welcome to the secrets of college planning i'm your host anthony you go and welcome to my one hundred show today we're going to get some insight in college basketball at the ivy league level my guest today is courtney bankcard she is the head women's basketball coach at princeton university and welcome to the show thanks so much for having me carette on your one hundred thank you very much so usually i start my guess where they went to college so would you go to school when i went to dartmouth college up in northern up in northern new hampshire having been in new hampshire native it made a lot of sense for me  great great so let's go back in time in high school when did you go through the process when did it start freshman year senior year how did it all begin for you you know i being from southern new hampshire i was a three sport athlete and  played for every season i was doing something in the sport that i was probably best at was soccer so i ended up playing that all throughout the summers and all through this basically all year and i was i was a soccer recruit coming to high school and i was choosing between originally boston college and notre dame both of whom great academic institutions and they came with a little bit of financial help which is good and my dad was he was the one that really encouraged i look at the ivy league and if i could utilize my sport talent to get an opportunity to go to one of the best schools in the country i should take that up at that time i  you know do i want a visit the dartmouth college i'm the head coach of the time was named steve swanson who by the time my senior fall came around he called me and he said i've made a coaching change i'm taking the coaching job at stanford so you can either come with me to stanford or you can stay on at dartmouth as as one of their top recruits and at that point i said or maybe a third choice i'm going to call the basketball coach at dartmouth and that's what i did and luckily i had an opportunity to to be a part of that program and had great success and things happen for a reason i'm really lucky wow that's player you know with the d p a national level was high school american so it was recruiting happened early but i didn't really take it seriously i didn't engage fully in the process until probably my junior year wow but that's that so now how does one go from  college and graduating from there to head women's basketball coach or princeton university yeah you know it's not it's not a direct line you know i went to having having majored in neuroscience at dartmouth i didn't know that sports was a vocation for me it was always my passion and i didn't understand that you can what you felt you should do professionally find your passion and so when i graduated from dartmouth i became an athletic director at a high school down in washington d c a boarding school for three years and i coached i coached tennis and basketball there and really got a chance my master's seems like a great way to get a graduate degree paid for and so they did it with pay for my master's degree and i was a full time college basketball coach you got a full time a graduate student and ended up realizing that basketball coaching is absolutely a very meaningful vocation great so now you're at dartmouth and i was basketball coach there yeah and then how did princeton go to you know i was i had there was interesting spring i had turned the turn twenty nine years old i had applied for the amazing race which is a great show on t v and then i had defended my graduate thesis all in the same week and in that week i got a call from the princeton athletic director at the time jerry walters asked me if i had interest in the head coaching job at princeton and you know i obviously was really lucky he had followed my career as a player and played in legacy of of excellence athletic excellence at princeton but the basketball program hadn't yet had their cut their stride and i like that challenge so i took over a team that had never been to the n c a a tournament and then we went my third year and eve last eight so we've been able have great success there and you've won the ivy league i mean yeah we won we've won the ivy league i think it's five maybe six times as well and that's sixty eight years yeah great great person yeah so now let's go into high school the students criminal often comes down to accessibility how do i have access to these players to find out who's the right fit so a lot of people are playing at the club level so they're using their summers to poyet either club soccer club basketball in our case basketball and then the a kind of dictates a calendar of when we're allowed to watch them play and in july as calendar were allowed out i think it's fourteen days in july and so we scour the country during that time and these kids are playing in multiple tournaments and we're sitting there on the sideline with a  notepad and with their college and from it with their information kind of the roster and we're circling kids and taking notes on kids that we think can help us and it being princeton there's a high academic component so so what we choose to do is first find out who they are who are the kids that we think could help us and who are the kids that we would be excited about growing their game and then we go back and really hunt those transcripts down and we that will that down to who also not only has the level but also has the academic background that's going to thrive here and now do you find the majority of the kids coming from the united over from the globe to princeton university where the kids really talk with yeah that's a good question i think it really depends on the sport so if we're talking truly just about basketball you know we find that over a fifty state over fifty states we've got plenty of people to choose from in our in our own country but there are you know there are you know are fencing team has very few americans you know really it really depends on your sport soccer i know as i have