremonies. The, the second you bend it a little bit, you better be able to bend a little bit more because there's going to be other asks and it'll go back to well, hey, there was a Preston. You did this. You know, so how did you handle that situation?
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B
I mean I'm not as nice as you. Let's be start out with that. Everybody knows that. To the two different scenarios. Like if they played the sport for. If we didn't offer the sport in the school and they did it 100 I felt like we should honor them. Like we didn't give you the opportunity to play for our school. You, you know, you earned this on the side maybe even harder. Right. Because you didn't get to just like come, come to practice after school and roll right into practice. You had to like get there. So yeah. 100 we had those kids. I drew my line in the sand when it came to sports that we offered in the school and a kid decided not to play it for our school. The only, the only stipulation like outlier in that is if they wore USA on their jersey and that's not unbelievable. Soccer academy, that's U.S. united States of America. So if they were like participating at that level and playing like for a United States amateur team, something like that, and they necessarily. They probably couldn't play, let's say for our school. They weren't like, it just didn't fit their schedule. I was, that was my thing. Exception to the rule. I'm sure that I, I took some, I know I took some heat for those things but I don't know. I was just like for those kids who chose to play club and again probably if it was my kid, I'd want it to be done another way. So I should have probably looked at it like that. But like let the club have the ceremony then for you and I'm not going to have it here at the school when you could have been helping us out and making us better and you chose not to.
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A
I, I wish I could have navigated the political waters where I was at to be able to do that because it would have probably made our ceremonies a little bit shorter in some scenarios.
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B
There you go.
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A
Well, talking about, you know, length of the, the ceremonies and, and things of that nature. Let's, let's talk a little bit about, you know, what are the essential logistics. Who do we got to get involved, whether it's the, the venue, you know, know, technology, elements of it, decorations, what is everything for the. The event itself, you know, the. The nuts and bolts of it. What are things that you need to really think about and collaborate with folks on?
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B
I mean, I think it differs a little bit by if it's, let's say, if you're doing like a separate D1 to D2 to D3, just because there's different levels of participation, maybe from even college coaches, what they have to do officially to get it done. But again, plan early. I love what you said about like, the press. So create a press release. Make sure your internal teams can help you out. So maybe you have a media class in the school, Adam, and not everybody from the media is going to be able to get there. Maybe at one of your schools that you were at, but maybe not necessarily at the small group 1, 500 kids school I had because they tend to be on like the same day. These signing ceremonies, they can only get so many places. So you want to make something special that you can at least send out to the media after it happens if they can't get there to cover it themselves. But that notification, like early and often is certainly helpful. I think every school should find a way to budget for like one of those step and repeats, like big signage behind you. And my. I would say I went too small the first time I did it because it wasn't big enough for the picture. Like a lot of times, you know, you had a bunch of kids, you had to move backwards for the picture, but then the step and repeat behind them was too small and you saw this stuff on the outside. Somebody could probably Photoshop that, not me. So I love having those step and repeats. Or again, maybe you have a program where you can use a graphic, but I love having that again. Who's doing the food? Do you have a contract with the school? Like during the school day, does the food service have to provide food for you or can you go outside? There's different contracts out there for different schools. Making sure again that you've got that custodial staff, your technology staff. If you've got one of those big dropdown screens that you can use in an auditorium and have that as a background, like, make sure it's done. Make sure it's done early. Get the. Get there either early or that day if it's an early ceremony, or make sure that you're putting the time aside. Like if you've got three important games that day to be at and things that in the evening, that's not a great idea. So, yeah, lots of Logistics go into it. What I miss, spot on.
- [18:20]
A
You know, I mean, the, the first, the first contact for me was always our venue management personnel. You know, just like the folks that are helping us, whether we're pulling bleachers out, putting them in, getting lights turned on, whatever needs to be getting done for the venue they were having them at. More often than not, they were in our. In our gym, which was great. The scheduling component of it, as you mentioned, you know, are you doing it during the school day? More often than not, we either did it before or after school just because it allowed for easier, easier commuting, if you will, for the coaches that may be showing up or the family members. You know, it's not just dropped in the middle of the day during, you know, their. They're 10:30 in the morning. Hey, everybody go to the auditorium. So we, we tended to do it either before or after school, but with that, you know, it came back to also, you got to communicate that to the security personnel. There's going to be additional vehicles coming on campus for this event. The decorations piece, that was always something that was of high stress because you wanted to make sure that you got it in early enough and that your orders were taken care of, you had the budget for it. I do like your point about the step and repeat. Can't stress that enough. One of the practices that we ended up doing was we would have the coach get up there, speak about the student athlete, and then the student athlete go up, you know, shake the coach's hand, step over right next to the step and repeat. Boom, there's your photo. Next one. So then we had everybody in front of the step and repeat. And then we tried to get a large group photo near the end, but it was always outside of the step and repeat. So you at least have it. Whereas the one good one and then the other piece too, that I thought was great that you mentioned was, you know, these are all on the same day. So you're not always going to be able to get media coverage. Every single one of your events, leverage social media, make sure that you got somebody that is helping take care of you and getting that content that you can put out, not only on your school website, put it out on social media and publicize it. You know, celebrate the kids and get that information out. Because you may not have that local sports beat reporter showing up, but you can certainly get them to retweet something when they see it, you know, so those are just some of the things that come top of mind for me.
