Transfers Josh Scovens ’27 and JaQualon Roberts ’27 scrimmage. Courtesy of @davidsonbasketball on Instagram.
Wherever students look to discuss the state of Davidson Athletics, be it residence hall lounges, tables at Vail Commons, or pages of The Davidsonian, conversations invariably turn to how to improve the team in its current form: Will a greater focus on endurance training or a new defensive strategy bring the Wildcats to glory?
In truth, much of a team’s fate is shaped before its players arrive on campus for summer workouts, navigate first-year orientation, or dress for their first games. In the increasingly turbulent world of college sports, the foundation of a team’s success is often built long before the first whistle blows—in the recruiting process.
Years before players become household names to Wildcat fans, their coaches are hard at work watching tape, browsing rankings, and visiting camps and clinics, trying to find the next generation of great Davidson athletes.
From there, as high school upperclassmen mull their academic and athletic futures, the next step in the recruiting process can take two different forms.
For many athletes, reaching out directly to a coach is the best way to ensure that they can garner interest from Davidson. “I reached out to the coach when I was visiting in the spring of my junior year, met with him briefly, and he invited me on an official visit,” said mid-distance runner Harry Carter ’28, who is on the cross-country and track teams.
For other recruits, like future NBA star Stephen Curry ‘10, their outstanding potential leads coaches to take more proactive steps to secure their commitment. In 2006, after recognizing Curry’s remarkable talent, Coach Bob McKillop drove to Curry’s high school in Charlotte and was invited to his house to deliver his sales pitch and seal the commitment.
Once Davidson gets on recruits’ radar, official and unofficial visits help them gauge their interest and fit at Davidson.
“We host [visits] if girls need them to help decide whether Davidson is right for them,” Field Hockey Head Coach Zoe Almquist said. “Usually we have already offered or are seriously considering offering them if they come on an unofficial visit. My assistant Anna [Smarrelli] sets them up, she usually includes going to a class in a subject that is interesting to them, a meal with the coaching staff, some free time with the team, seeing practice or a game, and a tour of the athletic facilities and lake campus.”
However, not all recruits visit before committing to the Wildcats. “70% of my current team did not take a visit (official or unofficial) before committing to Davidson. My recruiting process leans heavily on our clinics, email interactions, phone calls, and Zoom,” Almquist said.
The recruiting experience is more complex for international students like Asha Nightingale ’29. Nightingale is Australian and plays for the women’s basketball team. Athletes like her must navigate applying for visas, Zoom calls halfway across the globe, and sending over film from leagues and programs less known to coaches.
“I got to visit for a couple days during a tour I was on of the US, but I mostly just spoke with [my coaches] over Zoom,” Nightingale said.
“All five of my international athletes committed before they ever visited Davidson,” Almquist said.
In recent years, the tried and true practices of recruiting have been upset by a new pair of related phenomena: Name, Image, & Likeness (NIL) legislation and the rise of the transfer portal. After a long history of prohibiting athletes from enjoying financial compensation, the NCAA has recently found itself forced to revise its longstanding policy. States began passing legislation in 2019 to allow student athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2021 that the NCAA prohibition on compensation for college athletes violated federal antitrust law.
Student-athletes like soccer player Garret Wilkins ’28 quickly profited off endorsement deals, sponsorships, social media promotion, and other commercial opportunities previously unavailable to them.
“Matthew Thissell [’26] had previously mentioned the platform 98Strong to me as he had done some brand partnerships with their help in the past, so I signed up for that a while ago,” Wilkins said. “You make a profile and input things like your sport, school, division level, social media, and a short bio and after that you start applying for different ‘jobs’ or partnerships. After about a month of applying to ones that looked interesting to me, I landed the Spongebob Olipop deal. After that I just had to shoot the content requested by the brand and post that.”
Almost simultaneously, spurred by both the opportunity of NIL and fewer regulations on transferring, the transfer portal emerged as a quick escape hatch for athletes dissatisfied with their current situation or enamored with a new one.
Davidson has been both a beneficiary and a victim of this world. In the previous recruiting cycle, the Wildcats suffered the losses of men’s basketball stalwarts like Reed Bailey and Bobby Durkin to larger programs offering lucrative NIL opportunities. However, new portal additions Parker Friedrichsen ’27, Sam Brown ’27, Parker Friedrichsen ’27, JaQualon Roberts ’27 and Josh Scovens ’27 appear poised to help offset those departures.
Though hampered in reach by its size, Davidson has quickly adapted its institutions to the future of college athletics. In 2023, the Davidson Wildcat Exchange launched to facilitate NIL partnerships between athletes and businesses, donors, and alumni.
Last year, Zach Laput ‘25, a basketball player, became Davidson’s first ever graduate transfer. In February, Vice President and Director of Athletics Chris Clunie ‘06 announced Davidson would opt into the House v. NCAA settlement allowing direct compensation of student athletes.
“Davidson scholar-athletes now have the ability to earn compensation through their name, image, and likeness, no different from an amazing student musician who performs with the Charlotte Symphony, a talented student comedian who performs a set at a local comedy club or an enterprising student who starts their own business out of the Jay Hurt Hub for Innovation and Entrepreneurship,” Clunie said.
However, even with meticulous planning and ample funding, Davidson’s teams still must often confront the whims of a random system. Even outside of sports that attract outsized spending and scrutiny, like football and basketball, the uncertainty sown by NIL and the transfer portal are a fact of life now.
“We’ve had a few of our better guys leave. College recruiting now—even in baseball and all sports—is messed up because you can leave and try to go somewhere better whenever you want. There’s no loyalty,” baseball player Tyler Wille ’28 said.
As colleges must compete like never before to not just attract, but retain athletes, peripheral aspects like facilities can be crucial to wooing recruits and convincing current players to stay. In this context, Davidson’s $54.5 million investment in a state-of-the-art football field and athletic training facility for all Wildcat Division I athletes appears poised to pay dividends.
“The first time I visited we didn’t have the new facility so I was kind of skeptical about coming here. The second time I visited, we had the facility that won me over,” football player Lamar Bolden ’28 said.
Facilities are hardly the only area where the scope of Davidson’s recruiting objectives goes beyond just the on-field athletic project. Just as many non-athletes’ decision-making process for selecting a college goes beyond just career placement or academic rigor, student-athletes weigh factors like community culture, academic support, and even weather alongside athletics.
“We very much believe on field hockey that we are an important part of the college experience, existing as a co-curricular ‘major’ (and critical leadership development program) that will occupy about double the amount of time our student athletes will spend in their collegiate classes as a whole, but very much within the umbrella and the ethos of what Davidson College is all about,” Almquist said.
Once the recruiting process is over and coaches have successfully assembled their class, no rest is in sight: they must quickly move their attention to building a sense of camaraderie and sharpening their team’s game ahead of another season.