2+2=6...Recruiting is an Inexact Science with Guest Coach Jason Zimmerman

Today's Play:
Follow along with  Coach Jason Zimmerman as he shares his journey to a college coaching career and tells us what college sports "is really all about".  He also shares insightful suggestions about the recruiting process and how to make a lasting impression on a coach. 

Today's Coach:
Coach Jason Zimmerman. Jason is a current Division III Head Men's Basketball Coach and Director of Coach Z's Basketball Camps. He has over 28 years of college coaching experience including stints at the University of Evansville, his alma mater Davidson College, and now Emory University where he's been since 2007.

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Picking Teams: A Playbook for Parents is produced by: Amy Bryant and Sasha Melamud

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Transcript

Amy Bryant: 0:05

Amy, welcome to picking teams a podcast that dives into the playbooks of seasoned coaches. I'm your host. Amy Bryant, a 23 year veteran college coach, and my guests hail from the professional college and youth ranks. Together, we'll share real stories from our coaching experiences to empower you as parents to be positive forces in your child sports journey. Our guest today is Coach Jason Zimmerman. Jason is the current division three head men's basketball coach and director of coach Z's basketball camp. He has over 28 years of college coaching experience, including stints at the University of Evansville and his alma mater, Davidson, and now he's at Emory, where he's been since 2007 So Jason, tell me a little bit about your journey to become a college coach, absolutely.

Jason Zimmerman: 1:03

Well, let's first say we miss you here, like I miss working with you here down the hall, so I come down and see you. I miss that, but my journey that brought me here, yeah, I think it's, I don't know if it's unique, but I just, I enjoyed basketball, right? Like growing up, I just enjoyed it. If people say, you you pay more attention in the classes that you enjoy in school, and I just really enjoyed basketball, right? So every time I was in in practice, or, you know, working with my coaches, I just tried to soak it all in. And I guess I went to Davidson, I thought I'd be an accountant maybe. And really know if I've told many people that, probably. But I went to Davidson, thought I'd be an accountant, and then I got there and I was like, No, I just it's in my blood to coach and be part of teams. And so I played for some unbelievable coaches growing up, so my high school coach is in the Hall of Fame in Indiana high school basketball hall of fame. My college coach is in the New York Basketball Hall of Fame. He's in the Davidson obviously Hall of Fame. He'll be in the Naismith Hall of Fame soon, if he's not. So I play for unbelievable guys who are great mentors and people. So that probably led to me getting into coaching and then getting into college coaching I got into, I was a high school teacher for two years right after I got done at Davidson education, and teaching was always something I was interested in, just because I think teaching is coaching and coaching is teaching, and that really just led to me getting into And my two coaches I played for were unbelievable teachers, which I think sometimes is lost today in today's college coaching world, but I had an unbelievable math teacher for high school coach, and my college coach was a high school teacher headmaster, before became a college coach. So I just grew up around teaching the game and went to five star basketball camps teach the game. And so I was a teacher for two years. Taught economics and government to seniors in high school, and I was 22 years old. I wore a tie every day because I felt like I looked like a senior high school myself. And then coach mckibble asked me to come back and be on his staff. I was on his staff for seven years, and went to Evansville for four and then Betsy Stevenson called me. I have no idea why, but she called me and asked me if I'd be interested in the Emory job. And I didn't know much about Emory at the time, and took me about 30 seconds to research it, and said I'd be very interested in interviewing for the job. Took me a long time interview, and then thankful for the people like you chose me and I got to be here for the last 17 years. So that was, that was my journey, kind of here. It's been really special for me, and to be in one place for 17 years as a college coach is special. Like my kids grew up at Emory. You know, my kids grew up in Atlanta, and now they're in college and but that's, that's kind of my journey into coaching is really started teaching is, is how I got into college coaching, right?