- [20:33]
B
I Think, I mean, I agree. One thing I, I'm thinking about as you're speaking is it is about the student athlete for sure. But I have to say it also is important for a school athletic department to look good in situations like this. And what I mean is this, if you're a private school, like down the road, you're probably competing with another private school for some of these top kids. And if they see like, look what this school does for their student athletes at this point, it could make a difference in the decision making process. Public schools may be fighting to keep their kids at home from going to a private school. Same idea, right? I mean, heck, I might say this on an episode. There's opportunities. Do you as a public school have a signing ceremony for or a private school for the 8th graders who are coming in? We started seeing that in New Jersey where like the private schools kicked it off first a little bit. And like, hey, I'm gonna have a little ceremony when that kid says he's coming to my private school. I don't, there's nothing wrong with it. But then what would, should the public schools be doing the same thing? I mean, I got authorization, I've said this before, from my board of education to give full scholarships to all my public school kids who lived in town. They were allowed to come to my school on a full ride. They didn't have to pay at all. Celebrate that, right?
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A
That's great marketing right there. That's, that's just solid marketing.
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B
Yeah. Yeah.
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A
I mean I certainly am glad that we, during my tenure we didn't have to think about the, the 8th grade commitment ceremony because then you start going down a rabbit hole. It's like, what do we do for the transfers?
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B
Because, oh man, the portal, man, you get them in the portal, you got the portal ceremony.
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A
Oh, that's great.
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B
You know, one thing you said that I should comment on too is, is as a company, we oftentimes talk about how we can help people with like pre game during the game and post game with all the amazing tools we have. And you mentioned post game. Like it's not just about that ceremony. It's about what do you do with all the pictures, the video and stuff like that. Post game, make sure they're on your website, make sure they're on your social media. Get them out to people like that becomes important too. It's not just the ceremony.
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A
100%. Absolutely. Couldn't agree with you more.
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B
How about the journey? Like I mentioned at the very beginning here, this is a culmination of probably a lot of people's efforts to get that student athlete there. So any thoughts on how to make that special and to really, like, celebrate the journey of getting there?
- [23:09]
A
Yeah, I think a good approach of this is you want a storyteller. You know, you don't want to just get up there and ramble off statistics and, you know, awards that were given. You want to spend some time and learn a little bit about their journey. Right. So gather some information on that student athlete, whether that's, I mean, obviously the first stop. You're thinking of the coaches. Right. But also gather, you know, some of the campus community involvement, speak with some of their teachers, speak with maybe some of their siblings, their parents, perspective. Get some information about their journey as a. As an individual. Right. And then highlight it with some of their key milestones. You know, like what were some of the key moments during their. Their student athlete career, their high school career, even earlier. To really kind of paint a picture of this isn't just a single day where they're signing their letter of intent and they're moving on to the next big thing. It's really telling that story of how it started, where it's at and potentially where it's going. Right. I think that's a great way of kind of making it personalized. And you don't necessarily have to do this yourself as the athletic director because you're going to have coaches come in and speak on this. You can guide them and say, hey, here are some key things that we've seen is really successful. When you're. When you're celebrating these student athletes, don't just list off numbers and stats, wins and losses. Talk about them as a person, talk about some of the struggles they've had, how they were able to overcome this, and really allow there to be that overall view of the culmination, as you put. I think that's a great way of looking at it because it truly is from the time that they started playing that sport, some of them may have started as a very young child to where they're currently at. I think it's a great way of really engaging the audience and also celebrating not only the student athlete, the. But it also celebrates those that help them get to that place too, you know, and it's. It's celebrating the. The parents that helped put them there. It's celebrating the. This. The teachers that helped them, you know, whether it was, you know, on the field or off the field issues that were helping them through it. So, like really kind of painting that Picture storytelling, that journey of them. What are your thoughts?
