It came to the attention of the NCAA Board of Directors that coaches text messaging recruits is invading student-athletes lives and creating extra cost issues.

After looking into the issue and getting the appropriate dialog from student-athletes the NCAA banned all text messaging from coaches to recruits last Thursday in Indianapolis to protect the privacy of the student-athletes.

Katherine G. Zedonis, the compliance director for Sac State, said it’s important to realize that the student-athletes brought up this issue.

The proposal of the banning of text messaging was sponsored by the Ivy Group, and the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) was in favor of the proposal.

Vanessa Fuchs, Associate Director of Membership Services at the NCAA, said that 31 student-athletes, one from each Division I conference, serve on the Division I SAAC. Fuchs said that the SAAC members are asked to gather feedback from student-athletes who attend the institutions within their conferences, prior to their SAAC meetings, where they discuss and formulate positions on select proposals.

She also said they discuss the proposals with their conference SAAC and campus SAAC groups to determine if their conference supports or opposes a particular piece of legislation.Anna Chappell, the Division I National SAAC Chair for the PAC-10 Representative, said the SAAC’s role is one of lobbying for the student-athletes. She said a common factor they found was intrusion and cost. “It was intrusion into their personal time and extra cost if the family didn’t have a plan for texting,” she said.

“The board was swayed very much by what the student-athletes had to say,” Division I Vice-President David Berst said on a conference call to reporters. “We heard anecdotal stories of someone waking up and having 52 text messages.”

Sac State’s director of athletics, Terry Wanless, said not only can text messaging be intrusive, but costly.

If people don’t have text messaging in their plan, they have to pay to send and receive texts whether they read them or not.

Coaches will no longer be allowed to communicate with recruits through text messaging beginning August 1.

Zedonis said an e-mail was sent out to the athletic staff last Friday and meetings will be scheduled to inform coaches and answer any questions.

She said that she will be attending the NCAA regional rules seminar in May.

“We get our education on the rules there,” she said. “(This issue) will be a hot topic there.”

One might ask since there isn’t an easy way to regulate if a coach is following rules, what would stop them from sending one harmless text to a recruit?

“You have to trust your coaches to do the right thing,” Terry Wanless, director of athletics, said. “I don’t have any concern with our staff to adjust to the rule.”

This issue has gotten coaches’ and athletes’ attention, but not everyone agrees about the situation.

“Recruiting is a challenging business,” Wanless said. “It is competitive and (partly form of) job security to be able to recruit a quality athlete.”

Dan Muscatell, Sac State’s women’s basketball coach, said he doesn’t agree with banning text messaging at all.

“This legislation is as ridiculous as I have ever seen in my eight years (in the) NCAA,” he said.

He said the whole idea of recruiting is meeting the student-athletes at their level of comfort, which is text messaging.

Women’s basketball senior Kim Sheehy, who will be graduating in May, was not recruited through text messaging, but said she understands why coaches use it as a form of communication.

“I think that a lot of coaches like to use the texting because we would rather text than talk on the phone. More kids will answer questions through texting,” Sheehy said. “It wouldn’t have (bothered me), and I would have preferred it rather than calls. It’s much easier and wouldn’t have been intrusive.”

Sheehy’s teammate, freshman Erika Edwards, said she loved the fact that she got to know coach Muscatell through text messaging since she isn’t a talkative person on the phone.

“I think it would have sucked (if we couldn’t use texting. I got to know coach (Muscatell) through texting,” she said.

Edwards said if she would have had to sit down and spend time talking on the phone, it would have been awkward.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to call them [coaches] back,” she said. “It’s kind of the scare factor. You are so nervous to be recruited and to know what to say.” “(Coaches) will do anything to win that student-athlete’s heart,” Wanless said. “(But) it’s gone overboard.”

Muscatell isn’t the only coach who likes to use text messaging as a form of communication with recruits. Softball coach Kathy Strahan said she has used text messaging as a form of communication while recruiting student-athletes, but said she doesn’t send numerous texts to any one person.

“We don’t blitz or (use an) in-your-face (approach)” she said. “It’s not the way we recruit.”

Strahan said the only time she would text a student-athlete would be to keep in contact. A typical text she said she might send would say that she saw a student-athlete play and wanted to say nice job or good game without calling the student-athlete.

She said she thought it was a good move to ban text messaging.

“We will go back to the old ways,” she said.

Some coaches haven’t changed with the times and never pick up the phone to text a student-athlete.

Gymnastics coach Kim Hughes said he doesn’t use text messaging even in his private life.

“I guess I’m old-fashioned,” he said. “E-mail is close enough to the same thing.”

He said that he won’t have a problem with the new rule, but it’s easy for him since he never used it before.

Debby Colberg, the volleyball coach, said she doesn’t even know how to text message, but looks at text messages as a form of communication for friends and not in the professional world.

“I would want to be professional (with student-athletes). I just don’t care for it,” she said.

Colberg said her seventh-year assistant, Ruben Volta, has been known to communicate with recruits through text messaging.

She said he’s doing it in a limited way by responding to recruited student-athletes who have text messaged him about what court and time they will be playing in a tournament.

Unlike Strahan, Hughes and Colberg, Muscatell isn’t OK with the issue.

“(Text messaging is) not how we recruit, it’s just another tool in the recruiting process,” Muscatell said.

Muscatell said that some student-athletes have a problem with coaches text messaging them, but not enough to ban the usage. “This is a legislation that a bunch of old people are telling young people how to communicate ? and it’s not how that group of people communicates,” he said.

Muscatell did his own form of research. He has three children ranging from 17 to 22 years old, and after adding text messaging to his plan, the minutes went down by 1000. “So what do kids like using? Text messaging,” he said. “I need to meet them on that level.”

Before Muscatell uses text messaging with a recruits he asks four simple questions. If she has a cell phone, if she has text messaging is in the plan, if she likes to text messages, and does she want him to text.

He said if the answer is “no” to any question, he wouldn’t use text messaging. Colberg said she had read that the NCAA polled high school student-athletes and a majority said they wouldn’t like to communicate with coaches through text messaging.

Courtney Hibler, a graduating senior who competed for Hughes on the gymnastics team agreed, saying it wasn’t necessary. “It might not be a professional way (to get athletes) to come to the school,” Hibler said. “A more professional way would be to send a letter or e-mail.” Karyn Gilbert can be reached at [email protected]