heavily on national ice hockey to the lot of canada it's just in basketball we have it's not that there's not a lot of high level players playing in our country  from overseas but at princeton we have such a national scope that that we choose to really hone in on the on the cot in the u s ok so now the kids that are playing high school you know you're usually playing your college  sport at the same time they're playing high school basketball absolutely so do you recommend that these kids play not just high school but they play these outside club to yeah you know i think it comes down to you know the specialization that's happened across the across the board you know  three sport athlete that's pretty rare these days in part because there are people when you make a choice they want you to make a choice so that you have enough time to develop your skill at that level so if you love basketball enough to want to play at the level you love it enough to want to play in the summer too and so the summer puts kind of the think about it like this the summer is going to put all the best players from your region on one team not just your high school senior high schools a much smaller pool and so you might be the very best player in your high school but when you get paired with the best players in the region think start to kind of equalize a little bit so yeah i think summer access allows to be seen an additional way people are recruiting a heavy level is through the institutional camps so each institution can host easy camps that allow players to come to their targeted schools so we'll have people who are targeting the ivy league and they will go to a handful of the ivy league of the ivy league camps and and we've taken kids that we've never seen before they came to camp because it gives me a forty eight hour period to really work with them individually and find out what they're about so i would say summer whether it's playing in a club teams are going to institutional camps there has to be a way where you're getting access and you're being see now what's some of the requirements of princeton univers what you know athletically will start there i think it's recognizing that we've been in the top twenty five to the last five years and there's three hundred fifty division one programs so you know we beaten u s c we've beaten michigan beaten rutgers and seton hall by thirty this past year i mean we we played a very high level so you kind of won it you have to be one of the very you know probably top one hundred players in the country and then on top of it at the academically it's the number one school in the country for the seventh straight year and so that the transcript and the standardized testing have to reflect that that you know that's not what i want to see and then in terms of your course of rigor what makes sense for you you know if you're stronger in the math sciences challenge yourself they're stronger in english and history and social sciences take some honors and a p classes and in those to challenge yourself there so there's no real i wish there was a real defined equation there's not it's not it's really performance and excellence you're seeking that kind of an all of the areas of life so now i've heard many different coaches on over the years yeah and usually a topic that always comes up for parents is it's all about the sport it's not about academics or college love what do you say about something like that so glad you asked because i think that's what that's what makes princeton unique in the ivy league in general very unique is that you are not defined by your passion you're encouraged to find  passions at princeton and so you know we don't silo our student athletes in terms of athlete housing an athlete dining hall as an athlete study tables an athlete we really want our athletes to be generally a part of the genuine population of our of our school and i think the university strength is that you take these people from all over the world who have really intense passions and are really talented in very different areas hip hop dancing you know singing basketball ice hockey and you put them all together in their classes and in where they study in there where they live and i think they're in raises your bars across the board so that makes us very different i do think there are some some institutions many institutions because they're paying for you to be there they're sort of managing know how does princeton work with families yeah you know that you know i would say that we're princeton both figuratively and literally does it meet your needs financially so if your household income is below a certain threshold for instance free it's all grant money so no student going to graduate any loans so whatever you qualify for based on your need is what you get and if you if you make enough money were sixty thousand dollars a year doesn't impact you you have to pay it all regardless of your talent right  i would say the i think the average grant is forty six thousand dollars average and there are over sixty percent of all students are on financial aid which is again all grant money so i think prince is going to wonderful endowment and it's happy to educated the people that they get in so they're two separate qualities you know you first get in and then they will figure out how to pay for it so it is very need blind and so there's just no merit scholarship there's no they don't want to value the athletes any more than they do their musicians or their science students but i would say that we've been able to compete at a very national level athletically because people wondered first of all prince is very generous depending on your need and the second point is it's a great investment in your future and so we really try to help parents understand that the rate of recruit the number of kids that are on the actual basketball team you know i think spends a lot time a year so when we're going out there in the summer we're watching freshmen sophomores juniors and