RECRUITING LESSONS & ADVICE FEATURING MIKE, JASON, & MIKE’S SON CAL DISCUSSING THE RECRUITNG PROCESS THAT LANDED CAL AT D3 OHIO WESLEYAN – EPISODE 987

Website – https://battlingbishops.com/sports/mens-basketball/

Email – klinzing2024@gmail.com

Twitter – @calklinzing14

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On this episode Mike and Jason talk with Mike’s son Cal about the recruiting process that led him to D3 Ohio Wesleyan University where he is a freshman this fall.

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Grab a notebook and be prepared to take some notes as you listen to this episode Mike, Jason, and Mike’ son Cal Klinzing, a freshman at Ohio Wesleyan University.

What We Discuss with Cal Klinzing

• The importance of playing for a good AAU team
• Being proactive in your recruiting
  • Emailing schools you’re interested in
  • Sending a highlight video
  • Filling out recruiting questionnaires on school websites
• Be responsive when coaches contact you and demonstrate that you’re interested in them too
• How a lot of college basketball recruiting has shifted to AAU Basketball as opposed to high school basketball
• Connecting with coaches via Twitter and setting up an effective Twitter profile
• The hardest part is telling coaches no that you’ve built a relationship with
• Ultimately the school you choose just has to feel right

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THANKS, CAL KLINZING

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TRANSCRIPT FOR RECRUITING LESSONS & ADVICE FEATURING MIKE, JASON, & MIKE’S SON CAL DISCUSSING THE RECRUITNG PROCESS THAT LANDED CAL AT D3 OHIO WESLEYAN – EPISODE 987

[00:00:00] Jason Sunkle: Hello, and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. No, please don’t adjust your headsets. This is Jason hosting tonight, and tonight we are joined by yes, my co host Mike Klinzing and his son Cal Klinzing. And we’re going to do something a little different tonight. We’re going to talk about the recruiting process that Cal went through.

For those of you that don’t know, he’s a freshman. He’s going to Ohio Wesleyan. So we’re going to talk about the recruiting process, what it was like for him, and I’m going to serve as the host tonight. So it’s a little switch up. We’re changing things up. We’re close to a thousand episodes. We’ve got to change things up every once in a while.

So welcome to the podcast, Cal, first of all.

[00:00:38] Cal Klinzing: Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

[00:00:42] Jason Sunkle: I know. We had to really do a lot of things to make sure a cow would come on this podcast because you know, he’s the son of Mike. So Mike, welcome to the podcast, Mike. Is it weird being the guest?

[00:00:49] Mike Klinzing: We had to pull a lot of strings. It’s weird not to say hello. I feel like I should just say right now, hello and welcome to the who pets podcast. Here we go.

[00:00:59] Jason Sunkle: So we’re going to talk a little bit tonight, and I’m going to start with you, Cal. When did you decide that you wanted to pursue college basketball in whatever manner, shape, or form you were going to get to?

When was the decision made that you wanted to do that?

[00:01:13] Cal Klinzing: So I think I would say it was probably like the summer before my sophomore year, I think, was when I really decided to pursue it. That I like, that was something that I actually wanted to do because me and my dad started to get into the, to the gym more and we were in the process of then fixing form, which that turned out okay, but, but, but that’s when I kind of started to get into that and then from there it was kind of just no holds barred and kept going and now obviously I succeeded in that goal, but there’s a lot more work left to do, I guess.

Mike, do you have anything to add to that?

[00:01:50] Mike Klinzing: I think the fun part for me, and I’ve said this to a lot of people, is when the kids are younger and with Cal, there was a long period of time where it was me taking him to the gym or me asking him, Hey, do you want to go to the gym? And him going along and us going to practices and playing in games.

And obviously we played a lot of basketball when he was younger. But then I think just like he said, kind of going into his sophomore year, that was coming off of the COVID season, which he played through as a freshman. And once he kind of got to that point and he started to take over in terms of what he was trying to do as a basketball player, and not that I wasn’t involved because I still was in terms of just trying to guide him and help him and whatever.

But it kind of got to the point where it was no longer me saying to him, Hey, Do you want to go to the gym or, Hey, we need to go to the gym. It was him at that point asking me, Hey, can we go to the gym? I need to get to the gym. And then obviously over the last couple of years when he’s been able to drive, suddenly now I don’t have to be involved in any way.

He can just go and get his shots up or go and lift or whatever it is that he’s going to do. And so I think clearly there was a time where. The switch flipped and I think that’s when he started to take basketball more seriously, both first as a high school player and then kind of with the idea that, hey, if I keep working at this, that maybe there’ll be an opportunity to play at the college level at some point down the line.

[00:03:26] Jason Sunkle: All right. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. There’s something you said there that I had when, I guess, Mike, let me, let me ask you about your own experience. When did you comparison for you? When you decided you wanted to play college basketball, were you about the similar time? Do you remember?

