Since this has been brought up with regard to a certain young team in recent posts, maybe someone can clarify something for me. How much is the head coach responsible for recruiting and how much of it lies on the shoulders of the assistant coaches. I realize that being head coach means you are ultimately responsible for everything, but isn't it the assistant coaches that do most of the leg work, traveling all over the place to get the best players they can? What percentage of an assistant coach's job is recruiting? If a team has had problems getting good players, does that mean the asst. coach should be fired, or is it only a relatively small part of his job? Does the amount of responsibility asst. coaches have for recruiting vary much from school to school? I ask this because many people have been criticizing Brian McCutcheon for the quality of recruits in recent years. However, the drop in quality happened when we did not have a former Cornell hockey player as an asst. coach (between the time Mike Shafer left and Casey Jones arrived). Recruiting at an Ivy League school is hard. After all, what can Cornell offer a player, no scholarships, fewer games in a season, a hard academic program. I think the reason former Cornell players can be successful at this is because they can tell a recruit what playing for Cornell is like Only a former player can get across the sense of pride and family that they experienced while skating for Cornell. I hope that the Red finds another alumnus to replace Casey. I think the program will be much better for it. Paulette Dwen Cornell '89 Let's Go Red!