Busy Signal: Shirk Feeling the Power of WAC
by Jac Coyne |
Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff | Coyne Archive
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| While recruiting was tough at VMI, ultimately it was Jeff Shirk's ability to produce with the Keydets that helped him land the Washington College job. |
It’s been a little over a week since he accepted the
Washington College job and Jeff Shirk’s cell phone bill has
exploded.
No, it’s not from well-wishers, although there have been
plenty of those. Rather, after enduring painfully brief recruiting
calls over the past four years, Shirk is now finding himself
chatting up a storm with prospective student-athletes.
As the head coach at the Virginia Military Institute, a Division I
program located in Lexington, Va., Shirk tried to lure recruits to
a disciplined and stringent academic environment that was not
always suited for every high school grad.
After signing on with the Shoremen, he now has the weight of one of
the storied lacrosse programs in the country behind him.
“I’ve already found in the week that I’ve been
recruiting for Washington College it’s easier to talk to
recruits on the phone because they don’t say no right
away,” said Shirk. “’I’m calling from VMI.
What’s that? Virginia Military Institute. I’m not
interested in the military.’ You cut every conversation at
least five minutes shorter than Washington College because you
never get a chance to explain the ins and outs.”
As frustrating as some of the calls that were truncated when he was
at VMI were, it was ultimately one of the reasons he emerged from a
strong candidate pool to earn the Washington College job.
“When we took a look at the recruiting challenges that Jeff
dealt with in the last three or four years at VMI and the success
that he had in that tough environment made us all the more
confident that the fit was the right one,” said Washington
College athletic director Bryan Matthews. “He’s
somebody who could come in and hit the ground running in a
challenging recruiting environment.
“He has been used to doing it without scholarships, beating
the bushes to end up with a good class, all of which is very
similar to Division III recruiting. There’s not going to be a
whole lot of culture shock and not much of a learning curve. The
recruiting here is going to be very similar to what he did at VMI,
although obviously it’s a different product that he’s
out there working with.”
“Being at VMI helped me form an approach to building a
relationship with a recruit and allow them to see the benefits of
coming to play at my program as opposed to somebody else,”
added Shirk. “Not negative recruiting, but pointing out the
benefits of my particular program. It definitely helped me.
Washington College is an easier sell than VMI for various reasons,
but you’re still going to have to compete against very good
schools to get the kids.”
Shirk often lost recruits to Gettysburg, Roanoke and Lynchburg
while at VMI, and even went head-to-head with the service academies
for those rare players who were looking for a military-based
education. As one would expect, he didn’t win a lot of those
recruiting match-ups, but ultimately it was a service academy coach
who got the ball rolling on Shirk’s move to Chestertown.
Matthews made a call to Richie Meade, Navy’s long-time head
coach, when he started his search to replace J.B. Clarke, and
before Meade called Matthews back, he made another call.
“Coach Meade wanted to know if I was interested in the
job,” said Shirk. “I told him that I was, so I think
that’s how I got on the radar screen. Bryan called a little
before Memorial Day and it progressed from there. As soon as I
stepped on campus and met everybody, I knew it was the right
job.”
Well, there was a little more than that. Shirk wasn’t about
to leave a Division I post unless all the pieces were in place to
have success right away. As such, he was prepared to play a little
hardball to make sure this move was worth his while.
“I had it in my head what I needed to have to go there from a
support standpoint and everything else, and Dr. Matthews said
exactly what I had in my mind, so there was no negotiation,”
admitted Shirk. “That made me even more excited because they
wanted to win and do it the right way.”
There’s little doubt that Washington College is a perfect
spot for Shirk and, likewise, there’s little doubt that
Shirk’s recruiting acumen fits the Shoremen’s needs.
But, honestly, is Shirk ready for the conference he’s
joining?
Regardless of whether the MAAC and Centennial would be an even
match (this writer would argue it would be), with three bids this
year, the Centennial is one of the two power conferences in NCAA
Division III.
Is Shirk ready for the grind?
“He had done a whole lot of homework and research on
Washington College, but how much he did on the Centennial
Conference is a good question,” said Matthews. “My
guess is as he gets going that will be one of the realities that
he’ll be well aware of. We want to go after it pretty hard
and it’s a tough conference. If you can succeed in our
conference, you can succeed pretty well at the national level and
we want to try to do both of those.”
Shirk admits he’s still getting acclimated to his new
conference – and even admitted as much when he met up with
fellow Centennial coaching foes at the Adidas Lacrosse Classic.
“The first thing I said was I don’t know a whole lot of
the conference other than it is very good and is just getting
better,” said Shirk.
For Shirk, however, the strength of the conference is peripheral.
There’s just one focus.
“I won’t sugarcoat it: I want to win,” he said.
“We’ll go about it the right way, but that’s the
bottom line. I think that’s the thinking of the alumni, the
current players, and everyone associated with the college.
That’s what excites me so much. I feel like the college and
everyone involved in the program has the same drive as I do and
that gets me excited for the job.”
