From the Newsstands: This story appeared in The Eagle's April 2025 print edition. You can find the digital version here.
Every year, American University’s track and field assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Zach Prescott travels to various cities on recruiting trips in hopes of finding new talent. About two years ago, he considered himself particularly successful.
Prescott made the trip to New Jersey to watch current freshman Noah Smith, who at the time was in his junior year of high school, compete in and later win the 2-mile race. Prescott wasted no time in finding the athlete after his race to hand over a business card and put American on his radar.
“That is the best-case scenario,” Prescott said. “Finding someone who loves to compete and kind of introducing them to the school and allowing them to be like, ‘okay, what’s this place about, let me kind of figure it out.’”
American University athletes are known for their competitive nature within the Patriot League, but how do these athletes find their way to D.C.? For some potential Eagles, it takes inter-coach connections and a few emails to show initiative, but for others, talent and proximity streamline the process.
Many of American’s teams, like track and field or field hockey, conduct their own outreach for upcoming athletes who fit the standards of their programs. They attend local events, stay up to date with databases showing top-performing athletes and, specifically for field hockey, conduct interest camps.
A large part of the recruiting process has to do with where athletes come from and what type of high school they attend. About 35 percent of the 2024-2025 field hockey roster attended private high schools before enrolling at the University, according to data collected from the AU Athletics website.
However, this aspect is largely ignored during recruitment, according to field hockey associate head coach Kristin Matula. She points out that their focus is more on region than school, recruiting athletes anywhere from Pennsylvania to Germany.
The possibility of scholarships is an obvious question for high school athletes when deciding where they will spend their next four years. Swimming and diving head coach Garland Bartlett shares that the team is non-scholarship and does not offer athletics-related financial incentives.
“If you want to come here, get a great education, swim in a Division I program and improve every year, then have access to the city with just internships and just all those connections, then this could be a good fit for you,” Bartlett said.
The three coaches agree that giving potential recruits the right expectations of the University experience is equally important to the matter of athletics. Matula thinks about it like this: “If you weren’t playing field hockey, would you still come to this school?”
With the academic rigor and unique extracurriculars, both Prescott and Bartlett said athletes have to be enthusiastic about the University as a whole to be successful student athletes.
This article was edited by Connor Sturniolo, Penelope Jennings and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Olivia Citarella, Jaden Anderson, Emma Brown, Sabine Kanter-Huchting, Ariana Kavoossi, Ella Rousseau, Hannah Langenfeld and Nicole Kariuki.
