College of the Desert student-athletes, coaches negatively impacted by coronavirus pandemic
“It’s a crazy time for these kids at every age. It affects the MLB Draft. It affects kids that were looking to play pro ball big time. It affects summer ball big time,” said College of the Desert baseball coach Sam DiMatteo.
Part of that trickle-down effect are sophomores at College of the Desert looking to take their talents to a four-year college.
“A lot of the coaches aren’t sure how much money, what the cap space is, because they don’t have a number of how many guys are coming back,” said Harrison Nation, a sophomore baseball player at COD.
For COD’s coaches, it’s also impacting the recruiting of incoming freshmen.
“The college that they’re going to go to, there’s players staying now. So instead of leaving and all these spots opening up, now it’s that much tougher to get a starting position,” DiMatteo said.
Recruiting is still happening, just virtually.
“Thank God for social media and all these recruiting websites, it almost gets to the point where you don’t even have to go watch them play, but you want to create relationships and show that you’re interested, that’s just a big part of it,” DiMatteo said.
Virtual recruiting has its share of limitations.
“To make their decisions on virtual tours, I’m not sure if I could’ve been one of those kids,” said COD softball coach Garrett Estrin.
“A lot of kids want to come see the campus, a lot of kids want to come visit the coaching staff, you know, fly in, drive in, and make these big decisions, and they can’t do that,” DiMatteo said.
“Coaches are really risking it by bringing in guys who only threw about eight innings, but show a lot of potential because of how hard they throw or because of how well the pitches move and how good of control they have over it,” Nation said.
Though for Coach DiMatteo’s staff, they’re making up for lost time since being hired right before last season.
“It’s almost like we’re in a different scenario than most teams because we didn’t recruit anybody last year so you can almost say were wide open,” he said.
Both COD softball and baseball coaches say most of the sophomores are good to go.
“We felt very strongly about how well this team was doing and obviously progressing throughout the season. That being said, as good as they were doing, that creates opportunities for players,” Estrin said.
And those who aren’t have the option to stay another year, which both coaches welcome.
