Getting onto the campus at the Naval Academy is similar to Army, although it has a different feel. The Naval Academy is in Annapolis, Maryland, a town of 40,000, and adjacent to streets upon streets of shops and pubs and restaurants. It’s a bit of a summer tourist destination and a definite boating hot spot when the weather is agreeable. It is 338 acres on the edge of one of Maryland’s most eye-pleasing cities.
Whether it is Army coach Jeff Monken or Newberry, both agree that getting prospects to campus is when reality begins to overtake perception for prospects, and their families.
“A lot of times, it takes the coming here and meeting people,” Monken said, “because they have this perception it is going to be this rigid machine with robots running around in military uniforms, and then they realize it’s just people on a college campus.”
Said Newberry: “When they get on campus, they don’t see guys doing pushups and sit-ups in the yard. They don’t see people moving around like ants getting yelled and screamed at. In a lot of ways, it’s like a normal college.”
Whether it is Michigan, Alabama, Mount Union, Army or Navy, success on the field comes down to recruiting, and peeling back the curtain to what goes on with recruiting to the academies is markedly different than what many outside of the recruiting game think.
At the forefront is the idea of life after being at either Army or Navy involves readying to go to war. That is the first thing families, particularly moms, usually think about when one of the academies begins recruiting their son.
