MOBILE, Ala. – Traditionally during the spring season, the University of South Alabama football program will conduct a Junior Day in order to give a large number of potential recruits the opportunity to visit campus, see a number of facilities, watch how the Jaguar football coaching staff works at a practice, and interact with not only members of the program but support staff. Last year there were enough prospects interested in South football that the program conducted two Junior Days during the spring campaign.
The scheduled date for the first of those sessions this year was on Saturday, but with the spring season shut down before the Jaguars could take the field due to the COVID-19 pandemic the team needed another approach to be able to connect with recruits.
That's when Chase Calcagni, the program's director of player personnel, looked into Plan B.
"We try to get our top recruits on a day during spring practice so they can be in more of a one-on-one situation, but you still have a lot of guys who you want to get here so they can see everything," he said. "On a normal Junior Day we will do a facility tour and a campus tour, we'll see dorms and apartments, and the prospects are able to watch some practice. When all these things were happening and changing [due to the pandemic], I did not want to cancel just yet. We kept monitoring the situation, and when it came to the point where we had to cancel this I said, 'let's not cancel this, let's do it live.'"
"I thought it was a great idea that Chase and the recruiting staff came up with," said South head coach Steve Campbell. "The biggest thing we wanted to make sure of was that it was respectful to the situation that we are in, we wanted to follow all federal, state and local guidelines as far as social distancing was concerned. It was a great way to get a Junior Day out there and get guys on campus without physically bringing them in, we were able to virtually bring them to campus so they could see the facilities; there has been a great investment in facilities here with Hancock Whitney Stadium and the indoor practice facility, the locker room renovation that is about to begin and the nutrition center.
"We have to get that information out there and let recruits see what is being done here."
Live meant streaming a tour of the program's on-campus facilities including both the field house and Jaguar Training Center, and at the end of the tour Campbell was able to answer questions with Hancock Whitney Stadium — currently under construction and set to open in the fall — in the background. While walking through the field house, Campbell and Calcagni were able to showcase the locker room which will feature 120 new lockers and the team's new player lounge, the weight room and athletic training facility, and the old player lounge that is being converted to a nutrition center.
Click here to view South Alabama Football's Junior Day
Rather than having to manage moving hundreds of people around South's campus, a process that takes up most of a day, Junior Day was able to highlight program amenities in just over an hour with the help of three individuals — all maintaining proper social distancing — running live video on their phones.
"Normally, Junior Days are trying to coordinate 500 people on campus," said Calcagni. "This was the easiest Junior Day we'd ever planned, we just needed to get the facilities looking nice and clean — which they always are — and be prepared to broadcast on every platform; Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We practiced the day before, and we built a script. We ultimately decided that we wanted to limit it to around an hour. We planned to make this one just about our facilities, and now we're looking into what we can do about the rest of campus."
Statistics during the stream showed that at any given time approximately 100 people were watching live, but after making video of the tour available on Twitter after it was complete those numbers have increased considerably. Days after the event concluded it is nearing 6,000 views.
"The response has been great," Campbell said. "Every recruit that I've talked to has either watched it live or has been able to go to the web site and view the replay of it and they get to see what we are trying to do here."
"Right now you can go back and view it, so we can send it to the guys who missed it," said Calcagni. "I think all in all that right now we've reached a lot of people, not just recruits but fans who are eager for sports. It kind of touched everyone, which I think is cool."
It turns out running a Junior Day event live on social media was a learning experience for more than recruits and fans of the program. "The most lasting feedback was, 'don't turn your head away from the camera because it's hard to hear you,'" explained Calcagni. "If we were shooting this like a regular video, we would have had proper audio and equipment, but since it was live it was a little different.
"A lot of kids were like, 'hey, no one else is doing this.' So it was more important that we were able to be more interactive."
With spring football cancelled and the campus closed to unauthorized visitors, Calcagni is investigating other ways to use social media to connect prospects with the Jaguar football program.
"I'm full of a million ideas," he said. "A lot of them get shot down, to be honest with you, but some are good and make it through."
Based on the success of last weekend's Junior Day, Campbell is supportive of using the medium to help the program continue to make progress under current circumstances. "I can definitely see using social media platforms as we move forward," he said.
Many people not only across the country but around the world have been forced to adapt in an effort to move forward during the COVID-19 pandemic. The South Alabama football program was quick to make an adjustment, and as a result has found a way to connect with recruiting prospects despite travel and face-to-face contact limitations.
For more information about South Alabama athletics, check back with www.usajaguars.com, and follow the Jaguars at www.twitter.com/WeAreSouth_JAGS. Season tickets for all Jaguar athletic events can be purchased by calling (251) 461-1USA (1872).
Join the South Circle, the unrestricted giving option of the University of South Alabama Athletics. Contributions to the South Circle directly support all 17 sports in addition to various support programming. For more information on how you can join visit: http://jaguarathleticfund.com/give
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