Dority drove to the left side of the basket, lofted his left hand and spun the ball with his fingers up into the air. It was a high layup, but the backspin he placed on the ball let it hover in mid air, spiraling, until it came back down into the net to extend the Crusaders' lead over the UIC Flames.
He hadn’t known it at the time, but that was the last shot he would make in a conference win in his collegiate career. Lavonte Dority was an All-Conference Point Guard, 21 years old, and finishing that chapter of his life. Their journey was long and arduous, but his choice of where to play college ball impacted his life, helping him grow as a player. For many athletes in the modern day, that journey is harder than the average fan expects. Now Dority wants to help others learn where to go.
Dority is a recruiting and player development coach for basketball at Valparaiso University, a Division I NCAA school located in northwest Indiana.
“One of the things that is so different at a school like Valpo is how business-like everything has become,” Dority said. “Players at a smaller DI school like here used to only be focused on the game. Now, it’s trickier than ever for them to navigate.”
Dority played collegiate basketball between 2010 and 2014. He started his collegiate career at the University of South Florida, which played in the Big East conference at the time. In the early 2010s, the conference used to be the home of powerhouses like Notre Dame, Syracuse, Connecticut and Louisville. Dority struggled to earn starting minutes with the Bulls, so he transferred to Valparaiso after his sophomore year – a school with approximately 40,000 fewer students.
With the Crusaders, Dority found his footing in his third year, becoming a regular rotation player before breaking out as a lethal shooter from range in his final year of collegiate play during the 2013-14 season, averaging 15.7 points per game and shooting 44% from beyond the arc.
Dority said that was the year when everything clicked for him. Though his initial dream was to compete at the highest level of Division I athletics, he found fulfillment in his final collegiate spot. That formula, of athletes transitioning to smaller schools to find playing time and complete their collegiate careers was normal in the 2010s. It's no longer the norm.
“Players are completely focused on moving up as fast as possible,” Dority said. “It used to be that you would develop in college, and if you were talented enough and things broke your way, you might get a shot to play in the NBA, which is every player’s dream, obviously.”
Much of this push is due to the changes to name, image, and licensing agreements in the NCAA.
That kind of pressure doesn’t start with the college students; it starts at a very young age. Jake Cinderman is a freelance reporter covering sports and places the challenge on youth sports and the agendas being pushed onto parents.
“Youth sports is more expensive than ever,” Cinderman said. “Parents are told that ‘this team’ or ‘this coach’ or ‘this league’ will grow their kids into star athletes. All parents want is the best for their children, but they’re being told that what’s best is to invest now to make money later.”
That little lie is difficult for parents to wrap their minds around as their kids start going to college. Dority remembers when he was graduating from high school and the weight of the decision to go to one school or the other. Now he watches others deal with the same challenges that he did.
“You (as a scout) want to do your best to help the parents and kids as best you can,” he said. “Many of those kids dreamed of being in the NBA and making the Finals but being in college is hard. They have their whole lives to think about.”
It’s a story that many parents feel along with their high school kids, and one that both York and Dority have seen.
“It is challenging for parents, especially from lower-income areas,” York said. “They just want the best for their kids, they want to see them succeed, and all of the online hurdles and money opportunities they see on the news can make … it a hard environment for them too.”
That isn’t to say the collegiate athletic landscape is all doom and gloom. In many ways, it’s become easier than ever for players to be noticed by coaches thanks to the ability to send highlight reels over the internet and to host team and player profiles on websites like Hudl – one of the largest highlight servers and high school sports filming companies in the United States.
Michelle Henry is the Chief Product Officer at Hudl and says that the company offers a chance for high schoolers to streamline the process of getting recruited. Instead of sending emails and video tapes, they can upload everything — their highlights, their stats, their games played — all they need is a camera.
“Athletes want to get noticed,” Henry said. “That’s the goal. Regional recruiting is old-school. It may work at smaller schools with grassroots connections to colleges … but for a lot of players that aren’t making ESPN highlight reels, we are their best option.”
That is what recruiting has become in collegiate athletics nowadays. Sales.
“I can tell you, if I had these websites to use when I was in college, it would have made some things a whole lot easier,” Dority said. “Getting to just have all of your best games easily in one place that you could send to coaches anywhere, that would’ve been huge for me.”
A player is attempting to pitch their skills to coaches at all levels, and this applies to athletes in high-selling spectator sports like football and men’s and women’s basketball, as well as sports with less funding like lacrosse, soccer and softball.
Peyton York is an assistant coach with the Indiana University Hoosiers women’s soccer team. She said that the process of recruiting players can sometimes be overwhelming for coaches, even if they won’t mention it.
“Head coaches need a good team around them,” York said. “If you ask anyone in soccer … we’ll all say we’re excited that the game is growing, but it makes it difficult to find athletes that are committed to playing at a school and developing and growing.”
The Hoosiers had a great year of athlete retention on their women’s soccer team, with eight upperclassmen out of their 11 starters.
York says that kind of retention is more common in sports with smaller collegiate budgets and fewer eyes on them. She chuckled when speaking about how higher-budget teams like the Hoosiers’ football team deal with issues like these.
“They just won the National Championship,” York said. “I’m sure anyone there would tell you that there are quite a few high schoolers that want to go to IU (football), and quite a few that want to go for the money.”
For Dority and York, however, there is much more to the game and recruiting players than ‘the money’ or team success. Both of them remember the struggles that occurred when they were going into college.
“It was a struggle to know where to go,” York said. “I wasn’t a highly sought-after prospect after high school, but it was tough to know, y’know, what schools want me, what schools just want depth and another name on the roster to boost their numbers.”
Both Dority and York said that honesty is the way to reach students and parents. Head coaches get the brunt of the voice when it comes to recruitment and what kind of players are on their team, but assistant coaches and scouts are the eyes and ears where they can’t have them. A head coach can’t watch every highlight, see every play or make every high school game.
York described her role as a coaching ‘support staff’ for both players and coaches. While head coaches deal with the challenging on-the-field issues, assistant coaches and scouts often spend their time with specific position players, and helping them become acclimated to the school during their first seasons before they become upperclassmen and starters.
But it isn’t always the athletes that come to their school that leave an impact on them as well. Sometimes, it’s the athletes that don’t come.
Dority remembers in his first year as a scout, looking at an email from an Indiana native, who was considering Valparaiso. Through all of the spam, school email, and team news, something about this one stuck out. It was from a high school email, not a professional address.
Dority read as the high schooler opened up in his email and said he was struggling with choosing where to decide to go. Neither of his parents were collegiate athletes and they did not understand how to make the best decision for his future. Should he attend Valparaiso and get more playing time? Should he try to go to a larger school for money opportunities?
Something clicked in Dority’s mind, and he responded to the student to take another visit to Valpo and to schedule a meeting with him.
For two hours, Dority, the student and his parents sat in the student union, and they talked about everything college basketball had to offer. What a bigger state school was like, what a smaller school was like. What the opportunities are for students, but also the challenges there are for collegiate student-athletes.
Dority said he saw part of himself in the student when having that conversation, the kind of hope that basketball can give somebody, but also the nervousness of trying to make the right decision.
That student ended up not choosing Valparaiso, but sent a letter to Dority during his freshman year, thanking him for his candor, honesty and help, saying “I will be able to succeed due to your help.”
Dority still keeps that letter in his desk. For him, it wasn't just about recruiting a student to come play basketball in gold and white. It was about guiding student athletes to make wise choices.
“That's what I do every day,” Dority said. “For students that are here and for students who might not.”
