Utah's Signing Day 2011

One of the biggest deceptions people have of the coaching profession is, thinking that once the season is over you get the rest of the year off....Nope Jay has been up to his eyeballs in recruiting since December. He recruits all year but it gets pretty intense come Dec/Jan. Currently he recruits the state of Utah and Las Vegas, but that didn't stop him from going to TX, LA & CA. This year of the 19 signed recruits he was responsible for signing 9 of those athletes! You can read about them here and here.

We have made the effort to make sure we support Jay as much as possible. I think that no matter what job you have involving the family as much as possible shows both the employer how invested you are but also shows your kids why Dad (or mom) is gone and what they are doing while they are not with them.

Some of my earliest memories are going to work with my dad. Once he changed careers and was a teacher, I would go to his classroom after school was out and play in the chemistry labs, write on chalkboards. As we were older we helped correct papers. We as a family were invested in his and my mom's careers.

As our kids get older, they have learned to form real relationships with some of these players and have learned that the good things in life are earned with hard work.

They had 1000 fans at the signing party, which is a good start for jumping into the PAC 12 hopefully we can continue the support and get 10 times that to the spring game. They had a bounce house, sports court, football throw, merchandise, dinner and a program to introduce the new recruits.

This has been a stressful recruiting season for the staff. They were short 3 coaches, so many areas were not combed through as carefully as they should have been. Then add the pressure of the PAC 12. In the MWC you can battle against 1-2 PAC 10 schools and win the majority of the time, if you lose that recruit it doesn't really hurt. If you are up against 5-8 PAC 10 schools and you lose, well now you don't have that player and you will be playing against that player. In a profession where 1 season can determine if you have a job or not, getting those recruits is crucial.

I am looking forward to this season and the excitement it could hold.

(And the fact that I won't be pregnant anymore)

As far as Jay's schedule, we are looking forward to having fridays off in February and spring break in March. Jay is excited to get with the staff. Getting to know and learning from the new coaches Tim Davis and Norm Chow.