Edwin Thompson has something Dick Vitale and other Duke lovers and haters would kill for:
A key to Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The legendary home of Duke basketball is a must-see for recruits visiting the Durham, N.C. campus. And not just the ones in Mike Krzyzewski’s crosshairs.
Thompson, an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for Duke baseball, makes sure his baseball recruits pass through the famous gym. Even though he’s been on the job for nearly a year, he still shares their sense of awe.
“Every day, I pinch myself when I get a chance to walk across that court,” Thompson said. “It’s a historic place in sports.”
It’s been a whirlwind journey to Duke for the Jay High School graduate. A year ago, he was a head coach basking in the glow of leading Bates to one of its most successful seasons ever. Three years ago, he was coaching Jay boys basketball. Four years ago, he was Dick Meader’s right-hand man at the University of Maine at Farmington, recruiting baseball players to another historic, if far less renowned, landmark, Hippach Field.
All of it, from playing a year of ACC baseball at Maryland to coaching middle school track at Jay, from scouring New England for talent for UMF to recruiting the Eastern seaboard for Bates, prepared him for life in Division I baseball, Thompson said.
“All of the kids that I coached at Jay, in high school and middle school, they’re all a part of it. And all of the coaches that I coached with along the way,” he said.
Thompson, 31, spent his first season on head coach Sean McNally’s staff coaching the Blue Devils’ outfield. Duke finished 26-30 (7-23 ACC) last season with the youngest team in the country. But when Duke got knocked out of the ACC tournament, Thompson’s work was just beginning.
This summer, he has taken two trips to the West Coast, traveled to Arizona, Georgia and Florida. He attends tournaments and showcases, much like he did when he was seeking out talent for Bates. He just goes to a lot more of them.
“It’s extremely competitive,” he said. “It’s the ACC, it’s Duke, so it’s national. You’re competing nationally with schools, and we recruit nationally, so we run into schools from all over the country. That’s exciting because everything about it is competitive, and that’s what I love.”
“It’s been non-stop from one airport to the next, one event to the next,” Thompson said via phone as he prepared to board a plane for a recruiting trip to New York and Connecticut.
He said recruiting for Duke is more difficult than recruiting for Bates. The athletes must meet similar academic requirements, but have elite baseball talent. The competition for talent is more intense, too, given that he is competing against Division I schools across the country.
Meader, who talks on the phone with Thompson once a week, said Thompson is perfect for the job.
“With Edwin, it was obvious (when he was at UMF),” Meader said. “He has a great deal of confidence, in a good way. He has an ability to talk to anybody and make a good impression on that first contact. And he just has a great work ethic and love of baseball.”
Thompson admits representing Duke helps him make a good impression.
“Duke’s a brand. Everybody knows Duke,” he said. “Being able to get an Ivy-league type education and compete in the ACC athletically, there are few schools out there that can say that.”
Earlier this year, when Thompson was looking for someone to help him in the recruiting wars, he went back to his Bobcat and Beaver roots and invited Tyler Hanson to Durham.
“He called me on the first day of practice at Bates. It was something I couldn’t pass up,” said Hanson, who was an all-conference catcher during Thompson’s time at UMF and joined him on the Bates coaching staff for Thompson’s final year there.
A volunteer assistant, Hanson helps Thompson with campus visits. He is not allowed to recruit off-campus, but he attends tournaments, showcases and camps to scout talent, in addition to running Duke’s own baseball camps and working with Blue Devil catchers.
“He was a good addition. He helps out recruiting in a lot of different ways,” Thompson said.
“Working with Edwin is great. He could sell ice to an Eskimo if he had to,” Hanson said. “He’s done a ton for me. To be honest, I wouldn’t be here at Duke without him.”
Meader said it was Thompson who sold Hanson on the idea of coaching while they were at Farmington.
“Edwin had the ability to motivate Tyler and inspire him to want to be in coaching, and Tyler quickly got into that, wanting to know more about the game,” Meader said.
Like Thompson, Hanson, a 2005 Sanford High School graduate, traces his coaching roots back to working on Marc Bonnevie’s Jay football staff (“Coach Bonnevie’s coaching tree is really branching off,” Hanson noted). And like Thompson, he knows what Duke adds to his resume.
“It’s gotten me ahead of the game a little bit,” Hanson said. “It’s brought me to that next step.”
It may seem as though a Maine-to-Durham pipeline brought Thompson and Hanson to Duke.
Auburn native Britt (D’Augustine) Broady is an assistant field hockey coach. Joanne P. McCallie, the Brunswick High star who led the UMaine women to multiple NCCA tournament appearances, is the head coach of Duke’s nationally-ranked women’s basketball team.
“(McCallie) was really helpful when I first got down here, just helped me out with how to recruit to Duke and the whole thing,” Thompson said. “All of us Mainers stick together.”
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