I mean, I know that was many, many years ago at this point, Mike, but…

[00:03:45] Mike Klinzing: I was totally unrealistic. My situation back in the late 80s is totally different from a standpoint of you had no frame of reference in terms of social media, in terms of knowledge of what other players look like, what it meant to be able to be recruited by colleges at all different levels.

So if you went back to when I was in fourth, fifth, sixth grade, I think I always had a dream of playing college basketball, but my dream of playing college basketball was to play for North Carolina, Ohio State,

[00:04:19] Jason Sunkle: Did you rank number four in the state?

[00:04:20] Mike Klinzing: I was in no way, shape or form ranked number four in the state.

So I think to answer that question, I think I always thought that I wanted to play college basketball. But because information at that time was so scarce, I had no idea. So for example, my dad was a professor at Cleveland state, and so I grew up going and watching and going to Cleveland State games with my family.

And at one point, I don’t know exactly how old I was, but I would guess probably middle school age, so maybe. Sixth, seventh grade, my dad said, Hey, maybe someday you’ll be able to play at Cleveland state. And I remember just kind of laughing at him being like, I’m never going to play. I’m not playing at Cleveland state.

I’m going to go and play at North Carolina, Ohio State. Big school that everybody had heard of that you could watch on TV. And my parents necessarily didn’t have the knowledge and my high school coach, when I eventually got to that level, didn’t really have the knowledge. So I had really, honestly, no real fame of reference for kind of where I fit like I felt and looked and played against guys in the Cleveland area that I felt like I was better than.

And as they started to sign and go to different places, I kept looking around saying, well, how come I’m not getting an opportunity to go and play at these different places? And eventually, I mean, I’ve told the story on the podcast a bunch of times, so I don’t want to Tell it now again, but you can go back and listen to a number of podcasts where I’ve told the story of my recruitment to Kent, where it was more a case of me recruiting them than them recruiting me.

[00:05:54] Jason Sunkle: All right. So once that decision is made Cal, what’s your first step to try and get recruited?

[00:06:02] Cal Klinzing: Yeah, so we didn’t even really start doing anything with reaching out to colleges until right after my junior year had ended, and right before I started that final AAU season just because our experience with AAU, I mean, obviously I played for I played for a really good AAU team.

My junior and senior, like my junior and senior year was like right before my junior year, and then right before my senior year and the, the first year we were 37 and three. We might have had less than 10 college coaches come watch our game the whole, whatever, out of all of our nine tournaments or whatever we played.

But that second year we had guys at every game because guys were recruiting. But especially because at the Division III level, especially, those guys aren’t coming to your games until you’re going to be a senior. Unless you’re some five star prospect guy. There’s going to be no coaches at your game before, at the very minimum, your junior year.

So, but, to get back to what you were asking My kind of first step was before the AAU season even started, me and my dad, we went and basically just emailed every single Division III school in Ohio. We went through and obviously through the podcast, my dad knows a ton of great Division III and all levels coaches.

But I was focusing my attention on Division III because I wanted to be realistic about what level I was going to play at. And so we emailed to some schools that I thought I might be interested in outside of Ohio. And then in that email, we kind of included information about my school, highlights of what I play like, contact information, all that stuff.

And then from there, going into AAU season we started to get coaches to reach out to me. I set up a whole separate email just for that. And so through that, that’s kind of how it kicked off my recruiting process.

[00:07:52] Mike Klinzing: I think that if I was to give advice to anybody out there who has aspirations, whether you’re a parent or whether you’re a player and you’re listening to this, If you have aspirations of playing college basketball, especially when you’re talking about at the division two or division three level, where like Cal said, if you’re a big time division one prospect, people have most likely discovered you in all cases, probably by the time you’re in ninth or 10th grade.

And maybe those players are getting recruited. But if you’re going to be a guy who’s going to play Division II or Division III, as Cal said, you’re not really going to get much attention until that, that, that AAU season after your junior year, heading into your senior year. And I think that sending out information to colleges and being proactive, to me, I think that’s a huge part of it.

A lot of schools also have on their websites, they have a prospect questionnaire that you can go on and says, recruit me or recruit questionnaire or whatever on their websites. And I know that Cal filled out a bunch of those. And in fact, when Coach DeWitt from Ohio Wesleyan, we had him as a guest on the podcast and the podcast was over and he said, Hey, I noticed your son had filled out our questionnaire and that kind of kicked off the recruiting with Ohio Wesleyan.

So again, By sending out information proactively to coaches at the level that you want to play at, I think if nothing else, it gets you at least on their radar. And then obviously from there, they have to come see you play and they have to be in touch with you and get to know you a little bit as a person, whatever, and make a decision whether they want to recruit you.

