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When it comes to accelerated
recruiting, Bo Pelini, Tim Miles and Connie Yori all sing
from the same hymn book. All three Nebraska head coaches know their search for
talent is an ultra-quickening process, and with high school kids across the
country committing earlier than ever to college scholarships, coaches have no
choice but to rev up their own pace.
That brings us to a head coach who
may understand the art of accelerated recruiting as well as anyone in America …
Rhonda Revelle, the
Hall-of-Fame coach who’s won 754 softball games at Nebraska and counts two state Gatorade Players of the Year
in the program’s seven-player 2012 recruiting class.
And get this: Emily Lockman, who
pitched Norco to the CIF Southern California sectional championship and the No.
1 final national prep ranking en route to her statewide Gatorade honor,
committed to Nebraska when she was just a sophomore in high school. The
Huskers’ other Gatorade Player of the Year, Nebraska’s own Alicia Armstrong from
Beatrice, committed to Nebraska before her senior season, and that was no small
task because the Lincoln Journal-Star Super State softball captain also
earned all-state recognition in two other sports – basketball and soccer.
Yes, the Huskers relish the
successful recruitment of Lockman, their California dream, but they were
equally enthused about convincing Armstrong to play softball instead of college
basketball, even though she did elect to play in next month’s Nebraska Coaches
Association’s All-Star Girls Basketball Game instead of accepting the same
honor in softball, the athletic and academic ticket to her future.
Armstrong’s Athleticism is ‘Off the Charts’
Perhaps we also should mention that
Nebraska Coach John Walker considered Armstrong a potential soccer
recruit. “Who makes first-team all-state in three sports?” Revelle asked. “When
it’s all said and done, Diane Miller (the
Nebraska assistant in charge of the Huskers’ offense) thinks Alicia (a
shortstop) may be the rawest athlete she’s ever seen. Her athleticism is
off the charts. I just talked to her club softball coach, and he said that now
that she’s focusing just on softball, she’s taking a leap forward almost every
week. She’s a remarkable athlete, and he says he’s never coached a kid with her
kind of speed.”
As much as Miller craves coaching
Armstrong, who hit a state record .690 as a senior on a state runner-up team,
imagine how eager Lori Sippel, Nebraska’s
associate head coach and pitching coach, is to coach Lockman. Check that. Even
though Sipple has not “coached” California’s Gatorade Player of the Year, she’s
been instrumental in the prep senior’s remarkable transformation over the past
18 months.
Make no mistake. Revelle doesn’t
want Nebraska to take an ounce of credit for Lockman’s rapid development
because she’s done all the hard work required to make such dramatic
improvement. The truth is, however, “Emily has been a student of her pitching
coach at Nebraska before she even got here, so I have to give Lori some
credit,” Revelle said. “Lori and Emily have had a lot of dialogue – a lot of
Q&A kinds of emails – over the past two years, and to Emily’s credit, she’s
just taken it, embraced it and just kept getting better and better. Both Emily
and her club coach have seen a real difference in her presence on the mound and
in her ability to command and control a game. It’s been fun to watch her evolve
and grow, and it will be even more fun to watch when she gets here.
“We’ve watched Emily grow and mature
as a pitcher over the last two years,” Revelle said. “She’s always had great
competitive moxie. Actually, I’ve watched Emily since she was probably 14 years
old. She’s not physically imposing, but she just keeps coming at you. She has
great self-belief, a lot of confidence and is a fierce competitor. That’s her
biggest strength – she’s a competitor. You listen to the coaches who’ve been
with her, whether it’s her club coach, her high school coach or even coaches
who have competed against her, and they’ll all tell you how much she’s improved
over the last 18 months.”
Nebraska Recruiting Built on Relationships
The constant connection between
Nebraska and its latest California superstar only reinforces Lockman’s decision
to become a Husker. But that kind of trust is hardly an isolated case. “We’re
such relationship people. We know what we’re looking for, and we’ve developed
similar relationships all over,” Revelle said.
Relationship No. 1 continues to be
Nebraska Gold, the club team for both Armstrong and Husker senior Megan Southworth. The
deepest example of Nebraska’s commitment to relationships is the Corona Angels
in California, coached by Marty Tyson, whose daughter, Dawna Tyson will follow
in sister Tori Tyson’s footsteps
this fall. She joins Corona teammate Lockman in the 2012 recruiting class.
Corona also sent twins Tatum Edwards and Taylor Edwards to
Lincoln in 2010.
The same principle applies to
Nebraska’s Desert Thunder connection in Arizona, where Sammi Noland will join
former club teammate Mattie Fowler, one
of only three Huskers to start all 55 games this season despite being just a
freshman. Club connections make great bridges to Nebraska, which also just
recruited incoming freshman Hailey Decker from the
same Northwest Bullets club team in Oregon as junior infielder Kylee Muir. Revelle
isn’t afraid to go South either with new recruit Gabby Banda following Jordan Bettiol from the
same Sudden Impact club team in Texas.
“Recruiting happens so much earlier
in this day and age, so you have to work with the coach a lot, and I’ve learned
to trust the coaches in the recruiting process,” Revelle said. “When the kid is
not right down the street, you have to believe what they’re telling you,
whether it’s scholastically, socially or athletically. Once you feel like
you’ve developed relationships where you have trust, well, now, it even
compounds. That’s what happened with Emily, who gave us her verbal commitment
in the last part of her sophomore year. And that’s not uncommon. That gave us
two years to work together, so we could continue to prepare her to be a
Husker.”
NU Softball Staff Watched Championship Online
No wonder Revelle and her staff were
so giddy recently when they watched Lockman win the California championship
game to solidify the school’s No. 1 national ranking. “We got online and watched
because it was a dead period in recruiting,” Revelle said. “It was fun to watch
Emily face hitters who had committed to schools like Texas and Michigan and
Arizona and Cal – all teams that were playing in the Women’s College World
Series at the time. Every time those hitters would come up, we’d say: ‘Perfect.
These are some of the same hitters we’re expecting Emily to face in college.’
The way we look at it, it’s always a bonus when you can play on a big stage
before you even get to the big stage.”
Consider this a prime-time example
of accelerated recruiting and a positive result of a promise Revelle made to
herself when she gave up her duties as Nebraska’s Senior Women’s Administrator
(SWA) to concentrate full-time again on the sport she loves the most. “When I
was the SWA,” Revelle said, “the one thing that took the biggest hit was
recruiting. There are only so many hours in the day. So when I came back to
full-time coaching, I promised myself that every day I would recruit, whether
it was making a phone call, writing an email or anything else. Some days, you
recruit all day, but not a day goes by when I don’t or we don’t do something
for recruiting.”
Anyone who doesn’t believe that
recruiting and relationships are inextricably linked should consider this:
Armstrong’s mom and dad are Nebraska graduates. So, too, are a brother and a
sister. She even has an uncle who played football at Nebraska.
Revelle makes sure she points out
that Lockman has relatives in Nebraska, too. “Emily came here as a 12-year-old
visiting her relatives,” Revelle recalled. “She was a little munchkin at the
time, but she came up to me as a 12-year-old and told me she wanted to come
here and play someday. She reminded me of that when she made her official visit
here.”
Oh, How Quickly Six Years Can Go By
And what an important reminder that
was. Six years later, that fiercely competitive little 12-year-old was mowing
down future Division I players and giving Husker fans a sneak preview of a
promising future. Oh, how the years go by, and oh, aren’t we grateful that Rhonda
Revelle believes in accelerated recruiting?
Send a comment to ryork@huskers.com (Please include
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