A motivated mom and two of the top talents to come out of the state in recent years share their experience.
Rachael Lesslie walks with her son Service High senior catcher Gideon Lesslie after the Cougars' 16-9 victory over the South Anchorage Wolverines at Mulcahy Stadium on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. Anchorage’s Rachael Lesslie was determined to help get her only son and youngest of three children, Gideon, an opportunity to play baseball in college.
She accomplished that goal, and the 2025 Service High School graduate is now a freshman at Rochester Community and Technical College in Rochester, Minnesota. After years of research on his behalf, she believes it is getting increasingly difficult for student-athletes in high school to get recruited to play in college, not just in Alaska but nationwide. “It’s probably never been harder with all the changes that have happened with the NCAA over the last year and things like the COVID waiver being extended and things like that,” she said. For Alaskans in particular, getting in front of and attracting the attention of out-of-state college coaches and recruiters is especially hard. As a mom of a student-athlete with aspirations of playing at the collegiate level, Lesslie started learning as much as she could about the recruiting process. Eventually she was able to develop the information she gathered into a detailed framework. “The most important thing that I tell parents as they start the recruiting process is to commit to the process, not the outcome,” Lesslie said. “Don’t assign any meaning or any ego to the outcome, only the process.”She calls recruiting a game of rejection, hearing no and being ghosted. It requires thick skin and patience. “Not every school reach out to is going to have a need for their position, so it’s about finding the right fit for the right position and casting a really wide net,” Lesslie said. Anchorage’s Isaiah Moses and Deuce Zimmerman know what it’s like to navigate the pitfalls that comes with getting recruited out of Alaska. Both are former high school stars who shined in Alaska and took different routes to reach their final collegiate destination. Moses hails from Dimond, is a former Gatorade Player of the Year in basketball and is set to play out his final year of eligibility at Eastern Washington University, the second Division I program of his college career.Zimmerman was a dual-sport star at Bettye Davis East Anchorage and is enjoying a breakout junior season for the Western New Mexico University football program. Both agree that skill and exposure camps are some of the most helpful avenues that Alaska athletes can explore to showcase their talent without having to move to different states. “I would definitely say that you need to go on travel trips, you need to get with the AAU program and go down states and just experience it, because it’s a whole different world,” Moses said. “I feel like a lot of kids in Alaska, they get close-minded because they’re just in Alaska. It’s really easy to be good in Alaska, but to be good on a global and national stage is extremely hard.” Zimmerman didn’t go on many trips but vividly remembers how enlightening the experience of attending a 7-on-7 tournament down in Washington state was for him when he was in high school. He takes pride in having earned a scholarship and having played his entire prep career for the Thunderbirds. “That feels good on my heart that I was working throughout high school and it really paid off not leaving the state,” he said. “Why leave a state that shows you so much love? And if you put in the work, you’re going to get seen no matter what. I feel like you just put in the work, day in, day out, you’re going to get what you want. Just try to stay focused and keep your head down and keep going.”The acronym Lesslie developed for her recruiting framework is called S.C.O.U.T., with each letter holding a different meaning. The S stands for “showcase your talent,” which can come via social media, YouTube and sound bites from interviews. “ get so many emails and so much interest and there are so many talented players across the country that you’ve got to show who are in a very short moment, and the more videos the better,” Lesslie said. “You can’t just have four videos and think that you’re competing with every other athlete your age.” The C stands for consistency, which can be achieved by making incremental progress every day, whether it’s uploading videos or making more outreaches to new coaches and following up where contact has already been established. Service senior catcher Gideon Lesslie makes a catch as South Anchorage baserunner freshman Landon Gasser scores during the Cougars' 16-9 victory over the Wolverines at Mulcahy Stadium on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. Lesslie said Gideon sent 10 emails a day for a year, and it resulted in 11 offers and nearly $200,000 in scholarships. He was in contact with coaches from every level, ranging from junior college to NAIA and Division I, II and III. “It does not happen fast, it’s kind of a slow process but there are things they can do to speed it up,” Lesslie said. The O stands for “own your athletics and academics,” which puts the onus on the students to do their part by getting good grades and producing at a high level in their respective sport and arena. “The student-athlete life is tough and is not for everyone,” Lesslie said. “Of course the student will need support and help from parents and might even need a little encouragement getting everything set up but they really need to own it themselves.” The U stands for “update information constantly” because it’s vitally important to get the best and most recent example of a student’s talent and academic achievement out for prospective recruiters.