Spartan Victories on the Recruiting Trail Built from Team Effort
If you ask Mark Staten about the workload he carries at Michigan State, don't hold your breath for a self congratulating answer. You'll pass out cold.
The tight ends/offensive line coach and Spartan recruiting coordinator figuratively clocks in at several different positions for head coach Mark Dantonio. A program’s on field performance is always the most important reflection of a coach's success. However, Staten, as the recruiting coordinator for a program that is turning heads by consistently landing high-quality, fantastically talented young men to play football, is building quite a reputation off the gridiron as well. But he's never one to toot his own horn and defers to his recruiting teammates when asked to explain how he does it.
"One of our associates in our office, Simone Lavoie … does a tremendous job," Staten told Spartan Nation, "and really just works out of her comfort level in a lot of the things we ask her to do, just being in charge along with me in the recruiting and just what goes on in the day-to-day operations."
The work it takes to prepare for and host recruits can be daunting, considering the volume of people involved when one factors in friends and family. So the job takes focused effort at every level.
"We also use the Spartan aides, who are students within our program that help us with tours, help us get things set up," Staten said. Among other duties, student aides can be seen on football Saturdays, navigating recruits from the Skandalaris Center through a maze of rowdy, reveling fans to a check-in tent near the gates of Spartan Stadium.
The kind of selfless attitude Staten embodies is established from the top. Dantonio has stated on numerous occasions that recruiting is a team effort, and the philosophy of Michigan State under his watch is to get every position coach involved. Some coaches become associated with regions, like Dan Enos in southeast Michigan, others develop close relationships with recruits, like Dan Roushar last season with a couple of eventual Illinois lineman commits. But everyone pitches in, and it's all facilitated by the environment Dantonio has created.
"Under Mark Dantonio, it's not just Mark Staten, recruiting coordinator," Staten said, "it's every person involved, from the position coaches, through myself, through Simone, through the Spartan aides and everybody."
When it comes to handling his own business, though, Staten says multitasking is the key.
"It is juggling," he said. "It's being up at 4:30 in the morning this time of year instead of 6:30 or 7 this year.  And it's just putting the time in, but when you see the results and you see the classes that we've had over the past few years, and the one we're building this year, you look at that and you see the results, and when you see results, it makes you hungrier and you want to continue doing what you're doing with the work ethic."
Keeping up that kind of pace requires support from below, certainly, but just as importantly, it requires vision from above.
"You know Mark Dantonio," Staten said. Â "He's an easy guy to work for."
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