But I think too many people are passive in the recruiting process and just wait around and say, well, somebody is going to find me because I’m playing in such and such an AAU tournament, or somebody is going to find me because I’m at my high school. And I think the more proactive that you can be As a player, as a parent, I think the better off you’re going to be because at least you put yourself in front of those coaches and then they can make the decision.

Now, you may send them stuff and they may look at your highlight film and think, Oh, this is this isn’t a player that we want to recruit. On the other hand, You get a handful of schools that are interested and now suddenly you have some people that come out and watch you play live, whether it’s an AAU or they watch you play in high school or they’re making contact with you and getting an opportunity to know you.

So I think to me, if there’s one thing that we did right in Cal’s recruiting process, I think that’s it is being proactive in filling websites and making sure that we got information about him, his academics, his athletics, the things that kind of helped to set him apart. We got that stuff into the hands of schools and coaches that we felt like he would have a good opportunity to play.

And then I think Cal made a great point too, that we were pretty realistic about what level we thought that he could play at. And I think that that’s where maybe that separates us a little bit from a lot of other people that have kind of an unrealistic view of where either themselves as a player or parents, often times have an unrealistic view of where their kids at and what level they can play.

And so I think we did a good job of identifying where Cal probably would end up and then contacting the schools that were a good fit for him academically.

[00:11:20] Jason Sunkle: Well, a lot of what you said rings true with just in general life, right? Like being proactive could help you get a job. Like I think back to when I was teaching or when I was still teaching in my, in my charter school in Cleveland, and I was looking to get my Olmstead Falls job.

I luckily had my superintendent as one of my professors for my master’s degree. And when I saw that a job opening came up that fit my like licensure, I sent him an email saying, Hey, I’m going to apply for this. And he was very polite with a response saying, I can’t guarantee you anything, but I can at least get your name in the bucket and into the, into the interview process. And then you have to do the rest. And luckily for me, that worked out. And I following up with, after every interview, I would send an email to any of the people that were in the interview, just saying, Hey, thanks for your time.

And like, just all those things you definitely want to make people remember you in a positive way and, and things like that. So I agree with a lot of that and that, that can be applied to everyday life. That doesn’t just have to apply to recruiting.

[00:12:32] Mike Klinzing: I can probably speak to that in terms of responding to coaches.

I know that was a big part of, I don’t know if it got people interested in you, but I think it certainly kept people interested to talk a little bit about that from your perspective, Cal.

[00:12:47] Cal Klinzing: Yeah, for sure. So I was going to say I mean, I think like it’s, I guess like, it sounds bad to say, but it’s not hard to stand out.

It’s not hard to stand out these days. I mean, I think As a kid, right? Like it’s always impressive or whatever a young kid, young adult, whatever you want to say. But it’s not hard to stand out when you’re shooting, you’re talking with adult and you’re talking with a coach and you know, you ask them questions or you don’t, you respond within, you’re responding within like 10 minutes versus you, you leave them undelivered for, you Two hours and then you get back to them or you miss, you answer their call right away versus you, whatever.

Don’t, don’t call them back for three hours and say, sorry, I was taking a nap or whatever. So I think again, like that stuff goes a long way. And it’s like, if you show, if you show that you have the interest, that interest is going to be boosted up a lot more by whoever whoever’s recruiting your, you in that sense.

So, because I felt like, because I feel like I was like, I felt like I took the time and was invested with every coach and every program that was, was interested in recruiting me over the course of the whole process. I gave myself a lot more opportunities and I also put myself in a way better position because again, if you’re a coach and you say, Oh, well, this kid’s, He gets right back to me he’s interested when he’s talking to me, he’s asking me questions that you’re, that’s going to also conversely bring more interest in from, from that, from the coach or from the program.

And it just shows again, that you’re serious about it. And again, then you set yourself up to be in a good position where then those coaches want you more.

[00:14:22] Jason Sunkle: Makes sense. So I guess when you look back at the whole process, I mean, this is like a three part question, so you can attack this however you want, but the hardest, which might also coincide with the most frustrating part of the process and then the most surprising part of the process. You can go in whatever order you want, Cal. What was the hardest, frustrating, or most surprising?

[00:14:46] Cal Klinzing: Yeah, so I would say that I’ll go with the hardest part of it first, and I can name that off the top of my head.

The hardest part for me, which might be specific to this year, was the fact that with, with Division III, and obviously there are academic scholarships, and I did get academic scholarships, but because you’re getting no You sports scholarships, you have to wait for the fafsa. And especially this year with the changes they made to the fafsa, we had to wait a long time because the FAFSA didn’t even come out until March or May or whatever it was.

I don’t remember dad when it came out, but..

[00:15:09] Jason Sunkle: Get used to it. It’s the government get used to it.

[00:15:16] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, we filled it out like in early January, whereas normally it gets filled out in October and then usually it’s back by December. And this year it didn’t come back until, I mean, it was late April into May.