Amy Bryant: 4:11

That's awesome. I had no idea that you're a teacher, but it makes so much sense knowing you, because you really are all about teaching life lessons more so than even just teaching basketball and so, yeah, it's, it's been, you know, the pleasure has been all mine, being able to work alongside you for, I guess I only got to work alongside you for 15 years because I cut out a little bit early, but, but I really feel fortunate To have learned all sorts of lessons from your teaching through that time. So one thing that the parents listening to the show are really interested in is how to get their kids into college, how to get them recruited. And throughout all of your basketball coaching jobs, I'm sure you have a lot of experience with the recruiting. So which outlets would you recommend for families? Obviously, basketball to get seen by the right coaches, and how do they go about picking those outlets?

Jason Zimmerman: 5:15

Yeah, it's interesting question, because I've had two children. My children have gone through the other side of the process, and I realized, like, I have no idea how this works, and I've been in the business for 40 years, right? Or whatever, 30 years. So not that I have no idea how it works, but I think the biggest thing is you got to find schools that are just going out there and being like, Hey, I just want to get recruited, right? I think it's important to do research, like, what schools you'd be interested in? I think that's the most important thing. Like, they say, like, when you're good, people find you, right? That's why, when you're good people find you, yes, but like, so big world, like, there's a lot of things out there, like, there's so I think showing interest in a school is important, right? And then there's a fine line there, like you can show you go overboard, right? I get inundated with emails from the same person like and like, hey, maybe there's no interest from our side, right? So it, but I think showing interest in that school and doing your research in that school and coaches, etc, is very important when it when it comes to being seen. And then the other part about that is understanding who goes to what events like for basketball, for example, and basketball like Emory being the educational piece to Emory and admissions and all that. So we we use a lot of the Ivy Leagues, Patriot leagues, elite camps when we go to a an AU tournament, which we go to some. When we go to AU tournament, we've already done our homework of getting people's transcripts, finding out grades, you know, finding out, like, things about the family, right? Like can is Emory a spot for you. So we do a lot of as the coach. We do a lot of our work free, going out to see so I think when you ask, where do we get our guys from? I think we've been the we've been really fortunate, and I'm fortunate to work in a place like Emory, like people seek us out, right? People seek Emory out because of our education. And we've had, we've been fortunate to have a really good run out of the last 1413, what, 17 years we've been here, we've had a good run at it and be successful. So people have the emails that we get. That's the first place we look. It was like, hey, somebody knows about our education, somebody knows about Emory, somebody knows about our staff. Somebody likes the way we do it. That's how we start looking. Now, when I was at Davidson and Evansville, it's probably a little different. You know? Different. I didn't really go through our emails quite as much because of the level that we had to get to to play. And we go out and find but you still have to find those, find those people. I use a hook a lot, right, like I know a lot of people in the basketball world. So usually, if it's a good player, he's going to know somebody that knows me, or knows somebody that knows like, I've just been in a long time. So that's, that's how we get a lot of our student athletes. I know that doesn't answer the question. The thing I'll say about parents, and I think later on, we'll talk about this and parenting, is like, you're never going to feel like you did it right, ever, just you could do everything right, and your your son or daughter could go to the perfect place, and you're still going to feel like you didn't do it enough, right, or it right, right? So there is not a right way to do it. Somebody told me, when we started, when I started coaching, long time ago, is 99% of what we do in recruiting doesn't matter. But nobody tells you what the 1% is that matters. So you got to do you got to do all of it. You got to do the 100% right? Because you don't know if you only do this 99% Well, that 1% that you didn't do could have been what mattered for that kid. It's the same if you flip it on the other side, 99% of what parents do doesn't matter, but the 1% we don't tell you what it is, right? Is it an email with a with a video? Is it a calling a coach that I know? Is it a visiting campus, sitting down, you know? Is it? There's all kind of things that you can do, right? So, yeah, I I just think it's an inexact science. Amy. You're like, I really do, like, it's not. And for people who are very type a like, two plus two equals four in recruiting, it doesn't work that way. Like, two plus two this year it could be six, and next year it could be one. And like, you're like, I don't know. I don't know how that happened, which makes it really exciting and really frustrating, right?