we don't have the transcript at all times yet so we're just literally who can help us that number can be quite big right and then we start to get their transcript and some get weeded out and then we get their testing right and some more get weeded out so well it depends on time of year you know once we get to the spring of their junior year we're allowed to pay for families to come to campus and spend the weekend in the n c a a allows you to do twelve of those i would say we've never have more than five of those because we bad a very high percentage as you can imagine so if we want four kids and we invite five we sometimes end up with all  princeton university and when the she get there and what happens from i guess august or september to the following july well what's the process that that's a to get a student will take well once you're admitted which is by november if you do the early out earlier december do the early action process you are officially a tiger right so we ask you to kind of continue to show your stripes all throughout your high school year you know finish strong then you get into the summer and by then we will have sent a a weightlifting pack and look at sort of getting them ready physically for the demands of college when they arrive in early september and go through some orientation and go through some pick their classes and whatnot and then we can hit the ground running so we're we're year round sports a whirl out to start with on the first day of along and we're going we're going a while and then they go right through the christmas holiday right oh yeah yeah thanksgiving we were be in north carolina this year we're at davidson the day after thanksgiving so be flying a few players saturday so we fly on thanksgiving day you know the cleat athlete for the basketball season being so long they'll be home for private five days over christmas well but otherwise they're with me and and they want to be you know this is their this is their love but regular students that they don't have the i thought a commitment we'll have much they'll have you know we get thanksgiving and they'll have kind of almost a three week period over christmas just really depends on what you're doing with your time at princeton and so if you make it to the n c a a tournament you know you're not going to march absolutely yeah so our last practice we went to the n c a a tournament obviously most of the time and i would say you know that's during spring break graduate till they leave this summer wow so it's really you know it's you know it's interesting because it's you know i think especially the parents that have your kids you sort of probably are some of the recent concerned parents who are saying oh my gosh i want them to go to school and i think it's from is remembering that it's two hours a day of a twenty four hour day in the experiences that they're going to have the lessons are going to learn a student athletes are remarkable and life changing at the same time that they want you know this is their love their passion so i think it's a real holistic wa you take usually four classes during that during that semester and then you also want to have you want to play a high level you also have a social life and you want to have all three of those things that princeton and and there's time for all three it does come down to time management and i also say i think the key is specially these days with social media and with their cellphones it's just be where you are if you're in if you're in practice be there if you're in class be there if you're studying take the time to get the work done if you're if you're hanging out with your friends the dating all be present you know so yeah you know i think what why i stayed so long at princeton is i connect really well with the core values of the institution and that is where it help you and you find your passion and then we're going to help you be in the field we're going to be in that field when you graduate and so we've had every number of things we have kids working at google at nike in banks we have med school we've had we have overseas basketball we have a w m b a so really their interests are as different as we are as people yeah and so therefore what they do they graduate is s different and at princeton you can literally name it you name it and we can help you get it and that's what you pay for right now they also then come back as well right there you get a lot of the long line of command yeah that's why it takes so long to decide who i want because they never leave you know what's there and you know  so i'm talking to thirty graduate you know thirty kids i coached every month very normal he goes i got a job change a coach i'm pregnant coach i'm getting married he coached you want to go golfing he goes when you come to visit new york city kind of get it all and it's because of their national team the other twenty three national teams of the very best college players in the country twelve of them we took the team out to tokyo where we played tokyo employee canada and we put australia in to be able to take that group of people that were so talented and try to meld into a team so quickly and to play at the international level with international rules it was a it was a highlight a lifetime highlight for sure and i learned a lot and i think i give my best so it was a good mix what what's one of the lessons that you learn by coaching that you know i think i think at all levels regardless of your instinctual instinctual talent the love for learning the game you know whether you're people who kind of can do a little bit everything and you know kids they can have been at the highest level you know top player in the country they just want to learn the game  there's a lot of different coaching style yeah there you know it's your type of style and i think you'd have to ask my kids but i think what they would say is that i'm very relational i've walked their walk you know i've i've i've lived it i've lived the ivy league sperry