- [25:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know whose term it was, but it takes a village. I've heard that a lot of times. And like this is. Fits right into that thought process. It takes a village to get these kids to this place. Nobody does it on their own. So it's also making sure that you recognize that and you recognize those people who are part of that process. I think that's really important. I think that you said at the beginning, like this should needs to be an equity part of this too. I mean, there's going to be a kid who Maybe is a D1 kid who signs that like D Duke for basketball. And there's also going to be a D1 kid. I'm not naming a school so I get yelled at, but like there's going to be a kid who signs at a lower level basketball school. And that, that's great too. Right. But you can't just have 16 minutes of the ceremony on the kid who goes to Duke. I'm a Carolina fan. I don't even want five minutes for the Duke guy. But you're not going to, you know, celebrate that kid for 16 minutes and then all of a sudden celebrate the other kid for two minutes. So if you're working with your coaches, it's like, listen, you have three minutes to speak. You've got five minutes to speak about that kid I ran into. Sometimes I want, I would do like a slideshow for kids and I wanted pictures from when they were, they first started playing the sport and then like moving up right through. And some families were just better at either getting back to you or having that. I think probably more now with camera phones. I mean, I'm, they existed when I was in AD too, but I, you know, I think like, there's probably more pictures available these days than there used to be. But even that, like you struggle. All right. Greg's parents sent in 13 pictures for the slideshow and Scott's parents sent in one and a half and the half one, you know, looks terrible. So that's where it gets sometimes a little tougher when in terms of equity, but at least in terms of how you celebrate the kid, what you say, how long you have to speak about a kid, I think it's important to try and keep that sort of balanced.
- [27:19]
A
I really like the equity piece and you definitely made me laugh. When you're using the Duke example, we, we can refer to the other one as a three directional school, you know, so you got Duke or You got the three directional school signings. Both, both are important, both are very, very critical, you know, so no, I think that's a good way of looking at it is the equity piece is always extremely important because you want to celebrate them regardless if they're going to the number one school in the country for said sport or if they're going to a school that you've got to Google, you know, you still want to, you want to be able to celebrate them. Okay, so next one that we'll kind of talk about, are there ways to recognize students who are still pursuing opportunities or competing at non scholarship levels?
- [28:08]
B
You know, Cole is our producer and most of the questions that we get, I'm like, he's not stumping Scott on that. But this one, for the first piece of it, I was like, man, for the kids who are still pursuing opportunities, like, that's hard. Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna like sort of maybe balk on this question because somebody else may have a better answer than me. Because right now I would say every kid in the school might tell you that they're pursuing the opportunity. I want to have a ceremony, I want everybody there. And then it doesn't come to fruition or it really just was never a thing. So I, I would say though, all right, as I'm thinking, have one ceremony at the end of the year, I'll throw it out there. Like anybody who missed it, like, you know, right at the end of the school year, let's do one more and let's celebrate you guys who weren't committed to at the beginning of the year. I just saved myself on that one.
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A
You know what though? Like, I mean, I'm gonna basically reiterate what you just said, because what you just said is exactly what we did. Because we had those scenarios where, you know, whether it was a football player, lacrosse player, insert whatever sport you want. We had some that were uncommitted or maybe something just fell into their lap late. They, they're going to a mid major school, you know, or they're, they're going to a D2 or something like that. They came on late and they got an offer late because recruiting, you know, we all know that that changes with the wins, right? So we would do a late signing day ceremony specifically for that to where you could add in those student athletes and still celebrate them. Something that was interesting that changed during my tenure. There was. This is probably going to give you some, some pain here, Scott, hearing this. Many ads will probably cringe at this, but we originally were you were signing for something. You had to be essentially signing for a scholarship. And over time, being at a private school, there's obviously different pressures from your clientele, if you will, over time that became you were committing to play said sport at particular university, which then expanded our ceremonies out exponentially because you were walking on somewhere, you were going to a D3, et cetera, you know, like all those different things. But they did the one piece that we put in there to kind of put some guardrails there was. You had to have a letter from the coach saying, okay, Scott is committed to come play for three directional you. And that way we at least knew, okay, this is legit. This isn't somebody just trying to crash a signing day ceremony or prank us or whatever. But yeah, I think that. Great question by Cole. Certainly one that is not easy to navigate because there's a lot of student athletes, especially in this day and age, with the way the recruiting is going to be. They may not be decided on signing day. They may be kind of testing the waters a little bit and seeing what more they can get. So certainly to your, to your point, Scott, a late signing day ceremony, not a bad thing to keep in your back pocket for some of those that may come in late or God forbid, maybe there's one that you forgot and slip through the cracks and you're able to still get them in. Right? So great question, Cole.