Amy Bryant: 9:40

So, yeah, well, that helps. No, that helps. It definitely helps. I think it helps, especially for parents, to know that what they're feeling is is real. You know, we need to feel validated as parents, especially as we're, you know, trying to help our kids get to that right place. One thing that you said, I want to just follow up on, because I get this question a lot, and that is, how often do you want to hear from a student athlete, and this would be one that you're recruiting, okay, not the one that you're not interested in that's inundating you with emails, but the one that you're recruiting. Let's say you start talking to him in his junior year, like, how often do you want him to reach out to you? To be like, coach, I'm still alive. I'm still interested,

Jason Zimmerman: 10:21

yeah, it's a great question. And I think different sports vary, right? Like, we only want to get four, four student athletes a year. That's Max. Like, that's what we want, right? So there's not many that, there's just a few spots there, right? We can get as many as we want, but we typically only want four, right? And I think, you know, it's funny you said, because sometimes a parent reaches out to me too much, like, Now, I want to hear from the student athlete, right? Like, that's great. Like, I love that. You love your son or daughter, right? I love that, and I do too, and I feel that, but like, I want to hear from your son, right? I want to hear like I read an email and I said, Well, I know he didn't write that. Like his mom wrote that email, right? Like somebody else wrote that email, right? And so, like, I want to get the genuine and it's this how we are here. We I want to get to know the genuine person. Like, all right, who is this? Who is this young man that I'm going to be coaching, right? Because I'm not going to coach, I'm not going to coach your dad or his mom, or, like, I'm going to coach the young man, and he's 18 years old. He's going to be 22 and he leaves me and like, we want to, we want him to grow but like, sometimes I think the parents, especially at a place like ours, they try to do too much for them, right? Like, hey, when I talk to your son on the phone, I'm going to want to hear His voice, right? I don't want to hear why he thinks, why he wants. Because a lot of times what I want, what my son wants, is two totally different things, right? Like, not totally different, but I may want something a little bit more. He may want something a little bit less. It wasn't something a little bit different. So the the number of times that we reach out, it's funny, because now with text messaging and calling, like, we don't call a lot anymore. Like we don't we don't talk on the phone a lot anymore. We do it over texts. And my staff texts all our our prospective students, and they get to me, Hey, are you going to text him to set up a call? And I said, No, I'm going to call him and then, and then he's going to answer my call, and if he doesn't answer my call, I'm going to leave a message. He's going to call me back, because I want to talk to them, right? And so maybe I'm old school likehat a little bit, right? But I wanted to, even if it's for 30, you know, two minutes, like, our phone calls aren't long anymore. Like, they're not but even if it's for four minutes, Hey, how are you doing? How's your day? What's going on? Like, what are you doing right now? Right? Like, I like asking that question, like, where are you right now? Like, what are you doing right now? Maybe a Sunday night at seven, right? Like, we know it right now, and, well, I've been in the gym for seven hours, okay? Like, you use your time more wisely, right? Like, our like, come on, right? But, but, like, that's, that's a piece for me. I'm hearing it from kids. I like to hear from kids, right? And the emails, like, believe me, I know. I tell my son, hey, email this person, and then a week later, did you do that? Oh, I'm getting to come on. Like, what do you do? But just that genuine connection that to have with the student athlete is really important and and when so, you know, I can say I used to think I got to email everybody back. So every email I get, I got to email him back. Well, if you're emailing coaches or not emailing your back, it doesn't necessarily mean they they don't want to hear like they don't like your student, because maybe they just but it's also, after a while, if you send 3456, and a day, get back to like, I can't email everybody back. It's impossible, because if we do that, I have no time to run a camp. I have no time to coach my team like so, so that's the piece. Now, it could be that, you know, our staff is one, Jacob and I have two part time guys like, you know, our division one staffs now are 17, some of them, you know. So that's a little different, too. I think there's a fine line there. And I think that's a being aware of feel of, it's just like anything in life, right? It's, you have to have a feel like, Man, I'm probably going over the top here. Okay, back up, right? And I gotta do a little bit more. And usually, when you're feeling that, it's probably, it's a good feeling, right? You need to listen to yourself a little bit, right?

