If Daryl Shore has a keen eye for college talent, it may come from many different aspects of the Real Salt Lake assistant coach’s life in sports. From his first coaching position as a 23-year-old assistant at his alma mater, Birmingham-Southern College, to his 14 years coaching in Major League Soccer with the Chicago Fire and RSL, he has long been tied to the college game.
However, that affinity can be traced back way earlier in his life. As a kid, he was a water boy and video assistant for his father, who spent a lifetime coaching basketball at various levels, including a pivotal stint as an assistant coach at Wichita State University in the early-80s. He was at practices. He was at games. He would help his dad with recorded game tapes well before an era of DVR, Tivo and internet access to games around the world. He became a student of the game of basketball, but also of how to interact with players and coaches. Those interactions have helped him become one of Real Salt Lake’s greatest tools when readying for the SuperDraft.
“Growing up around the game and growing up going to practices and going to games and sitting behind the bench as a water boy and elevating to becoming the video guy - I grew up around college sports and that’s one reason why I’m maybe a little more into watching the college game than most of the guys,” Shore said from the MLS Combine in Carson, California, this week. “It’s something I take pride in – knowing most of the kids that are at this combine and guys throughout the country. I still think there are guys that fall through the cracks and guys that we need to keep tabs on throughout the year.”
The college scouting process can be a difficult one and it takes dedication to the craft to accomplish many of the goals that the club seeks. This year with the 13th pick in the first round, Real Salt Lake needs a wide array of options on its draft board to be sure that it is picking the best player to fit its system of play and having that commitment to scouting is important. It goes beyond just watching game tapes though.
“We watch quite a bit. Andy Williams watches the most, but as coaches that’s still one of our jobs – to keep watching college games and we all have a couple of conferences we are in charge of so we all have a pretty good database. And we all have coaches that we trust in the college game that we can speak to and when they tell us about players we try also to watch those kids,” Shore said.
With that database in tow, Shore joined the rest of the technical staff at the StubHub Center this week to get one last look at some of the top aspiring talent at the MLS Combine. Through all of the hours of video and watching games live and speaking with coaches around the country, things will come to a peak on Friday when RSL picks 13th overall after the draft starts at 1 p.m. MT on Friday. RSL is as prepared as it can be for the unpredictable nature of the draft.
“I do think we’ve identified three or four guys that could help and I think a couple of them will probably slip down to 13 so I do think that we’ll be able to get a guy that we’re interested in and a guy that will help us if not immediately then definitely down the line,” Shore said.
Follow the draft live on Friday at MLSsoccer.com.