And even then we just ended up calling admissions office and kind of, kind of getting, I don’t even know if estimate is the right word, but it just, it was so delayed. And then obviously when you’re making a decision about a division three school and you’re not talking about a full ride athletic scholarship, you’re having to piece together the money side of it.

So I think from our perspective, and I know this is what we’re Cal is trying to say here is that that was very, very difficult because it just left us with, okay, like we like this about this school, or we like this coach, or we like this program, and we really love this. But if one program or one college is going to cost $25,000 more a year, that’s going to kind of have to weigh into the decision making process.

And so with that piece being missing, It made it really difficult. And I think we had to, and Cal will, was the guy that had to do it. It wasn’t me. We had to continue to talk. He had to continue to talk with a bunch of different programs because we just weren’t sure what the ultimate sticker price was going to be.

So I think that again, Cal spent a lot of time talking to a lot of coaches that in another year, the decision might’ve been made much earlier than it ended up. I mean, we didn’t make the decision until well after the high school season. We were into April or May by the time we made a decision.

And so much of that had to do with the FAFSA. Whereas if it had been a normal year, that decision probably would have been made early in his senior year of basketball. And then you could have kind of put it behind, put the decision behind you and focused on your high school season and known where you were going to go, but that just wasn’t feasible because of the FAFSA this year.

[00:17:15] Jason Sunkle: All right. I mean, it sounds terrible, but it makes sense what you’re saying. So. I guess, would you say that’s also was your most frustrating part, Cal, or would you say…?

[00:17:24] Cal Klinzing: Yeah, it was just frustrating because there were points where like I just felt like I was talking to all these schools and I was seriously considering all these schools, but it just felt like I was ready to make a decision at points where like, I felt like I kind of knew like the criteria and again, looking back, I’m glad that I did have a lot of time to really think about it and make the best decision for me.

And I think again, the school that I chose, which was Ohio Wesleyan, I think is the best fit for me. And I’m obviously super excited about this year and super excited for the opportunity to hopefully compete and hopefully win, do something this year with the team.

But I’m super excited for that. But I just think that at times it was just frustrating because I felt like I wanted to keep communicating with the coaches and I wanted to keep the connections open. But I also felt like I was just kind of ready for the process to be done because I kind of felt like I had made a decision and I knew what I was doing, but I couldn’t really close those doors because I didn’t know the financial piece of it, I guess.

[00:18:25] Jason Sunkle: So you were like stringing them along. Too, because you were having these conversations and you didn’t know exactly where you were gonna end up either because of all the things. So yeah, I could see how that was frustrating.

[00:18:35] Cal Klinzing: I mean, I guess it was kind of like, whenever I came down to the Final Five school schools and to be completely honest with you, I could’ve seen myself going to any of those five schools.

All those five schools had great coaches, great programs. I mean, there was different things I liked about, about all of them, obviously. But it was just hard because, again, I was talking to all these great guys, these great coaches, and ultimately I was only going to pick one.

And again, that’s how recruiting goes. But I was so late in the process, and I was still talking to five different schools. And that’s hard when you get down to it tell everyone, no, I guess.

[00:19:13] Jason Sunkle: Makes sense. All right. So what was the most surprising part? I’m going to ask Mike, from your perspective, what was the most surprising part of it?

And I guess you could probably draw from your previous experience when you were being recruited or if it’s not related to that at all.

[00:19:29] Mike Klinzing: You know, honestly, I don’t know that there was anything that was completely surprising that caught me off guard. I guess if I go back to the beginning of the process, or I go back to when Cal was much younger, before college basketball was on our radar, before he was a high school player, and just with my experience, I guess in the game of basketball. And I think back to one of the very first conversations we had here on the podcast with Tony DeCesare, who at the time was coach at Solon high school. And he was talking about the recruitment of sincere carry who eventually ended up playing at my alma mater, Kent State. And I remember when we had that conversation, I think that he was within probably the first, I don’t know, 30 or 40 episodes, I think we had Tony on.

And he talked about how. When Sincere got recruited and he went to West Liberty out of high school and Tony said he never talked to the coach at West Liberty once as Sincere’s high school coach. And to me, I was just floored by the idea that somebody would be recruited and their high school season, their high school career, their high school coach wouldn’t be a part of the process.

And then I look at Cal’s experience going through, and I would say that all, at least initially, what attracted the schools that ended up recruiting him to Cal was his performance. And like he said, we were very, very fortunate from an AAU standpoint. He played with a great group of kids with a great coach.

Shout out to Izzy Santiago Jr, who was his coach at Mac basketball. And the exposure that he got through that is what really opened the doors for him to be able to play college basketball and his high school. I don’t want to say it became an afterthought because I think it did sort of solidify him being recruited during his senior year when the schools that were interested came out to see him and watch him play, but that was after they already knew that they wanted him.

