Does anyone have experience recruiting at DII from Hawaii? Obviously the distance combined with the lack of strong recruits in Hawaii make it seem like a difficult task. I am just curious as I ponder where I may want to move next.

May be obvious but if you can be the only DII in Hawaii it's ok. May have slim years but a stud recruit is yours!

It's really luck of the draw. As jenningss said, you can fall into a star or you can have nothing. I've found, at least in D1, that it's best to scout the other out in the middle of nowhere places too. Then at least you're a little closer to even ground when battling someone in Montana or Alaska or something.

I had good success recruiting in Hawaii at DII.  I made sweet 16 after 2 years. I scouted Hawaii and all of the west coast. Go after guys that have OK ratings but high potential.

I coached 4 seasons at HI-Hilo and it was really tough to get guys...I tried to nab the local HI talent but there was someone at HI-Pacific and BYU-Hawaii as well I believe, so I had to branch out and get a few guys from Cali and AZ...it's quite the disadvantage though, I'm glad I tried it.

FWIW, if they ever opened a brand new world, I would set my sights on coaching HI-Hilo FOREVER.

Posted by terps21234 on 1/10/2014 6:43:00 PM (view original):
I had good success recruiting in Hawaii at DII.  I made sweet 16 after 2 years. I scouted Hawaii and all of the west coast. Go after guys that have OK ratings but high potential.

"Go after guys that have OK ratings but high potential".  Honestly, isn't that what someone should be doing no matter where they're recruiting from?  Not sure that really helps the OP in this case, simply because it's pretty much common sense.  I think he's looking for even more specific answers/strategies/techniques.

If there are no humans in Alaska, treat Alaska like an extension of your home state. Monopolize it. Check the world and see which states don't have many humans nearby, hopefully you can go after players there without much competition. (I was doing this for a while in South Dakota in Knight with the N Central and N Sun conferences relatively empty, but I think other humans remembered that SD exists, because people fight there now). If at all possible, avoid fights on lower 48 recruits, because you almost always have a disadvantage. Scout the hell out of internationals. 

This is essentially what I've been doing at Alaska-Anchorage for the last few seasons in Knight. I've had some modest success (a Final Four and a Sweet Sixteen), but it's been really uneven (those two years were followed by a PIT). It was a lot easier to build a team than keep a team, because in building it, I could recruit players for $110 and not worry about the promised start because the team sucked anyways. Once I had a competitive team, I actually had to spend more money to get far-away recruits to consider me. 

What about the international market?

Thanks for the posts, guys. I was just curious. It does seem like a huge disadvantage and would require being very creative with the budget. There is already one human DII coach in Hawaii so that makes it that much more difficult. 

I think Alaska and Puerto Rico would offer similar challenges. At Alaska I figure there are possibly some Canadian recruits close as well as parts of Russia. 

The problem with Alaska an PR is that there are no D1 schools.   In Hawaii you can pulldown the local D1 talent.

Puerto Rico does have Florida pretty close I guess....

Two or three years ago someone wrote a fairly good guide for how to recruit semi-successfully in Hawaii...I annotated the following information from it:: "1. Defend the islands at all costs, fight like heck for any and all in-state recruits worth having. Let the mainland know they're in for a battle for anything they try to grab (schedule to get the best prestige of the island schools), 2. Relax your standards slightly for in-state recruits and grab them early -- grabbing a career backup on the cheap early frees up money to go after other players. 3. Internationals are your friends. 4. Aside from the island and Asian internationals, resist the temptation to dive in early. Let others get bloody and try to find the overlooked players in the cycle or two before recruiting starts and shortly thereafter. 5. Recruit for roles...it can be hard to find a well-rounded player that you'll be able to get, so find players that are REALLY GOOD in a category or two."

Posted by Trentonjoe on 1/13/2014 3:19:00 PM (view original):
The problem with Alaska an PR is that there are no D1 schools.   In Hawaii you can pulldown the local D1 talent.

Puerto Rico does have Florida pretty close I guess....

PR has the added problem of no FSS service, so you have to expend extra money on scouting trips just to discover who the decent locals are.

Posted by rednu on 1/13/2014 3:46:00 PM (view original):
Two or three years ago someone wrote a fairly good guide for how to recruit semi-successfully in Hawaii...I annotated the following information from it:: "1. Defend the islands at all costs, fight like heck for any and all in-state recruits worth having. Let the mainland know they're in for a battle for anything they try to grab (schedule to get the best prestige of the island schools), 2. Relax your standards slightly for in-state recruits and grab them early -- grabbing a career backup on the cheap early frees up money to go after other players. 3. Internationals are your friends. 4. Aside from the island and Asian internationals, resist the temptation to dive in early. Let others get bloody and try to find the overlooked players in the cycle or two before recruiting starts and shortly thereafter. 5. Recruit for roles...it can be hard to find a well-rounded player that you'll be able to get, so find players that are REALLY GOOD in a category or two."

I'll agree with this assessment.  I have coached at DII Hawaii several times over the years and am currently at Hawaii Hilo in Knight.  Hawaii is mine and nobody else will recruit there without my expressed written consent.  The remainder of my roster will be made up of internationals.  I doubt I will even bother recruiting other North American players unless I have an A+ prestige and a late DI dropdown is just sitting there inaccessible to the vast majority of other DII teams. 

As long as you are the only human coach on the islands and, if Alaska is human controlled, you don't kill each other over the same internationals (I view the Canadian internationals as primarily Alaska's home turf and the Eurasian internationals as primarily my home turf) then you can have success there.  Local players are so cheap, you can devote your entire budget to the international market...something lower 48 schools would have a hard time justifying.