Oh Canada!
August 10, 2005 03:37 PM | General
August 10, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – About nine years ago West Virginia University distance coach Sean Cleary was sitting on a bus riding back from a cross country meet at Notre Dame when former coach Marty Pushkin leaned over and nudged him.
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| Megan Metcalfe won the NCAA women's 5,000-meter title in June.
Kirby Lee photo |
“Hey, Sean,” whispered Pushkin in his still noticeable southern accent. “We’ve got to have ourselves a good recruiting year. We can be a better program if we can just get another frontrunner or two.”
It was at that point in the fall of 1997 that Cleary -- a native of Georgetown, Ontario -- decided to go to the place he knew the best: Canada.
In order to begin recruiting Canada on a massive scale Cleary had to first get more organized, so he dumped out his large jar of pennies he had sitting on a counter and dug out a well worn piece of paper that had the name Rebecca Stallwood scribbled on it. Cleary had met Stallwood during an indoor meet when she was just a sophomore in high school, took down her name, and promised he would be in touch in a couple of years.
Well, it was a couple of years later.
West Virginia has had Canadian athletes in the past. Wayne Yearwood was a Montreal native who came to Morgantown by way of junior college. The 6-foot-8-inch forward helped the Mountaineer basketball team to back to back NCAA appearances in 1986 and 1987, averaging 12.9 points and 5.5 rebounds per game as a senior in 1987.
Football's Mike Vanderjagt, an Oakville, Ontario, resident, came to West Virginia from Hancock (Calif.) Junior College in 1991 to be the team’s punter, but later wound up becoming the most accurate field goal kicker in NFL history with the Indianapolis Colts where he still plays today.
Maurice Richards, a backup defensive back from Montreal, was a letterman on the 1993 Sugar Bowl team and the Mountaineers currently have another Canadian on its football roster in backup linebacker Dwayne Mundle.
Wayne Morgan was a quality player for men’s soccer coach John McGrath in the late 1980s that went on to play professionally.
Yet the pathway to Canada really started with the track program back in 1990 when Pushkin convinced Georgetown, Ontario, distance runner Bob Donker to come to WVU on a partial scholarship. At the time Donker had developed a close relationship with Dave Emmons who was coaching high school track in Minnesota. Donker was one of Canada’s top distance runners and was getting full-scholarship offers from several American schools.
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| Mike Vanderjagt has become the most accurate field goal kicker in NFL history.
Indianapolis Colts photo |
Pushkin’s solution was to bring both of them in together: Donker as his top recruit and Emmons as his graduate assistant coach.
“Bob liked Dave and he really admired Marty Pushkin and his father-like stature in the program,” said Cleary. “He passed up a lot of full-ride opportunities to come here for less.”
What West Virginia got was its first three-time single-season All-American in school history in 1994. In the fall he placed 24th at cross country nationals and then finished seventh in the 5,000 at indoor nationals and fifth at outdoor nationals to complete the rare trifecta. Donker was a four-time All-American in track and also was the first male WVU performer to win the prestigious Penn Relays in more than 100 years. Cleary was a high school teammate of Donker's who wound up following him to WVU after a two-year stop in junior college.
Later when Cleary became Pushkin’s assistant, Donker’s success at West Virginia directly led to him landing Canadians Steve Bohan and Pete Watson in 1996. Bohan developed into a cross country All-American in 2000 and was also a recipient of the Red Brown Cup signifying the school’s top all-around athlete for that year.
However, it was Cleary’s trip to Canada right after the Notre Dame meet in 1997 that provided the genesis for what the West Virginia women’s distance program has become today. He was able to land miler Kate Vermeulen and distance standouts Rebecca Stallwood, Francine Darroch and Karen Lockhart at the same time.
Vermeulen became the school’s second national champion in 1999 before transferring to UCLA, Darroch developed into one of the top distance runners in the Big East later with Providence, and Lockhart was a solid contributor in the Mountaineer program.
Yet it was Stallwood who proved to be foundation on which Cleary’s entire Canadian strategy was built, not only because she turned out to be a national caliber performer but also because she was a terrific student who later was accepted into medical school.
“There was a stereotype going on in Canada that American schools are academically inferior to Canadian colleges,” said Cleary. “It was a misconception up there.”
Cleary’s biggest triumph came in 2001 when he landed Megan Metcalfe, who turned out to be the school’s most well known and successful women’s track performer. Metcalfe capped off a brilliant career in June by winning the NCAA outdoor 5,000, becoming just the school’s third national champion. Metcalfe is a nine-time All-American in both track and cross country, and her accomplishments have become well known in Canada.
Joining Metcalfe at nationals in 2005 for West Virginia were Canadians Jessica Czaikowski and Jennifer Kemp. Tara Struyk, another Canadian, just missed qualifying after making it to nationals the prior two seasons. According to Cleary, WVU had three of the four Canadians competing at outdoor nationals this year.
Now not only is the WVU track program benefiting from Metcalfe’s popularity in Canada, but there is some spill off in other sports as well.
Women’s tennis coach Dan Silverstein is encountering it during his travels to Canada. One of his top players is sophomore Monica Lyskawa, a Brampton, Ontario resident.
“A lot of the Canadian girls I talk to know about the girls on the track team here,” said Silverstein. “They hear West Virginia’s name a lot up there so it’s become a pretty good recruiting tool.”
