For many college coaches, recruiting is a process marked by road trips, phone calls, all-star games, meetings and mailings. With hundreds of prospects to scout, it's a full-time job to acquire the best and brightest of each year's recruiting class. Every coach wants to sign athletes who will help his or her program succeed.

For rifle coaches, the goal is the same -- it's the recruiting process that differs. There's a greater emphasis on selectivity and resourcefulness, and sometimes, a need for creativity.

At the NCAA level, about 500 rifle student-athletes compete for a total of 46 teams. At the high-school level, about 3,000 boys and girls compete in shooting sports. With a small percentage of those athletes eligible for recruitment, the talent pool is limited, and often times, so are college coaches' resources to find and sign recruits.

The NCAA allows for 3.6 scholarships per rifle team. Most teams carry eight to 10 student-athletes. It would seem a better ratio than other sports with larger teams and equally low scholarships available, but rifle has hidden costs not encountered by the majority of sports.

Most rifle athletes pay for their own equipment, which can run into the thousands. A good competition rifle can cost at least $2,000. Then, there's the cost of competition attire. For athletes who compete in both smallbore and air rifle, the cost can be twice as much, so a partial scholarship is not nearly as enticing as some might think.

Also, almost all rifle coaches are one-man shows. They recruit and coach; they drive their teams to and from meets, and then, there's all that paperwork they have to contend with.

Many have unique circumstances in addition to those challenges born from the nature of their sport, the characteristics of how it's supported and the institutions they represent.

Coach Harry Mullins at the University of Kentucky said working for an athletics powerhouse is a double-edged sword when it comes to recruiting rifle athletes. He said, "As far as the name goes, there's recognition, but that's kind of the hard part about it. They see football and basketball on TV and then there's this misconception that the school has tons of money for its other athletics programs."

Despite the fact that his program is fully funded, he said, "The 3.6 scholarship limit really hampers us. Our top shooter may be on a 25 to 50 percent scholarship," Mullins said.

Honesty saves time, money

Adding to the financial limitations, Mullins said, are the expectations that high-school rifle athletes have for college teams. "A lot of high-school coaches think there's all of these full scholarships out there waiting for the kids," he said.

His theory is supported somewhat by Erin Gestl, coach of the Palmyra rifle team in Pennsylvania. He said he believes less competition equals more opportunity and he encourages his athletes to take advantage

"Since shooting is not as popular as other sports, I believe the kids I coach have a better chance of getting a scholarship," he said. "If you're a good shooter, colleges know where you're at."

Colleges might know where the athletes are, but it's just a matter of getting them to visit and being able to foot the bill. Bringing recruits in for official visits involves strategy and a keen awareness of recruiting dollars.

"It's like a jigsaw puzzle. I have to make all of the pieces fit in terms of scholarship money, recruits and our budget," Mullins said. "Sometimes it takes a little bit of luck to get it all to work."

Two-time defending national champion University of Alaska Fairbanks' head coach Dave Johnson said recruiting is a process that requires a great deal of honesty up front on his end so that the money spent doesn't go to waste.

"If we go to the expense to bring recruits in for a visit, they need to know two things: the winter is harsh, and if they need to go home every weekend or are the type to get homesick, this is not the place for them," he said.

For those reasons alone, Johnson said, "It's rare we get someone walking in the door at a real high level. But if they have a desire and willingness to work on their skills, they'll progress quickly here."

In Johnson's case, access to the mainland for recruiting is a luxury. Locating potential recruits usually entails relying on established relationships with coaches of junior shooting clubs across the country and attending several big shooting tournaments each year.

Johnson said, "We start tracking kids their junior year. That's when you start to see them mature as a competitor."

Quality over quantity

The sport of rifle does not have a ratings system, RPI or Sagarin ranking. Many coaches gather information about potential recruits by obtaining results bulletins from various junior competitions. The results most often exclude the age of the shooter, presenting a challenge to the coaches to find out if the athletes are even eligible to be recruited. Mullins said, "That's probably the toughest part of the process."

Mullins' recruiting process involves a relatively short evaluation period. He said, "We start looking real close their senior year. It's more about looking at their résumé and seeing if they've progressed through the years."

Karen Anthony coaches the women's rifle team at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and she described an entirely different recruiting scenario.

She said she finds recruiting a relatively easy process because, "I'm only looking for female shooters, which already is a small group. I get a scoresheet that tells me who is shooting well. There are just a few events to watch and attend if I want to observe a particular shooter."

Anthony said she is not concerned with having to seek out recruits. "The athletes who want to shoot know what's out there. Most students have a short list of where they want to go," she said.

In turn, Anthony said she has a short list of who she wants. The potential complication, she said, is that "since there are so few women, if there was only one or two I'm looking at and they choose to go somewhere else, there's no one left."

Fortunately for Anthony, that has not been the case thus far. In fact, one of her prize recruits, Nicole Allaire, claimed the smallbore individual title at the 2000 NCAA championships.

Though these coaches represent just a sampling of the rifle coaching community, other sports and coaches could learn a lesson or two. It's not necessarily the quantity of athletes they recruit or the money they spend. What matters most is the quality of athlete they bring in and what they do with them once they're there.

It's more than just a shot in the dark.