So they were coming to watch him play to, again, let him know that they were, they were interested. I think they had already made their evaluation and knew that they wanted Cal to be a part of their program. If you would have told me again five or six years ago that AAU basketball was going to be more important in his opportunity to go play college basketball than high school basketball would have been, I would have told you you were crazy.

Going through the process, obviously, we quickly realized that the opportunity to just be seen, At AAU tournaments and for college coaches, as we’ve talked about on this pod numerous times, it’s so much more time efficient for college coaches to be able to show up at an AAU event and see so many players at the same time in a very short amount of time.

And as a result of that, I think much more of the recruiting process happens, at least in terms of identification and initially figuring out who they want to recruit. I think most of that, if not all of it, happens through AAU. And then the high school season is used to sort of solidify that interest by showing up and watching a kid play.

But again, not necessarily to evaluate them in a high school game, but more just to demonstrate that, hey, we’re coming out to your games because. We want you to be a part of our program. So I think that was surprising to me, probably not surprising once we kind of got into it, but again, looking at my perspective, going backwards to when Cal was much younger, I think that was pretty surprising and certainly, me of five or six years ago wouldn’t have believed that that was ever going to be true.

[00:23:26] Jason Sunkle: Tony DeCesare episode 106, Mike. I look, found it. All right, there you go.

[00:23:30] Mike Klinzing: So it was a little further along than what I thought, but still.

[00:23:32] Jason Sunkle: We’re just trying to forget those old early episodes, Mike.

[00:23:38] Mike Klinzing: There you go.

[00:23:38] Jason Sunkle: All right. So going back to some, like early in the, what’s something that, like before the whole process began, Cal, what’s something that now you wish you knew like, say you were doing this all over again.

What’s something that you learned throughout the process that you wish you knew before the process began?

[00:23:59] Cal Klinzing: I would say that something that I wish I would have known was just like the importance of like, I mean, I knew about it and I did a good job of parlaying it into interest and stuff like that, but knowing before, how big of a tool like Twitter and Twitter is the biggest one, but social media, and then obviously that beginning, how important those beginning introductions and emails were because again no school, I mean, before the AAU season, I didn’t have anyone talk to me, and again, if I would have went out and played maybe some schools would have came and seen me, but, I mean, the reason why most of the schools that were interested in me is because I showed an interest in them first, and so I think, knowing that from the beginning and knowing I feel like we did it pretty well, but I think there was a reply could have been a better way to set it up. And I think we could have done a better job from the beginning with that. Twitter and stuff is a huge tool and especially these days with recruiting, like, every coach is on Twitter.

If you’re reposting your stuff on Twitter, you’re going to get noticed. If you’re reposting, Hey, I’m going to be at this tournament. If you’re posting your schedule and stuff like that, that’s all super important. And I knew it was important from the beginning, but I think like now going back and seeing how important it was and how important that was to the recruiting process was just really interesting.  I think.

[00:25:30] Jason Sunkle: Mike, do you want to add anything to that?

[00:25:32] Mike Klinzing: to that? Yeah, I definitely think that. Being able to Maintain contact with coaches through social media for any players or parents who are out there. There’s lots of good examples of what a good Twitter bio should look like, but you definitely want to have contact information in there.

You want to have for yourself, for your AAU coach, for your high school coach. And if you have those things in there, then it makes it really easy for a coach to, okay, I see this kid and then I can go and check out Twitter. I can find their schedule. I can find highlights. And so I think that’s also a way that at least initially, I think coaches definitely utilize Twitter.

And so, yeah, I think we did a pretty good job. Cause again, I just went out and based on conversations, both on the podcast and just with guys off air to figure out how to put together a Twitter bio and sort of a Twitter page that would be of benefit to Cal to help him to get recruited. So I think that was a big part of the process.

And then I guess the other thing to me that stands out when I think about what we did right, and I would say that we did it right accidentally, it was by no means purposeful. But previously when Cal was younger, I was his AAU coach and we would play and our team was, I would say, okay not great, not bad, but okay.

And we had a former teammate from those AAU teams that reached out to, he actually reached out to me because I think at that point, Cal, you didn’t even have a phone. Yeah. Kid reached out to me and said, Hey, would Cal like to come to this? And I said, probably let me ask him and Cal said, yes. And so we drove to this, what we thought was an open gym at Lutheran West.

And it turned out it was kind of a pseudo tryout for this AAU team. And Cal went and played pretty well. And after that, I had a couple of parents come up to me and say, Hey, we’re kind of trying to put this team together and Izzy’s going to coach the team. And we’d like to have Cal be involved in it.

And to be honest, we kind of fell into like a perfect situation. We had 10 kids on that team that, and it changed a little bit from going into junior year to going into senior year, but the core of the team remained the same. And that team just was an incredible experience, both from the coaching that the team and Cal got from Izzy.

