March 27, 2015
Elston making changes with recruiting
Andrew Ivins
BlueandGold.com
Notre Dame's Mike Elston didn't want to go into detail when asked Monday what has changed for Notre Dame since he took over as the program's recruiting coordinator last month.
"I'm not interested in doing a lot of information sharing with what we're doing to be honest with you," Elston said.
And that's fine, because an enigma machine isn't needed to decipher what he's trying to do with Notre Dame's recruiting efforts. In the span of just six weeks, things have changed inside the Guglielmino Athletics Complex - and that's a good thing for the Irish.
Elston, who was selected to replace the departed Tony Alford, has given the Irish a recruiting makeover. He has made a splash on social media with new Twitter and Vine accounts, and shuffled around the front office personnel to get what he wants out of the staff.
"The biggest thing," Elston said, "was just reorganizing, and making sure that everybody within the recruiting department knew and understood the roles that they needed to play so that we could function at a really high level.
"This past weekend we put together what we thought was a very good Junior Day. It was a national Junior Day, around 11 states - I believe - represented. So, we were excited about that."
He should be, because while the six-second clips of players working out at 6 a.m. and the animated tweets of green clovers are a nice touch on the recruiting trail, where he really wants to make a difference is with the unofficial visits.
In years past, Notre Dame has had Junior Days, but none of them have been as geographically diverse as the one the Irish held on March 21. In addition to the 11 different states represented at the event, two midweek visitors from California and Missouri made it prospects from 13 states for the week. But before Elston draws praise for attracting out-of-state talent, it should be noted that his focus isn't exactly where the prospects are from. It's instead on how early the staff is getting on campus.
"One of the biggest changes that we have tried to go through - and I don't mean changes, just improvements and trying to do a better job of - is that we have always done a really good with evaluating talent and getting the interest, but we have got to get them here and we have to do a better job of getting them here, earlier," Elston said.
"This [past] Junior Day is an indication of having a plan of when our Junior Day is going to be ahead of time, getting the information to them, and inviting them and helping them set that up to where they can make the trip. You'll see that [more] as we move forward."
Elston not only wants prospects from all over the country to visit Notre Dame, but he wants to get them on campus as soon as possible.
"We're already talking about an event that we're going to have in June," he said. "We're talking to [the recruits] right now about that, so we're the first they're hearing it from. That day isn't going to be tied up for someone else. That's going to be our day."
It sounds cliché to want to "own" a day for recruiting purposes, but in an age where the offseason camp circuit is often times more rigorous than the actual high school football season, it makes sense. Elston wants to make sure that kids know they are invited to Notre Dame for recruiting events, and for them to set plans before they commit to something else like a 7-on-7 tournament or a camp at a school like Ohio State.
"That to me is the important thing," Elston said. "The communication and the building of a relationship."
Detroit Martin Luther King four-star wide receiver Donnie Corely appears to be listening. King, who is Notre Dame's top target on the board at wide receiver, is already eyeing the Texas game for a visit at the start of the season.
While Sept. 5 is still 162 days away, having a tentative date for a visit planted in the back of Corley's head is exactly what Elston wants. It might not be a "save-the-date" type of invitation that Corely slaps on his refrigerator, but it's one that Elston and the rest of the Notre Dame coaching staff can continue to point at until the time comes to actually visit.
"I think we're taking this to a whole different level," Elston said.
Information sharing or not, just a month and a half onto the job, Elston appears to have things trending that way.