and i've lived  i've lived the idea of why not us right so so we want to n c a a tournament game it has only happened one other time and i did the history we're getting close to the sweet sixteen we finished thirty you know two years ago we finished the top fifteen in the country it never happened we were ranked in the  preseason for the first time in our history we just why not right so i have a competitiveness and an optimism i think that is palpable but in terms of my daily interaction this is not my show i'm a part of it and i think that allows me to coach in a relational way that my role is to is to guide in power and inspire and and challenge just like their goal is to stay engaged into and to develop and to trust and know no one's is more important the other it's how are we really you know one other and i think that's by the way i would say about my style so now what's what's one of the challenges that you face with a lot of the kids that come to princeton university is there any type of challenges that you have a student coming from high school going into princeton and what it what are the challenges that they're faced with one of the more common ones is these are people that have really worked hard for success throughout their whole life and so they haven't they haven't faced failure in failure is a quite a relative term right i mean is there a boy i'd love to have the failure they have but they and so when they hit bumps in the road sometimes it feels bigger to them because they aren't used to it right you get to be my age and your age you've made enough mistakes along the way so there is truly how you navigate and how you go around them and i think what i try to do is really help my kids learn how to do that because they haven't had as many because they've been if they have worked hard enough to be in position of success most of their life so i would say the combination of fear of failure perfectionists obstacles being somewhat sometimes debilitating so i think they've met their match because i've you're going to dream as big as i do you fall down sometimes and so i fall down a lot so i've been able to help with that that's great yeah so now is there a lot of travelling that's involved with you with your absolutely sure we get to you know so i take the team i went to australia last summer i will be in kent who next thanksgiving will be in north carolina north carolina for thanksgiving in florida for christmas you know so wherever games are scheduled we try to take our kids home to their home region at some point during their four years and we have kids of all over the country right so that covers that  international experience will take them one every four years somewhere in in late august early september so you want to senegal africa we've been australia and then in terms of my finding talent you know i've been to corvallis oregon  one of our captains is from corvallis oregon and that's not an easy place to get to you go wherever the right kid is you know and so part of it is going on and off places to really hone in on who the exact right one is and then you've got to be present for all right because most schools are regional recruiting if they're going to be able to be more present in those whole regions where so we have to travel a lot to make sure that they understand that that we're as interested even though we're from further away so i've got i've got a lot of airline miles and i've got a lot of points in process but for me it's it's when i'm watching body language the intangible of effort and the you know players will worry they'll go home in their parents car and they'll be worried that i didn't shoot well today  pieces is really straightforward that's just transfer punting etc but in terms of we'll take any leads we can from anywhere what will will research them based on who the who the source is sometime more heavily than others but we're certainly grateful when people care enough to say i think i might have a nice hometown hero or that i think you'd be interested in but really i think it's the stress that parents and recruits feel especially when coaches are present that says i've got it all laying on the line and for them to understand that we what the things that you guys are valuing might not be what we are we already know you can score it's why we're there we already know you can jump and run you're already there we don't know if you do it consistently all game we don't know if you dive on the floor we don't know if you talk we that we're watching are not just how many points you score because i might not be needing to do that i might be needing you to be a part of what we're doing and not score forty games so i think the recruiting process is a lot more stressful on the parents side and on the kid side that is on the side we know we're going to we're not going to watch a kid one time and be done with it we watch these kids multiple times throughout this rather crude journey so it's just we just are a little more laid back about it i think that would every everyone just understands that people end up where they belong i think it will be all smoother  coming to princeton university what advice you want to give i would say there's a couple different things one is engage and gauge with the people that are going to help you and so if that's your own guidance counselor if that's the coach or the or the commuter the  kids interested mail a thing you know so engage in the process i think that's important and not engage only with your peer group because they're not you just sometimes i think parents say well that's what these people are doing well they're not in the college either so we know that's the right way to do it right so i think you gauge what the people that have is to really find happiness you know when you go on that campus when you talk to those people when you are when you get a piece of mail when you see when you go on their website that make you happy if it does something inside you telling you look more look