And then from the players themselves, just like I’ve said a million times, like I’ve watched lots of games and I’ve watched my kids play in lots of different sports. And most of the time you’re kind of rooting for your kid and you want to see them out on the floor and whatever. And with this team was like, again, not that I didn’t want to see Cal on the floor, but the team was just so fun to watch.

Like we talk about, what’s the key to being a good basketball team is, Are you unselfish? Does the ball move? Do you play hard? And I can honestly say that I haven’t been around a group of kids who were as talented and yet as unselfish and just competed as hard as they possibly could. And by no means was that, like I said, a plan.

We had no idea that what we were walking into that night back, I don’t even know when that was, and prior to, that was probably prior to his junior season, or I guess prior to his, maybe right after his sophomore year, I can’t remember, but yeah, something like that. Yeah. And we just walked into it with, with we had no idea it was it was going to be a, it was going to be a pseudo tryout.

[00:29:18] Jason Sunkle: Right place, right time kind of situation, huh?

[00:29:19] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Right place, right time. And I think that turned out to be a huge key in Cal’s just development as a player. I mean, he just got so much better by playing with those guys in practice and over the course of, I think we went, what was the record Cal? 69-14?

[00:29:36] Cal Klinzing: We were 37-3 the first year and I think then we finished 69 and 14 or something like that over two years.

[00:29:37] Mike Klinzing: We played a lot of games and we won a lot of games and we did it at a very high level and it was coached like a real basketball team. So unlike a lot of AAU basketball that you see, which I think sometimes for coaches is hard to evaluate, I think when coaches came and watched, I think they got a pretty accurate picture of the type of player that Cal would be for them on their team. Whereas a lot of times you go and especially when you have a player who’s maybe a big and AAU tends to be dominated by guards and, just have dudes going one on one and all that kind of stuff. And our team played like a team.

So I think that made it easier for coaches to evaluate Cal and the other kids on our team. And like I said, we just stumbled into that and it was in no way, shape or form a plan, but I do think that when it comes to recruiting and if I had to give I would say, again, try to find an AAU team, an AAU program that’s filled with kids who are interested in winning and sharing the ball and find a team that has a coach that isn’t just going to roll the balls out and let people take turns playing one on one, but actually is going to coach the team and make them move the ball and make them play defense and run it more like a high school or even a college team.

And that’s certainly what we had. And I think that that benefited Cal just as a player. In terms of his development, but it also benefited him in that because the team was good, because they were well coached, because they played so hard, coaches noticed the team. And I mean, I can’t tell you the number of coaches that said, I just love the way that this team plays and competes and defends and all these different things and all that.

Again, which was brought by Izzy and by the other players that consequently reflected well on Cal and I think benefited him. And I think it benefited every kid on that team just in terms of their ability to play college basketball. And it’s interesting that we had, over the course of those years, we had I think probably 12 kids or so that We’re a part of that team in one way, shape or form.

And we had two guards who were just tremendous for Cal to play with that. They’re both playing college basketball and then Cal, and those were the only three guys that just made the decision to go and play college basketball. There were other guys that certainly had the capability. Yeah. Yeah. I guess in Tino’s playing overseas in Finland, which is where he’s from.

So it’s again, it was just a special group in so many ways. And like I said, we stumbled into it, but if anybody’s out there listening, I would highly recommend trying to find, take your, take your time and find the right AAU team. That’s going to a play the right way, have great teammates. And then like Cal said, an important part of it is playing in tournaments where Coaches are going to be, and then if you know what level you’re going to play, like if you’re, if you’re a division three player, there’s no reason for you to travel across the country to go and play in huge events in Arizona or California or Las Vegas or whatever, because if you’re a division two or division three player, you can play in plenty of tournaments right here in the Midwest with states that are contiguous to Ohio.

That’s where all those schools are anyway, they’re not, they’re not flying across the country to Vegas to come see you play. If you’re an Ohio kid, they’re watching in Ohio or maybe Indiana or Michigan or Pennsylvania, whatever.

[00:33:21] Jason Sunkle: All right. So I have one more question and then I guess you can. Well, I’ll ask one more for like a wrap up kind of situation, but if you could change one thing, and maybe you kind of already touched on this, like one thing about the process itself, not necessarily what you guys did.

If you could change one thing about the process, I mean, obviously FASTA getting done quicker probably would be an answer, but if the general process If you could change it and say, Hey, this needs to be retooled or reworked. What would that, what would that be and why?

[00:33:57] Mike Klinzing: Dad, if you want to take that first, give me a second.