The nucleus of women’s soccer’s nationally ranked recruiting class this year came from Canada. According to Soccer Buzz Magazine, an online service devoted solely to American women’s college soccer, two of West Virginia’s Canadian recruits were ranked among the top incoming international players this fall.
Both Amanda Cicchini and Deana Everrett -- Oakville, Ontario natives -- were members of the Canadian Under-20 national team. A third Canadian recruit, Robin Rushton, was included among the pool of players considered for the U-20 team. Cicchini also played for the full Canadian National team – a first for a WVU women’s soccer recruit.
Jennifer DePrez, West Virginia’s longtime women’s soccer assistant coach, first found out about the three watching them play in a soccer showcase in Cincinnati, Ohio.
“A lot of Canadians are more prone to coming to recruiting events in the U.S. so we were able to see a bunch of them in Cincinnati and that really benefited us,” said DePrez. “That’s where we got those three players from.”
According to DePrez, they didn’t have any grand designs of turning Canada into a prime recruiting territory. But now that they’ve had some success there their thinking has changed a little bit.
“When we saw these kids it was just like recruiting any other athletes … well, it’s worth a shot and let’s do it,” she said. “Now it’s worked out really well for us in that we’ve been able to bring in three and we’re hoping that we’ve developed a connection there.”
DePrez points out that Toronto, a major international city, is just a five-hour drive away from Morgantown.
“It’s close enough for these kids to go away from home but not be really far away,” she said. “From our experiences we’ve come to learn that Canadians want to play in the United States.”
Women’s basketball coach Mike Carey is interested in expanding their recruiting into Canada. His main concern is developing the right contacts. The women’s basketball program has had two Canadians in the past: center Ann Murray (1990-93) and forward Tina Parry (1988-91).
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“There was a stereotype going on in Canada that American schools are academically inferior to Canadian colleges. It was a misconception up there.” -- Sean Cleary |
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Gymnastics coach Linda Burdette doesn’t actively recruit Canada but has had some Canadians on her roster in the past. Women’s rowing coach Nancy LaRocque had a couple of Canadians on her roster last year and men’s soccer coach Mike Seabolt has one this fall in Quebec native Bernard Ouassa.
Seabolt says he’s interested in brining in the right Canadians but admits Canada women’s soccer is much stronger than men’s.
“I have better contacts in other countries,” he said. “I look at other places first but it is a place we look. Toronto and that part of Canada are not too far.”
Seabolt says many of the good Canadian men’s players can go directly to the English professional leagues because they can get a British Commonwealth visa.
Recruiting coordinator Herb Hand admits football takes a somewhat reserved approach to recruiting Canadians.
“We’re so spread out right now that unless we get a guy that’s somehow recommended to us -- Dwayne Mundle for instance, he sent us his film and has turned out to be a pretty good player,” Hand said. “We’ve actually looked as some other guys from Canada but it’s not an area we’re going to actively recruit.”
Hand says Miami, Michigan, Syracuse and Wisconsin are some of the schools successfully recruiting Canadian football players.
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| Sophomore hurdler Jessica Czaikowski is a two-time NCAA qualifier.
Kirby Lee photo |
“A Canadian kid has more brand awareness for the Miami Hurricanes than they may have for the West Virginia Mountaineers,” he said. “There are some players up there but it’s like anything else, what are you getting in return on your investment?”
If it’s women’s distance runners or soccer players, then West Virginia is getting a lot. And West Virginia is one of a growing list of Big East schools benefiting from having talented Canadians. A sampling of current rosters of the 16 schools that sponsor Big East sports shows a total of 111 Canadians. Louisville has the most with 18, followed by Syracuse with 15 and West Virginia and Connecticut with 10 each.
Notre Dame’s Candance Chapman was a Canadian National team member in soccer and earned All-America honors in 2002. South Florida has three Canadians on its volleyball team including Conference USA Freshman of the Year Kristina Fabris.
Men’s soccer had the most Canadians among Big East schools with 14.
Women’s track coach Jeff Huntoon says Canada will remain one of his program’s primary recruiting territories.
“You sit down and draw a five-hour circle around Morgantown and you are including Toronto into that area,” Huntoon said. “Here we are 15 years down the road and Sean is still talking to many of his same contacts.”
Huntoon says prominent Canadian runners are now beginning to seek out West Virginia, too.
“I just got a video tape from a girl and her first statement was, ‘My goal is to obtain a scholarship from West Virginia University,’” he said. “For Canadians it’s a privilege to go to school here.
“We’ve got some things that are so established now through the success that we’ve had that we’re in pretty good shape there right now,” Huntoon added.
Cleary says the women’s track and cross country programs couldn’t have finished in the top 20 at two national events this year without the contributions of Canadians. More importantly, these Canadians are proving to be the crème of the crop both athletically and academically at WVU.
“We’ve brought through a large percentage of our kids that have hit the highest standards not only athletically but academically as well,” he said. “West Virginia University carries with it an academic weight that if they do a good job in school they will not experience the same prejudices they once did when they return to Canada.”
Nine years ago, Marty Pushkin was looking for some frontrunners for his cross country program. Thanks to Sean Cleary and other West Virginia University coaches, the Mountaineers have now become one of the American frontrunners in the pursuit of talented Canadian athletes.
