High Schools and areas missing in recruiting Topic

I've done some (limited) research on some of the schools I currently and have coached at in the past and their surrounding areas and found that the system seems to be generating no recruits close to some colleges despite the fact that there are high schools and students in those areas in real life.

For example, I used to coach at Clarion in Knight (DII, Clarion, Pennsylvania) and found very few recruits closer than 30 miles away. Internet research tells me there are plenty of rural school districts in that area and I don't recall ever seeing any recruits generated from any of them.

This leads me to believe rural colleges may be artificially more difficult to recruit for in HD. Thoughts?

6/26/2013 10:51 AM
I've seen multiple recruits from Unicoi Co HS in Tennessee and Dixie HS in South Carolina. The first is pretty darn rural, and the second is about as small a town as you can have. They may well be missing some rural areas, as I do not profess to be an expert. But they have some that I was honestly a bit surprised to see
6/26/2013 11:16 AM
I know that in Oregon there are no public schools included.  They are all small private schools, which misses all of the top schools in the Portland area.
6/26/2013 11:28 AM
I coach Sul Ross St. in Allen...I'm lucky if there's a recruit generated inside 100 miles, much less one that's actually obtainable at the D3 level. Western Texas seems to be a ghost town/dead zone for kids.
6/26/2013 11:35 AM
they generate recruits based on the number of schools in each division within the entire state, with (supposedly) no bias towards or away from any given part of the state (geographically). 

that said, I'm sure they took a list of high schools in each state a long time ago and just use the same ones again and again. 

6/26/2013 11:44 AM
I signed two players the same season from the same high school in the same small rural town in Michigan.  Wikipedia said the population of the town was 800 if I recall.  
6/26/2013 7:59 PM
http://whatif.cincinnati.com/hd/PlayerProfile/Ratings.aspx?tid=0&pid=2484174

Hundred, WV has a population of 300

Also my school has more students, 2000, than that town has people and has. Also although our basketball team is pretty good but not great we probably have the best public school football program in the state we made it to 2 straight state championships. But I have never seen a recruit from my high school.
6/26/2013 10:18 PM
I'm not saying there aren't any players from rural schools. I'm saying there should be more players from a varying array of rural schools that don't seem to exist in the game but do in real life.

Going back to my example at Clarion, the closest recruit I ever had there was 30 miles away. One was from Oil City, Pa. and the other was from Marienville, Pa. Yet a simple internet search told me there are seven small school districts in Clarion County, Pa., with the town of Clarion smack in the middle of the county and I didn't see any recruits from any of those schools.

Another funny note is what I found in researching the schools those 30 mile recruits came from. The Oil City one was from a catholic school, but the other one is much more entertaining. It's listed as Abraxis I Arlene Lissner High School, which is a facility that "offers specialized programs for hard-to-place juveniles and youth" including fire setters and sex offenders. They don't have a basketball team for obvious reasons, but on HD they sure do. Maybe we should be afraid to recruit those guys because they might rape someone or burn down the gym.

6/27/2013 10:45 AM
They are not trying to simulate real life high schools ...

They generate enough recruits based on what teams are where in the game .. not based on the latest US Census.

If they need 292 recruits in New York state, then they generate that (there is a random factor, so there will a +/- to the base number .. but it will be similar every season.

It is based on a list of schools at some point in time ... but it is loosely based on that and it would be 10(ish) years ago.
6/27/2013 2:59 PM
I understand what  you're saying, hughesjr, but the schools I'm sure the schools I'm talking about existed ten or so years ago. It seems like the HD schools used are in many cases only the private schools in a certain region.
6/27/2013 3:16 PM
I recruited a guy from Inkster, ND. Population 50.
6/30/2013 10:31 AM
Posted by bullman17 on 6/26/2013 11:28:00 AM (view original):
I know that in Oregon there are no public schools included.  They are all small private schools, which misses all of the top schools in the Portland area.
This is how Pennsylvania is as well.  Just small private schools, this is most likely the reason the OP never seen any recruits in his Clairon area.
7/1/2013 8:21 AM
You're right - they are all private schools. That seems incredibly short-sighted given that the disbursement of public schools would be to all areas but private schools are in random locations.
7/1/2013 8:37 AM
I always thought Indiana was incredibly under rated for prospects on this game.  Year in and year out the state of Indiana produces a strong number of Top 100 guys on Rivals/Scout. 
7/1/2013 9:25 AM
I think the entire assigning recruits only to private schools is not good.
7/1/2013 9:28 AM
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