Assistant coach and head of recruiting Ritchie Price has a unusual style of recruiting. He focuses heavily on paying his recruits the attention they need. In 2013, he went out of his way to recruit now-sophomore shortstop Matt McLaughlin. "He has become one of the best young recruiters in the country," coach Ritch Price says.
Assistant coach and head of recruiting Ritchie Price has a unusual style of recruiting. He focuses heavily on paying his recruits the attention they need. In 2013, he went out of his way to recruit now-sophomore shortstop Matt McLaughlin. "He has become one of the best young recruiters in the country," coach Ritch Price says.
Assistant coach and head of recruiting Ritchie Price has a unusual style of recruiting. He focuses heavily on paying his recruits the attention they need. In 2013, he went out of his way to recruit now-sophomore shortstop Matt McLaughlin. "He has become one of the best young recruiters in the country," coach Ritch Price says.
through hands-on recruiting NICK GEIDNER @nickgeidner
One of the most important
if not the most important aspects of a robust college athletic program is recruiting. As players age and move on to higher levels, the only way for a program to survive is by bringing in newer and younger talent year after year. Assistant coach and head of recruiting Ritchie Price has a unusual style of bringing new talent to the Kansas baseball program. He focuses heavily on paying his recruits the attention they need and sells all that Kansas has to offer when those recruits come to visit. That style has plenty of people talking, and he's probably earned that credential. These days, it's hard to look at Kansas' recruiting without seeing the massive fingerprints that Ritchie has left on the team. I have to pay Ritchie a great compliment; he has become one of the best young recruiters in the country, coach Ritch Price said of his son in a September news release. I honestly believe the 2015 class is one of the best I have ever been associated with in my 22 years at the Division I level. In 2013, Ritchie went out of his way to recruit a player who would go on to be a crucial player on the team's 2015 squad: now-sophomore shortstop Matt McLaughlin. Last season, McLaughlin had a batting average of .293, which ranked fourth on the team. McLaughlin also had a fielding percentage of .947, which placed him among the top infielders on the team. Ritchie flew to California three separate times to watch McLaughlin play and always kept in contact with him, which is one of the reasons the shortstop is at Kansas today. It was just the communication and the effort he put in to come watch me play, McLaughlin said of Ritchie's recruiting tactics. He flew down to San Diego twice to see me play, [and] he flew in to San Jose to watch me play. The feeling of being wanted is huge, obviously, rather than
just getting the routine emails
of, Hey, come to our camp. Of the 35 active players on the 2015 roster, 28 of them or 80 percent are from outside the state of Kansas. Each of those are guys Ritchie and the rest of the Kansas recruiting staff had to leave the state of Kansas and invest time and money in order to recruit. Perhaps more importantly, that's 80 percent of the active roster that chose to come to Kansas of all places. We believe that Kansas is a place that if we can get you here to make the visit [...] show you the campus, the University, the college town and the facilities, Ritchie said. We've got a really good chance to land you.
Its completely evident how much better
our players have gotten since he joined our staff, and I give him full credit for that. RITCH PRICE Head Coach
Sometimes, the campus or
town isn't always enough to fully land a player. The recruit needs to feel comfortable and at home when visiting a school. Ritchie has an unorthodox way of doing that, and it starts in the clubhouse. We feel like we have really good kids on our team and a really good clubhouse chemistry-wise, Ritchie said. "The more that our recruits interact with the entire team, the more they'll feel the family atmosphere we have here at KU. Another way Ritchie is a successful recruiter is how well he can relate to players. Ritchie began his collegiate coaching career at South Dakota, where he had the title of the youngest head coach at the Division I level. He believes his young age played an important factor in the way he was able to relate to the players. I think the situation [being the youngest head coach] was good because I could really relate to them, Richie said about
his time at South Dakota. I
was able to sell the opportunity to play for a young coach that's going to be able to relate to you and have fun. At a school that didn't have a lot to sell to kids, that was something that we were really able to lean on. When Ritchie made the decision to take the assistant coaching job at Kansas in 2011, he continued to use his young age to relate to players, but he also was able to use the fact that he was a former player for Kansas, graduating back in 2007. During his time as a player at Kansas, Ritchie set 24 school records, was a four-year starter at shortstop, where he was named top shortstop in the Big 12 in 2004, was honored with the status of team captain in both 2005 and 2006 and helped lead Kansas to its first Big 12 championship in program history. McLaughlin explained how much having Ritchie as a coach helped him make the transition onto the team in his first season last year. [Ritchie] was probably the best shortstop that's ever played here, McLaughlin said. Playing shortstop for part of the time last year and hopefully this next year, I would try to pick his mind as best as possible and try to do some of the things that he did and how he had so much success here. I would ask him a lot of questions, and he would recognize when players really want to get better and, you know, he'll take them under his wing and really try to improve them. Ritchie doesn't recruit just anybody either. During his time on staff at Kansas, he has managed to sign three of the top six prep players in the state of Kansas and two of the top five prep players in the state of Nevada, including the No. 1 left-handed pitcher and the No. 6 overall player. And that's not including all the talent he recruited from the rest of the country in states such as California, Hawaii, Colorado and Texas, to name a few. While a lot of the time Ritchie spends as a coach at Kansas focuses on recruiting, he also works heavily with the team's
offense and the team's infielders.
Ritchie finished his college career with a batting average of .305 and still holds the Kansas record for most career hits (312). He uses the knowledge he has to teach his players some of the same techniques. In 2014, Ritchie led the Jayhawk offense to a team batting average of .283, which helped the team reach the NCAA tournament for the fifth time in school history. The 2015 Kansas baseball team began its fall practices on Sept. 22. Trying to move forward from its disappointing 23-32 end to last season, Kansas is looking forward to this upcoming spring, where coach Ritch will turn to Ritchie to continue to work with the players on getting to where they need to be. The team aims to get back to the NCAA tournament, which it fell short of last season. And while that task may be tall, Ritch seems to have full confidence in his son's ability to get their players where they need to be. It's completely evident how much better our players have gotten since he joined our staff, he said, and I give him full credit for that. Edited by Dani Malakoff
ZOE LARSON/KANSAN
Assistant coach and head of recruiting Ritchie Price.