The Athlete Match Story
At Athlete Match, we come to work every day passionate about helping student-athletes,
coaches and administrators navigate a stressful and time consuming recruiting process.
What makes us passionate about recruiting?
Well, we know a little bit about it! With over 30 years of combined head coaching experience our Senior Leadership Team has coached at Eastern, Franklin & Marshall, Widener, and Elmira, to name a few.
A Bit Of History.
Mark Wagner, Founder and President of Athlete Match wasn’t planning to attend college before he was recruited to play college soccer. It turned out to be a life-changing experience which led to a 25 year career as a Head College Coach and Athletic Director, and the creation of two highly successful soccer companies. His life has been driven by the desire to provide student-athletes with a similar life-changing opportunity.
Despite Mark’s love of college coaching, over time he grew increasingly frustrated with the college recruiting process and the negative impact he saw it having on both student-athletes and college coaches.
A Common Goal.
Enter Brent Jacquette, a highly successful college coach with extensive experience at the NCAA D3 levels, and All-American athlete at Penn State University with over 10 years of head coaching experience.
Turns out, Brent had similar concerns about the state of college recruiting. He noticed, all too frequently, that families were making the wrong college choice. The proof? The national four year graduation rate is only 40%, and 39% of students transfer after their freshman year. Families are struggling with a broken recruiting process, Brent wanted to help improve it.
Thus, Athlete Match Was Born.
In a short span of time, Athlete Match has grown to include even more college coaches who share our concerns about college recruiting and want to make it better! What began as one college coach trying to improve the state of college recruiting has grown into an organization working with sports clubs, state associations and schools, helping thousands of student-athletes annually.