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B
You're gonna have a special ceremony. You just decided the kid you missed has like the best ceremony because they're by themselves. The other piece, though you mentioned was kind of like the non signing ones. I mean, I know we had done this early. One of the D3 coaches that we were dealing with created her own celebratory like form, as opposed to a signing form. It was more like a celebration form. Krista Racine, Drew University, small university here in New Jersey.
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A
I.
- [31:52]
B
She had that for her kids and I thought that was like the best idea because it was nice to have something for them to sign to. We what? My favorite gift. I'm probably jumping the gun on the last question, but the favorite thing I did for the kids is we got these pen sets and they were like logo pen sets. The. It came in a nice case and then they had logo pens inside. And I called that like the official signing day pen for the school. Well, if you don't need to sign something, you don't really need the pen. And it was something the kids would take with them. So I loved having those and putting them on the table and that was my little gift to the kids. But you need something to sign so like create it yourself, who cares? Create something that is, could they can keep and hold on to and frame or whatever else and that you can use the pen for.
- [32:40]
A
Absolutely. Couldn't agree with you more.
- [32:44]
B
Some common challenges to overcome. These, like anything that sticks out that we talked about doing a lot, but any, any like stories, experiences that you're saying that was a challenge.
- [32:57]
A
You know, I think that the big challenge was always just schedule conflicts, you know, whether that's a schedule conflict with a more multi sport athlete, schedule conflict within your venues themselves of where you're going to be able to have to do it. That was always something that was top of mind. Right when we got the, the dates, it was immediately like, okay, look at the calendar, what do we got going on? And it wasn't just day of that you had to worry about what was held in the gym the night before. Is there going to be enough turnaround time for us to, you know, strike bleachers, pull things out, you know, get everything set up? Budgetary constraints, I mean that's always something that you've got to think about. I know we've kind of hammered on that a lot, but maybe you have a larger than normal signing class, maybe you had budget like hey, you know, annually we typically see this large signing class of 10 kids. I don't know what happened this year, but we got 20 and we've now just doubled everything. Right in terms of that. The, the one thing earlier on was, you know, kind of where do you draw that line in the sand in terms of who participates, who doesn't? Because you're gonna, you're, you're not going to be right or wrong either way because quite frankly, you're gonna, you're gonna upset people on either side. Either I'm getting left out because I'm not signing for a scholarship or why are they included? Because I thought this was scholarship signings only, you know, so you're kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't there. So I think that that's kind of a big challenge. And then setting proper expectations is always a challenge because no matter how many times you hammer it home and you communicate it, there's always going to be somebody that wants to do something bigger, better, more extraordinary. Hey, we want to do it televised or, you know, we're going to go on this show to, to do this. And those were some of the things that we would encounter. And you just kind of weathered it the best that you could. And I would say the, the biggest challenge was always the unknown curveballs that you got. Without fail, we would always print up. I loved your, your example of the pens. We had the pens, right, because we thought that was something cool to do. We had little like name plates that we would, you know, get made up and it would have the school logo on of where they were signing. And without fail, every single signing time, last minute, oh, I changed, I'm not going here, I'm going there.
- [35:21]
B
And you're like, I don't think we.
- [35:23]
A
Have enough time to get this printed. Or if you tried to print it, just kind of, that was those little things that are just, to the outsider, you may not even notice that caused us levels of anxiety. It's like, do we have enough time to run this up to the printer and get it done? So back to your equity piece. Everybody gets the exact same thing. So those were the types of things that kind of gave you a little bit of a, if you will. But what about yourself?
- [35:48]
B
I love what you said about like making everybody happy. I mean, my 13 year old daughter would say, I'm an OP. Like I, I, I, I was an OP to somebody all the time. Like somebody would not be happy in this mix. So I guess maybe it's a matter of trying to keep as many people happy as you can and then just sticking to what you think is the right thing to do or your school district thinks is the right thing to do. Because it can be a mess. Weather can be an equalizer. Not in like San Diego usually. Not in San Diego usually, or places like that. But you know, come here and all of a sudden you've got a signing day plan where parents have taken off. You've got grandparents, you've got coaches coming in, your school coaches you got coverage for if it's during the day. And then all of a sudden you hit snow, let's say in the northeast. And think about the time of the year that these are taking place.
- [36:42]
A
Exactly.
- [36:43]
B
You know, a lot of them are in this like questionable weather time of the year. So now all of a sudden, like how does, how quickly does that get planned? And obviously my advice would be, is have a snow date on there, right? Have like an inclement weather date. If we cancel on this day, then we're doing it this day. I would always give people a couple days in between. I wouldn't do it the next day because like, it's hard for somebody to plan maybe just the next day. But definitely have if you're in One of those geographically, you know, challenged weather environments. Something to consider.
