During his junior season at Rice Lake High School in 2000, standout pitcher Justin Musil threw a no-hitter against one of Wisconsin’s top-ranked high school teams.
Praise was reaped, news stories were published, his ego inflated.
“I thought I would play a bunch of baseball, and college coaches would be there, watching,” says Musil, now 29. “They weren’t.”
Instead, Musil attended a junior college and then played shortstop at Division III Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
“I didn’t have the opportunities I had hoped for,” he says. “I made some mistakes in the recruiting process.”
To help young athletes avoid his sit-back approach, the Eden Prairie resident founded a personalized recruiting service. Since last winter, Elite Sports Advising has worked with more than 50 young athletes to help them achieve their goal of attaining college scholarships.
Musil believes he’s learned from the mistakes he says that other recruiting services make of just gathering information on players, producing a highlight video and sending out mass emails to coaches.
“It’s not that beneficial,” says Musil, who previously worked as a regional scouting director for a national recruiting service. “People are buying into that, thinking it’s going to help them, and it’s not going to help them.”
It would seem like Matt Hopfner doesn’t need much help. The versatile senior pitcher, outfielder and first baseman helped the Edina Legion team win a state title last summer. And when Musil visited the Hopfner home, Matt’s mother Susan and father Doug were skeptical that the $3,295 dost was worth it: “We thought it would be an extra expense, but after talking to him, we thought it would work out our way in the end,” Hopfner says.
Musil seeks to understand and answer three questions: Where does the athlete want to be? Where does Musil think the athlete can be? How do he and the athlete get there?
Hopfner wants to play Division I baseball in 2013, and Musil encouraged him to attend a camp at Northwestern University near Chicago.
“The coaches knew my name,” Hopfner says. “So, obviously Justin talked to them.”
As Hopfner and his teammate, first baseman Mark Handberg, took batting practice in a cage at Northwestern, a coach yelled instructions from another station.
“I was keeping my eye on you,” Hopfner recalls the coach saying.
Susan and Doug Hopfner believe that Matt can play college baseball, but they didn’t know how to promote him.
Justin Musil “was straight-up and told us right away about Matthew’s abilities,” Susan says. “We might not hear from him for a week, but we know he is behind the scenes, working. We couldn’t do this on our own. We wouldn’t know where to start.”
“He’s taken the pressure off of recruiting,” Matt says. “If not for him, I’d have the stress of putting together videos and sending them out because that’s key to being recruited in baseball.”
The Edina Legion team has a saying, “You never know who’s watching,” due in part to Musil’s advice, says coach Nick Kennedy.
“The scout might be there for 15 minutes and only watches you warm up with your buddy in the outfield,” Kennedy says. “That comes from Justin’s perspective. You always have to be on your toes.”
Kennedy and his fellow coaches, including Tom Nevers, an Edina standout and first-round pick in the 1990 Major League Baseball draft, said they were initially leery about “an advisor.” Now, “it’s invaluable,” Kennedy says.
But what happens if it doesn’t work out? What happens if the athlete gets hurt? Or if coaches don’t believe the player is as good as the advisor, parents and player thinks?
“That hasn’t happened to me yet,” Musil says. “The process is not guaranteed, and I’m not sitting down and promising Division I scholarships.”
Not receiving a DI scholarship wasn’t the biggest hardship for Musil in college—overcoming a rare form of cancer was. He took a medical redshirt in 2004 as he underwent radiation and chemotherapy. He knows that Plan B needs to be ready. He returned to the Wisconsin-Eau Claire Blugolds for the College World Series in 2005.
“There has to be option one, two and three,” Musil says. “I lay out the backup plans. I relay out to them to make sure they are aware there is a safety net. I know what Plan B looks like, so I know I will do my best to protect the kid.”
