woulax23 wrote:i disagree with the idea that smaller private schools will be able to compete over the next five to ten years with teams like western and southern oregon, who are public, which makes them cheaper and easier to get into. i know that two guys are coming to our school for sure who are pleased because it is a public school in oregon with a team besides u of o or osu. i guess im not saying they wont compete, but they will have a more difficult job in recruiting
I know this post was written eons ago, but nevertheless, here's why woulax23's argument suffers:
Schools like Whitman attract people from across the U.S., including the East Coast. Whitman in particular is a top-tier liberal arts school, offers students many outdoor opportunities, and will basically provide most people with an excellent college experience. While many out-of-staters flock to Whitman each year, no one in their right mind would travel all the way from, say, Maryland to attend SOU or WOU. Now, I don't mean to knock these schools when I write this. Rather, my point is that there are a hundred SOUs and WOUs across this country--why go all the way out west when someone can get the same education at home and pay in-state tuition? (Plus, can you imagine some dude wearing a pink polo shirt with the collar popped up, strutting around SOU or WOU? That kind of behavior barely passes muster in Walla Walla, for crying out loud.)
Bottom line: Schools like Whitman, Linfield, PLU, etc. (and to a lesser extent, Montana) attract people outside of the West Coast/PNW. Thus, while these schools may have to pick from a smaller pool of players, they will typically enjoy substantially more favorable ratios of outstanding players to newbies. This has been the case in the past, and I predict that it will continue be the case over the next few years as well.
Now, the key variable in all of this, especially for Whitman (and I'm speaking from experience here) is to get these guys from MD, NY, CT, etc. to actually play when they arrive on campus. For instance, we had an absolutely sick attackman from Maryland a few years back who, had he played, would have rivaled Sadler for top attackman in the league (and yes, Sadler was the top attackman in the league, lest we forget, even when Whitman played in the A division). Unfortunately, the hippies got to him, and before you knew it, he was walking around wearing hemp necklaces and talking about taking solitary hikes in the wilderness to find himself--a travesty in every sense of the word. After much pleading, we finally got him to commit to play. He scored something like 5 goals in the lone game in which he played (after not touching his stick for almost a year and without a single practice), before he broke our hearts and left the team for good.
God damned hippies.
