By Eric Trent
The Peninsula men’s basketball team has already benefited, in terms of recruiting, from taking home the third-place trophy at the Northwest Athletic Conference Tournament, last month.
“It’s helped immensely. The kids see us as a winner. Kids, these days, want to come to a program that’s successful. We were successful this year, but Peninsula College basketball, in general, has been successful for a long time now. It’s just a credit to our school, our program and our athletic department.” Head coach Mitch Freeman said. Freeman has already scoured the surrounding Olympic Peninsula for its top players. “I’ve been to Neah Bay, Sequim, talked to all the coaches, Coach [Greg] Glasser at Sequim and Coach [Kasey] Ulin at Port Angeles. So we’ve been local as much as we could,” Freeman said.
“We’ve talked to Abraham [Venske] in Neah Bay, talked to Colton [Raben] at Forks and then Alex Barry at Sequim. We’ve covered our backyard.” Freeman said.
Freeman, however, hasn’t limited his recruiting to only local. “I’ve been out to the Seattle/Tacoma area, I was in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago and I’ll be heading to Alaska.” Freeman noted.
“You’ve got to go everywhere. Obviously we’d love to have our kids on the Olympic Peninsula stay home and play but we have to be able to go outside a little bit to find some kids that want to come to a winning program and get their degree.” Freeman said.
With three scholarships available for this upcoming season, some recruits have already visited campus. “We’ve had a number of kids on campus. We’ve offered several players with the few scholarships that we have left. We don’t lose a whole lot. We’re returning almost everyone from this past year’s team.” Freeman said.
“We expect to have recruiting finished by mid-May and then start on next year’s evaluations this summer. The kids that we’re looking at, right now, have a lot of attention from other Junior College’s and four-year schools. “ Freeman added.