Sure. I’ll give you a chance to think about it. I mean, when I think about what I would change, I mean, obviously, as you said, I think the FAFSA was a big thing that hopefully, although I heard that’s going to be released again late this year, so maybe this year’s recruits will have to do that. I think that from a standpoint of from a parent or from a player standpoint, I think the biggest thing that you’re looking for, no matter what it is that you’re doing, is you’re looking for that communication back and forth. And like Cal said, I think that what you want is people who are honest going both directions and like I’ll give you an example kind of what we’re talking about like Cal had a couple schools that were interested in him or reached out and pretty quickly we made the decision that for whatever reason that those schools were ones that we weren’t interested in and that he probably wasn’t going to go there.

And so one of the things in Jason, you heard coaches say this, that we try to get very, very quickly to a yes or a no, right. The coaches want, it’s better to make a decision and just, they want it. They want to hear no very quickly as opposed to somebody who says, well, maybe, and then you end up wasting a lot of time on a kid who probably is never going to go there.

So I think I kind of kept that in mind and learned that from listening to the podcast. And so I don’t know that it’s necessarily something I would change, but it’s something that I think is important going both ways. It’s important for the recruit to be honest with the school in terms of what the level of interest is.

And then I think conversely, it’s important for the school to be honest with the player in terms of their level of interest. And obviously, to some degree as you said, I think you used the word stringing along. I would probably maybe not phrase it quite that way, but certainly there’s. a case where if you’re still trying to figure out and get all the information like we were with the FAFSA, that you’re kind of trying to keep those lines of communication open so that you don’t close any doors on a place that you really feel is a possibility.

And like I said, that process went on longer for Cal this year. And I think Cal, one of the things that about that was probably when Jason asked about the hardest part. I think that we answered that honestly, but I also think one of the hardest parts for you was just making those phone calls at the very end when you had to tell three or four schools that you had been talking to for months and months and months and coaches that you had built a relationship with, which again, that relationship lasted much longer before a yes or a no came simply because the FAFSA was so delayed. But having those final conversations I think was something that one, not every kid would make those calls and do it on a personal level the way Cal did, but also just, I think that was difficult, correct?

[00:36:59] Cal Klinzing: Yeah. I mean, I think like what you’re talking about with the question of changing the process, I mean, I think like, especially this year, the thing I guess I would change for me as a personal thing is don’t get me wrong, I value and appreciate the relationships that I’ve built with the coaches that ended up being in the final five schools that I was deciding between but I would have if I could change anything I would I wish that I would have been able to give a yes or no earlier because I feel like I know I wasn’t doing this but you know part of you feels like you’re leading someone on by eventually I’m getting four out of those five schools.

You’re gonna have to tell those guys no and Again, you have reasons to like or dislike school wise, I mean, I liked every single coach that was recruiting me I could see myself playing for, but for different reasons, obviously one or other was a better or worse fit, but I think that when it came down to it for me, I had to make those calls.

I just felt like it was really hard because again, I’d been talking to those, whatever, five coaches for. I mean, by the time I committed, it probably had been close to a year, if not more, dad, right? I mean,

[00:38:13] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

[00:38:14] Cal Klinzing: So I think that was hard because again, part of you feels like you’re kind of throwing the guy into the bus because you’ve been talking to him for a year now and you’re saying no, and they feel like they’ve kind of been cheated because I personally went and visited all those schools.

I did some overnights at some of those schools. And it was just hard because again, you have this relationship that you’ve built and but it just felt like the whole time I felt like kind of like I was leading people on, which I knew I wasn’t because I was seriously considering every single school, but it was just hard because again, you knew at the end of the day, you were going to have to say no to four out of those five.

And with the fafsa this year, it was too bad because I had to keep my options open, I guess.

[00:39:01] Jason Sunkle: Imagine how the bachelor feels..

[00:39:02] Mike Klinzing: Cal. Yeah, it’s true. Well, I mean, you just, again, that’s true. We liked all the coaches that we spent a lot of time with that recruited Cal and I built relationships with those guys or previously had a relationship with some of those coaches.

And yet at the same time, like Cal said, you knew at one point that only one school was going to get a yes and the other schools were going to get a no. And that was just a difficult situation to be in, even though you didn’t know what the ultimate decision was. And obviously me as a parent, I didn’t know what the decision was and I wasn’t going to make the decision.

Cal was the one that ultimately had to make that decision about where he was going to go. And so then he had to live up to, Hey, I got to have a conversation with each of those coaches. I owe it to him to be able to pick up the phone and tell him, Hey, I’ve decided to go somewhere else. And like I said, because we spent so much time, Cal specifically, talking to them, but even myself and my wife sitting with them at games or talking to them after high school games when they came and again, some of them are driving a couple hours to come see him play and you’re having these conversations and you know that ultimately some or both or most of those guys are going to be disappointed and there’s only going to be one coach that’s going to be happy that he committed to go to that school. And so that, I think, again, I don’t know if you could really change that necessarily, but that’s definitely a difficult part of the process. And I think it’s probably difficult again on the coaching side of it, right? It’s difficult too, because you’re putting a lot of time and effort into trying to get a kid and you hope, and I truly believe that every one of those coaches sincerely wanted Cal to attend their university and wanted to be able to have the opportunity to coach him.

