Justin Kronauge Decides:: The Tennis Recruiting Network

Justin Kronauge Decides:: The Tennis Recruiting Network~~~

And the winner is......(drum roll) Ohio State. The much-sought-after righthander from the Dayton area decided to stay close to home which bodes well for the Buckeye program. In addition to landing top junior Bryan Koniecko for this season, Ty Tucker also has a new addition from Germany arriving in January according to this recent release.(Those of you who actually click through should note that the player in question is NOT ranked among the Top 50 juniors in the world. He's 19, and although he did finish 2004 in the ITF's Top 100, I'm not sure where the 47 in the story came from).

There is apparently a new indoor tennis facility in the works at OSU, and it's much-needed, as the current on-campus building was not capable of hosting the recent ITA Indoor, which is why we were at the Racquet Club of Columbus. I know they would probably be loathe to take any lead of the University of Michigan, but the Ohio State athletic department would be smart to study the Wolverine's tennis complex closely. As a place to watch or cover tennis, it couldn't be more user-friendly.

The diligent Rhiannon Potkey was called on to write a story about two prized recruits in her area that are juniors in high school and hence still in the mail stage of the process. The boy plays football and the girl basketball.

And while the bulk of the story is about the two of them, Potkey does manage to work Sam Querrey's recent college visits into the piece, which, unfortunately refers to tennis as a "fringe sport." But here are the key excerpts:

Big-budget sports like football and basketball often receive the most attention and publicity when it comes to recruiting.

But even players from lower-profile sports such as tennis are given the star treatment by college coaches.

Sam Querrey is rated the top American male recruit for the 2006 class by tennisrecruiting.net. The Thousand Oaks High senior has narrowed his choices to USC, Stanford, Virginia and Duke.

Although spared the deluge of mail -- Querrey received a mere three or four letters a day -- programs have pulled out all the stops during his official recruiting visits.

At Duke, Querrey watched a men's basketball practice and met with coach Mike Krzyzewski for 20 minutes after.

When he was at USC, Querrey was introduced to football coach Pete Carroll, who sent a followup letter last week.

"He said he enjoyed our visit and that USC is a great place and how much he wants me to be there," Querrey said. "That was pretty cool."

The USC staff also brought Querrey onto a grass field and had the marching band swarm around him while playing the school fight song.

On his trip to Palo Alto last month, Stanford lit up the scoreboard at the tennis stadium with "Welcome to Stanford Sam Querrey."

As much as he finds the attention flattering, Querrey's ready for it to end.

"Recruiting is a pretty long process, and I'm kind of getting tired of dealing with it," he said. "Now, I just have to figure out which one I want to go to."

Querrey is currently playing the Pro Circuit in Hawaii, but I believe he is planning to sign by the close of the early signing period next Wednesday. [UPDATE: 11/11--Querrey will not be signing during the early signing period]