- [37:20]
A
Definitely. Great thoughts on that front. I'm going to close this out with one last question for you.
- [37:26]
B
What were.
- [37:27]
A
What were some of your favorite signing, like, memories? Like something that sticks out to you the years that you did it. Do you have any that pop out to you as your favorite?
- [37:39]
B
No. That's a terrible answer.
- [37:43]
A
But honestly, though, I appreciate it. That's why people tune in, because we're just honest.
- [37:47]
B
It's true. Like, I. I think for me, they were all just as special because I knew how special they were for, like, the kids and their families and like that culminating event. And everybody was always just as happy as the next person the next year. Whatever school they were going to, they finally made the decision. They had a coach who was interested in them coming to that college. And it. It was always just fun. And again, people tended to be so grateful. On the other hand, too, like, parents were mostly happy and grateful that you were able to have these ceremonies. So I don't honestly have one that sticks out. I do again, I would say, like, having those pens, when I thought about that idea, doing a slideshow at times, like those things made him more memorable. But I don't have one that sticks out. How about you?
- [38:38]
A
I got two for you. One is kind of. One is. Is a personal one for me that really meant a lot to me. And then the other one is just kind of a funnier one. So I'll start with a funnier one. Won't name names, won't even say the sport or anything like that. Not trying to throw anybody under the bus. But we got to a point where we had had a club coach come up and speak and was speaking about a student athlete. And we got to a point where we had to try and figure out how are we going to play them off, because they've long winded that they were going over time. And it just kind of politely got to the point where it's like, hey, we're just going to nudge student athlete and be like, hey, just. Just go up there and kind of like give them a hug right now. Let's. Let's kind of land the plane here. So that's one that sticks out to me. But I think probably my most memorable one was at my school. I originally came on and I was the director of sport performance. So I had pretty tight relationships with our student athletes, got to know them throughout the years. And then as I transitioned into an athletic director role, some of those student athletes that I had coached were now getting a signing day ceremony. So my first year as an ad, seeing some of the kids that I had coached from their freshman year up to that point, signing day ceremony, them coming up, and not only thanking me for what, what we did collectively in the weight room, you know, helping them get ready for their. Their next level journey, but also just like, hey, thanks for helping put this together. You know, listening to me as an athletic director, when I had any trials or tribulations helping to coordinate this event. And I had a. A pretty good number of kids that year where it felt pretty special because then as years go on, you know, you go from being in front of those kids every single day to now you're the guy up in the athletic director office. You don't have those. It's not the same level of relationship. I'll just be honest. So. So that was probably one of the most memorable ones for me because it was kind of emerging of the two different career paths that I was on, and probably one of the last ones where it was like I was really, truly connected very well to those kids. So that's one that'll always stick out to me.
- [40:41]
B
So love that. Love that.
- [40:43]
A
Yeah. So certainly good memories.
- [40:46]
B
What awards ceremonies, the Academy Awards, whatever. Like, the music starts playing in the background when somebody talk too long. Got somebody in the background either cue to add up or if somebody who can cut the mic, they just keep talking. Yeah, it just cuts. But I think a good way to end this is to, like, put a punctuation mark on what the way you said it, which is think about how great you felt in that ceremony that you just mentioned because you had more skin in the game. Whatever it is, that's what parents and like families, they feel all the time for putting in 14 years worth of work. Or maybe a club coach who you. You're thinking, do I invite that club coach? Because they've been with them for so long, they feel that same pride. So to be inclusive and try and get as many people to. To have that great feeling is an awesome way to think about these ceremonies.
- [41:38]
A
Yeah. And I think, I think that's a great way to kind of put a bow on this episode. I think that's going to do it for us. For this edition, AD360, National Signing Day is going to be here before we know it. So hopefully this information, you know, kind of our takes on it are a little bit helpful with you because, you know, as mentioned, it's. It's holiday season. Many folks are hopefully checking out for a little bit. But when you come back, it's all going to be there and ready to roll. So hopefully you can take some of this information with us. Scott, anything in closing before we sign off.
- [42:08]
B
Start playing it now. Happy holidays, everyone. You. And we'll see you after the holiday, right?
- [42:15]
A
Absolutely. Always a pleasure, Scott. Really appreciate it. And then lastly, if you liked what you heard today, please stay tuned for future episodes. Make sure you follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast from so you don't miss any new episodes and content. With that said, happy holidays to all of you. And from AD360, I'm Greg Vandermade.
- [42:35]
B
I'm Scott Rosenberg.
- [42:37]
A
Until next time, folks.