And yet, we’re not there yet. They weren’t going to get the opportunity to do that once he made his decision. And so it’s, I just think that that part of it, again, with the FAFSA. Made it especially difficult this year for just the process, especially at the division three level. And obviously we didn’t deal with any of the transfer portal stuff or some of the other things that you’re dealing with at some of the higher levels.

Cal didn’t have to deal with anything along those lines. So at least I guess we can be thankful for that.

[00:41:19] Jason Sunkle: Cal, anything you want to add to that? Or did he say it succinctly enough for you? All right. I guess the last thing I’m going to say is if you guys want to like summarize the, your overall feelings about the, about things and, and where it ended up, like from beginning to end if you could summarize it in like one or two sentences, what would that be?

And I did not give your dad that question ahead of time, Mike.

[00:41:48] Mike Klinzing: Cal, let me go first. I’ll give you a chance to think. So let me go first. I think from my perspective, what you hope for is one. that your kid gets an opportunity. I remember telling people when he was a sophomore in high school that I thought he could play college basketball at some point.

And I said, I don’t think I’m crazy. I don’t think I’m a parent who look, we’re all biased towards our own kid. I don’t think that I’m so outlandishly out of place that I think he can play college basketball. And so I think what you hope for in the process is that you work through, you look at all the different factors that go into making a decision and you hope that the person ends up in the right place at the right school with the right fit.

And I believe that me as a parent, and then eventually Cal, who obviously had to make the decision, did all the due diligence that’s required to believe that he is in the right place at Ohio Wesleyan University. And so I think if I look at the recruiting process in its totality, I think that what we hoped would happen is what happened.

That he had an unbelievable AAU experience. He had a great senior year of high school basketball, and it ended with the opportunity to go to a great university, play for a great coaching staff. And again, there’s obviously no guarantees that it’s going to be perfect at Ohio Wesleyan, but I think we’ve put him and he’s put himself, more importantly, in the best position to be able to succeed through the process, which I think is all you can ask for.

[00:43:37] Cal Klinzing: Yeah, definitely. I guess what I would say from my perspective, I think the first of all the things you gotta do, you have to market yourself and you have to sell yourself to the coaches in the first place, especially at the division three level. You’re not going to be just discovered in most cases, you got to go and market yourself and put yourself out there and get that interest out there.

And then again, once you’ve done that, then the load is off of you and then the coaches are the ones who are interested in you and you’re parlaying that it parlaying that interest and then I guess from there I think you know you talk about throughout the process in the middle of the process I just think it’s important to keep communicating beyond as honest as you can with the coaches and with the staffs of the programs That you’re talking to are interested or that are interested in you Just try to be as honest as you can because those coaches deserve that courtesy.

And then I think conversely if you’re honest, you’re going to save yourself a lot of trouble in the long run you know, cause you don’t want to lead someone on. You don’t want to give someone a false idea kind of. And then the last thing I guess would be when it comes time to make your decision For me it was a really hard decision, but I think you ultimately just have to go with what feels right.

If something doesn’t feel right, something feels it’s not going to be a good fit. You have to pick where you feel like you’re going to have the best opportunity to succeed on the floor and then in the classroom and on campus somewhere where you feel like it could be your home for the next four years.  So I think when it comes down to it, that’s super important.

[00:45:12] Jason Sunkle: All right. That sounds great. And all the listeners out there, I’m sure if you have any questions about the recruiting process and Mike would be happy to answer any questions and you probably get Cal to help answer questions. Would you agree with that, Mike?

[00:45:26] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Yeah. I would agree. I think I’ve thought about, who knows, maybe this should be the kickoff for it is putting together a little guidebook to the recruiting process and kind of what we’ve learned. Cause I think there’s a lot of little tidbits and little small things that we talked about tonight on the pod that coaches are, that families and players can do to help in the recruiting process and to be able to give someone a better opportunity to be able to eventually play at college basketball. And so, I think that’s a big piece of maybe what we do moving forward. But yeah, for sure, anybody who wants to reach out, email, Twitter, text, whatever, I’ll be happy to answer any questions that anybody might have.

Not that I’m a complete expert, but certainly through the conversations that we’ve had on the podcast with coaches and then my own experience as a parent with Cal, I think I’ve got at least some perspective on how the recruiting process goes and what you can do as a family to be able to make it work and go as smoothly as it possibly can. And again, with the ultimate goal being that you end up in the right place at the right level where you can thrive academically and athletically.

[00:46:44] Jason Sunkle: Well thanks Cal and Mike for joining us on this episode and thanks for listening to this episode and we’ll catch you on the next one. Thanks.