College lacrosse coaches now have all the information they need at their fingertips to proficiently scout and recruit high school talent from every state in America.

Recent Wesleyan graduates Chris Meade ’05 and Matt Wheeler ’05 have created an easy and efficient website that allows high school players and college coaches to connect, making the recruiting process that much easier. Their site, LacrossRecruits.com, has been active for just four months and has over 200 registered players from all over America.

Meade and Wheeler both had impressive lacrosse careers at Wesleyan—both were captains in their senior season when the Cards went 13-6 and reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history.

Meade, an attackman, began putting up numbers immediately upon arriving in Middletown, and currently sits tenth on Wesleyan’s all-time career points list, with 132 (85 goals and 47 assists). He received the Call Award in his final year, an award given to the most inspiring and dedicated senior athlete.

Wheeler, too, made an instant impact at Wesleyan, starting 11 games in the goal as a freshman and 54 total in his career. During their four-year careers, the Wesleyan men’s lacrosse team achieved the best record over a four-year span (46-22) in the school’s history, a record that has since been broken.

After graduation in May of 2005, Meade and Wheeler both had plans for business school. Three years later, in June of 2008, they would combine to launch the first online lacrosse recruiting service built completely by lacrosse players.

Meade relocated to Salt Lake City, Utah after Wesleyan where he prepared to attend business school and coach youth lacrosse. The idea of LacrosseRecruits materialized quickly after he realized that there was no feasible way for college lacrosse coaches on the east coast to see these high school players in faraway places like Utah.

“College coaches want to find players who match certain profiles,” Meade said. “With our site, coaches can not only locate these players based on position, GPA and SAT scores, but they can also view highlight clips of the player right there on the same page. All the information that a college coach tries to gather from a recruit over the phone, or through an e-mail, is there on one easy to use webpage.”

Meade and Wheeler brought the idea to fruition and acted as their own accountants, researchers and marketers. They both accredited the well-rounded education they received at Wesleyan to their ability to swiftly become independent entrepreneurs. They also got vital insight into the market in which they were entering through online surveys on their website. After gathering information from these surveys and speaking to dozens of college lacrosse coaches and players about the inefficiencies of the current recruiting process, Meade and Wheeler were confident that their product would succeed.

“Lacrosse is spreading to high schools all over America,” Wheeler said. “As the game continues to spread, it will be harder and harder for coaches to reach kids in obscure places throughout the country. LacrosseRecruits.com allows coaches to target every lacrosse player—kids from the hotbeds and also from small places.”

With the faltering economy, college lacrosse coaches are also experiencing diminishing financial budgets, and don’t have the necessary funds to visit every major high school showcase tournament in the country. LacrosseRecruits.com makes it easy for coaches to cover the full terrain of talent, all over America, without leaving their offices.

There are two sections on the website, one for coaches and one for players. When a match is made the coach can arrange to bring the athlete to campus for an overnight visit, as is custom in most NCAA recruiting courtships. Since all contact information is right there on the webpage, both parties have all the information necessary to set up a visit.

There are several competing online lacrosse recruiting services, however, they are not nearly as efficient or effective, according to Meade. Although a similar site called Laxrecruits.com offers free profile pages for players and allows coaches many database search options—as opposed to Lacrosserecruits.com, which charges $149.99 per year for players and is free for coaches—Meade says that the rival site has not been effectively marketed to the lacrosse community, not has it been frequently updated. According to Meade, Laxrecruits.com receives only 2,000 hits per month, while his lacrosserecruits.com receives approximately 10,000 visitors a month.

Laxscouts.com is another online recruiting device that offers scouting reports for college coaches. Prices range from $450-$750 for a player to be scouted and have his information forwarded to lacrosse coaches who sign up for the newsletter. Meade and Wheeler found that many college coaches receive these newsletters in their e-mail, only to delete them. Also, while the site allows college coaches to search for attackman or a player from Connecticut, for example, they are unable to combine these searches for various characteristics that match an ideal player profile. Lacrosserecruits.com, however, allows coaches to focus on locating players who match their exact recruiting profile.

There are several other online recruiting services that either aren’t marketed directly to the lacrosse community or lack the advanced sorting capabilities of lacrosserecruits.com. Meade and Wheeler spoke extensively with dozens of college coaches to determine how helpful their site could be in the recruiting process.

“We candidly discussed the potential role a service like Lacrossrecruits.com could play,” Meade said. “The vast majority of coaches responded very favorably. Each coach spoke of the inefficiencies in the recruiting ’system.’ For example, it might take up to five phone calls to track down a recruit’s contact information, only to find out the player is not a suitable candidate for the program. Lacrosserecruits.com will eliminate many of these unproductive missteps.”

Additionally, Meade and Wheeler have an advantage over their competition that is invaluable—they have played and been involved with lacrosse for their entire lives.

Both went through the recruiting process while in high school, identified new talent for coaches while attending Wesleyan, worked as counselors at recruiting camps, and organized tournament teams. Through all this experience, they have developed a firsthand understanding of the recruiting process, from the perspectives of a player and a coach.

With the girl’s lacrosse site ready to launch at the end of October, Meade and Wheeler have found their niche in the changing landscape of college lacrosse recruiting.