Amy Bryant: 14:16

Absolutely, yeah, that makes sense. And And speaking about that feeling, let's say, let's say you have two recruits, okay, side by side. They both have the same athletic ability. They both have great academics. They they're going to thrive at Emory, academically, athletically, but you only have one spot, okay? I mean, I know we have flexibility. We can, you know, when I was coaching like, sometimes you just be like, I can't say, I can't pick only one. I'm taking both. We're gonna have an extra kid next year. You know, that's it. But let's say, in this world, you know that we're creating right now, you only have one spot. That's it. What is the characteristic? What's the feel that you get from those kids? What's the one that you're gonna use to make that decision.

Jason Zimmerman: 15:01

I don't know if there's one thing Amy, the first thing we do is, like, does it, you know, in our sport to, like, what position you know, so, like, if one's a garden, one's a big you know, like, Okay, we need more of that this year. Like, my roster, like, a lot of times it's my roster, like, Okay, we could use a taller guy, or we could use a guy that has this skill shoot it better than this guy. So very rarely are they exactly equal, right? Very well, especially in our sport, when you have like five different positions that you can play, and then, you know, there's a skill, maybe there's one skill that we're looking for, like, we'd really like to shoot it better next year. So when we go into this summer, like, that kid shoots a little bit better. I'm gonna, I'm gonna like, Hey, I'm gonna try to get that kid right. Maybe the other thing is funny when you say that is because sometimes it's your roster that you have right now, and it's like, maybe somebody in your roster just just grates at you right? Like, something he does just like, man, we can't do that. We kind of do better than or something that he does. He does really well. And when you go on the road and look at recruiting, you're like, Oh, I like that guy because he reminds me of this guy, right? Or, or, Oh, I don't like that guy because he has the same issues that I've been dealing with my team this year, right? So that's why we go back to say it's such an inexact science, because, like, this summer I may be looking for different than last summer, but So last summer I may have taken that kid, and this summer I'm like, I don't think I can take him, because we're looking for something totally different, right? And it has nothing to do with how good a player that the young man is, right? But nothing now, obviously, if he stepped curry and step curry, like I want to take him, it doesn't matter, right? But, but, like, a lot of times. And I think you said, is there one thing that goes it also comes back to who I want to coach, right? Like, I'm with these guys a lot, right? Like, a lot, and they're in my office a lot. You know you were, I mean, they're in my office, they come down. I'm with them. I'm on a bus, I'm on a plane. And, I mean, more than my children, right? And so we watch a lot of the the intangibles, right? Like, he comes out of the game and he blows off his coach, right? Like, no, that's not happening, right? Like, now you have to understand, like, maybe there's a situation where I'm, like, I can see why he did that, right? Like, if you're watching the whole situation, but if you're watching everything, when you go recruit, that's where I think evaluation is so important. You know, sometimes I'll see a kid walking out to his car, talking to his parents, right? Like, as I'm walking out of my car, and maybe the kid's not, you know, treating his mom with respect, right? Like, hey, like, I don't we, don't we just, not what we do, like, it's not who we want to be, right? And so there is a, there is a continuum, though, like, how good is he? Maybe we need to teach you, like, we could teach him, we could teach him. And that's, that's coaching, right? But I do think, like, all those things, and I think our program's been really and Emory helps with this, like to get good kids right. Good kids, who you know, are just they have good families. Are brought up the right way, not that there's one way to be brought up, like you go in our locker room. This is what's great about basketball and sport in general, is like you go in our locker room. We have white guys, black guys, right? We have we have Christians, we have Jews, we have atheists, we have guys from the West Coast, guys from the East Coast, and we're all in the locker room, and we're all together. We all have the same goal, and we're at pregame meal, and our discussions at pregame meal, I just, they just blow my mind, right? And so that's why, that's why I love coaching in general, like, just because you have, like, if, if our country worked as a team, right? And like, hey, we have a goal here, and we have it now. It's a lot easier when you're a basketball team, like, Hey, we're trying to beat such and such, and we're trying to do that on Friday and Sunday and excited. Like, there's a lot more complicated things, but man, our locker room is if we could somehow get take that into a greater, you know, you can scale it, I guess, for the business word, right? If we could scale that, it'd be a special place, right? Special place. So true. That's so true. Just to kind of build on that too, like, because, to me, that's, you know, coaching is about so much more. It's about those conversations, it's about the pregame meals. It's about that locker room time the time. And you know, that's what I remember when I look back in my time coaching. So what would you say is your fondest coaching memory? Oh, you put that question. There's just so many like, I mean, the first time we went to the NCAA tournament at Davidson, I was an assistant, and so I worked really hard as a student athlete to do that, and we missed it by a game on the last second shot, my went back. And the first time we won that Southern Conference tournament to go to the NCAA tournament 1998 like that was, like, really special, right for me, just because it was, like a seven year journey, and we were really bad at Davidson, when I played, when I started playing, and then we got pretty good by the time I was ended our career there,