“A good way to do that is being really self-aware and honest with yourself about what skill level you’re at,” she said. “Some students may not have what it takes to play in college at all at a competitive level but if they want to continue to play, there are plenty of schools that offer club teams through a variety of sports.”Lesslie has also helped a number of families navigate the recruiting process and gathered a lot information for other parents of aspiring college student-athletes so they can advocate for themselves. She said the foremost priority parents and athletes should be aware of is ensuring admissions eligibility. Standards and prerequisites differ from NCAA and NAIA, and transfer rules from junior colleges are also something families should be aware of as they go through the process. Rachael Lesslie sat next to her father Randy Sartain while watching the Service High Cougars' 16-9 victory over South Anchorage Wolverines at Mulcahy Stadium on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. Parents can register their student-athletes with the NCAA eligibility center as early as the summer before their freshman year of high school. That enters the student-athlete into a database and puts them on a mailing list to get suggestions about classes to take heading into each school year to ensure eligibility. Students who apply for NCAA schools don’t only need to meet the minimum requirement grade point average to be eligible. They also need to have taken certain classes as well, specifically math, English and science courses. “Every math class needs to be at a level of Algebra I or higher and the English electives need to be approved by NCAA,” Lesslie said. “Parents may not realize that and I’ve seen that become an issue several times.”Technical training classes taken at institutions such as King Tech in Anchorage and Mat-Su Career & Tech High School in Mat-Su Valley often don’t count toward NCAA eligibility. Communicating with counselors about which select few are is imperative, according to Lesslie. Oftentimes high school athletes aspire to go “Division I or bust” and overlook the other options that may be available to them that are more realistically suited for their skill level, especially coming from Alaska. Lesslie says that it’s harder than ever to earn a scholarship to play at the highest level of college sports, and there’s plenty of research that supports her findings. According to prep school IMG Academy, roughly 2% of high school athletes compete at the Division I level, and that number drops to less than 1% for football and 1.3% for women’s basketball. “I spoke with some college recruiters last summer at an event in Kansas City and they said, ‘If I have nine openings on my roster, I might only pick one high schooler, maybe two,’ and those are the top athletes in the country,” Lesslie said. Coaches can get more experienced players out of the transfer portal — which didn’t exist until recently — making it harder for aspiring incoming freshmen.When Moses was entering the later stages of his high school career, he received interest from UAA and UAF, as well as junior college schools in the Northwest Athletic Conference. He opted for UAA but never actually suited up for the Seawolves because of academic struggles he faced off the court. Due to COVID, the final semester of his senior year was virtual. Senior Isaiah Moses dashes over his teammates in the graveyard relay event. Classes at Dimond High School competed in several games during the school's Spirit Olympics assembly on January 24, 2020. “It was a tough time going through that, getting my senior season cut short from COVID,” Moses said. “I feel like I never really bounced back mentally. So I struggled a little bit at UAA with off-the-court stuff.” The team didn’t play any games during the COVID season, and he redshirted his second year with the program before deciding to transfer to College of Southern Idaho halfway through the school year. “ Coach Osborne, he knew the head coach at CSI, so he helped me end up transferring over there, and I really had no idea what to expect,” Moses said. “It was my first time away from home, first time living away from my mom, away from the rest of my family.”Coming off his junior season, he received an offer from Florida Atlantic University, but then the Owls got a new coaching staff. With so many college athletes being given an extra year of eligibility, the Owls’ recruiting focus turned more toward the transfer portal and less on incoming freshmen from the high school talent pool. It wasn’t until the summer after he graduated when his close friend and former high school quarterback, Kyler Johnson, committed to WNMU. That opened a pathway for him to achieve his dreams of playing at the collegiate level. “A lot of coaches really weren’t texting back, and then Kyler ended up getting the offer from Western first, and he’s like my best friend, and he’s my quarterback, so at the end of the summer, I just hit them up, and they gave me a scholarship,” Zimmerman said. Since regular exposure is so hard to come by for aspiring college athletes in most sports but especially football, Zimmerman’s biggest piece of advice for those hopefuls is to take advantage of every chance they do get to showcase and further develop their talent. “Take every little thing, like the camps that come up there, and don’t take it for granted,” he said. “Show your face, go out there, play hard and have fun because we don’t really get a lot of opportunities like that in Alaska. Do anything and everything just to get your name recognized and out there.”Josh Reed is a sports reporter for the Anchorage Daily News. He's a graduate of West High School and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
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