Minus camps and road trips, football
The month of May is usually one massive road trip for Casey DeAndrade.
The second-year cornerbacks coach at Holy Cross would have journeyed to Texas and the Baltimore area, recruiting prospects while keeping an eye on southeastern Massachusetts, as part of a four-week long stint away from home searching for talent.
But there’s been no long-distance travel for DeAndrade this spring. The COVID-19 pandemic, which made the NCAA issue a dead period that was recently extended to July 31, prohibited coaches from on-campus or offcampus in-person contact with recruits. College football coaches are recruiting exclusively from afar.
“Not being able to go on the road and evaluate kids and meet them and meet the high school coaches and doing it all over the phone, it’s been definitely different,” said the 26-year-old DeAndrade, who is an East Bridgewater native. “We’re still working ways to do it and I would imagine every staff in the country is doing the same thing and figuring out different ways to recruit.”
With no opportunities at the moment to see recruits in person, coaching staffs have relied on digital platforms, like Zoom, to connect with prospects. Boston College’s Director of Player Personnel and Recruiting Coordinator Joe Sullivan has used video web-conferencing services, as has DeAndrade, to give recruits virtual tours of campus and additional information about their respective schools.
“We have a young staff who’s passionate about recruiting, so it was as seamless as it could have been,” said Sullivan of the transition to virtual recruiting. “We’re at a point where I think this is something that we’ll be able to use post pandemic.”