Amy Bryant: 21:45

I love that. I mean, on my wall in my office, and you've seen this too, I had this huge bulletin board, and I just because coach wouldn't plan me more. But that's why we got stuck up there every card and every note that I got from from really good. And then, you know, when I came back and coached players, parents, other coaches. It didn't matter anything that that coach, McCook, first time he went to the NCAA tournament. was just really mental and just kind of, you know, made it real I mean, that's really like that. Davidson was great. And then me. It made it more real than than what I was doing, like more personal and more intimate. And that's, you know, that's the there's so many here, Amy, that it's like we went to the lead relationship that a coach really has with the people that that a eight one year and winning a game at Stevens Point, the first coach works with every day and touches every day. And I still time we went to the NCAA tournament at Emory, the first have my board behind here. You can't see it here, but I still time we won the UAA championship at Emory for me, then, not the have it with some of my notes left over, and nobody writes handwritten notes anymore. I get text messages. I text like I first time Emily had, but first on a long time, right? And then don't write handwritten notes. That's bad, the lost art, and I we were able to go on this run where we had 10 in a row, or love it. And one of the things with the student athletes that I went to 10 in two blade tournaments in a row. We were work with, I tell them, Okay, after you meet with a coach, like the only division three at the time that had done that. after you visit a school, I want you 100% sending an email. Thank Like those things are in there, and it's not just like one you right away. Within 24 hours, you got to do that. That's but your bonus is if you sit down, write a handwritten note and moment, but I think the fondest is when I come into my office mail it in, also just highlighting one thing that you and I look on the wall, and you know this, I have all the teams remember. I don't how many kids actually do it, because it's that that I've coached here as their pictures on the wall optional. You know, optional sometimes means I don't have to, right. And when you come in, sometimes you'll be in here on a but, but I think the high flyers, you know, they really, they really take that from heart and and, you know, I know that Saturday during the season, and you're frustrated, and you look I, I used to value that board in my room. up and you see a guy and you're like, Oh, I remember that guy,

Jason Zimmerman: 23:10

So it's interesting that you said I was, gosh, there's probably that's, we have alumni weekend, like, like, I gotta call him, like, Hey, I gotta, I gotta reach out we, we're gonna do every other year. And then the guys like, to him. I haven't talked to him in a while. I gotta call him. So let's just do it every year. So anyway, it was a couple years on the way home, you'll call him, and then you're talking ago. It was after covid, maybe two years and then my wife was about these things that these guys remember, that you kind of with me, and we were at just a restaurant in town with 35 of our alums. And my wife said to one of the alums like, this is remember, but, like, you remember it differently, but it why, like this. This is why I record so. Really cool. Great. affected their life, right? So those things are so, like, real, That's perfect. I love that. That's that's really powerful, right? And just being able to do that special. actually, so I love it.

Amy Bryant: 23:51

Thanks for tuning in for today's play. Join us next time to hear more insights from another outstanding coach. Until then, remember as you navigate the ups and downs of your child's journey. You're not just picking teams, you're building character, fostering resilience and creating lifelong Memories. You