USF's Holtz starts work on building bonds

At the end of nearly every practice this spring, usually well after all the players and assistants have cleared the fields, first-year University of South Florida football coach Skip Holtz remains behind to mingle.

A constant stream of local high school coaches has flooded USF this spring to watch the Bulls practice and to meet the new coaching staff, one that plans to make the Tampa Bay area its prime target during recruiting season.

On National Signing Day in February, less than a month after he arrived, Holtz said he wanted to build strong relationships with every high school within 100 miles of the USF campus. He is starting to do that on a limited basis.

"We were so busy (at first) trying to get into the recruits' homes, and building those relationships (to) get that class in the boat, that you didn't have a lot of time to junior recruit or go around and build a lot of relationships with the high school coaches," Holtz said Wednesday.

As part of the relationship-building process, Holtz held a recent coaching clinic on campus and made practices open to high-school coaches with the help of Rich Rachel, USF's director of high school relations.

Because of NCAA rules, Holtz and his staff can only have limited contact off campus with potential recruits until later this month. Many have shown up to watch the Bulls practice with their high-school coaches.

"It's been great," Holtz said. "They have really opened their doors for us. We can open our doors, but if they don't want to come over here, it doesn't make any difference. So it's been great building those relationships."

Tweet, tweet

More and more athletes and coaches are using Twitter to stay connected to fans, and few are more popular than NBA superstar Shaquille O'Neal, who has more than 2.8 million followers @The_Real_Shaq.

South Florida sports information director Chris Freet, a social media buff, is working with Holtz on his Twitter skills. Freet recently contacted former Tampa resident Amanda Miller, part of the team at Digital Royalty in Arizona that works with Shaq and White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen on their social media outlets.

"She had lots of ideas, but in respect to Twitter, it was back to the basics by going back to one-on-one connections through Twitter," Freet said. "She said, teach Skip how to use that @Reply function and answer questions and respond to comments directly."

Holtz, who can be followed at @CoachHoltz, met with USF officials Monday to get more involved in social media. He plans to start a scheduled chat with fans soon. Holtz has some work to do to catch up with Shaq. As of Wednesday, Holtz had 3,351 Twitter followers.

Notes and nuggets

Starting pitchers Teddy Kaufman, Randy Fontanez and Andrew Barbosa made USF the first school to win three consecutive National College Baseball Writers Association national pitcher of the week awards when Barbosa was honored Tuesday for his 16-strikeout performance in Friday's 5-0 win at Cincinnati. ... Freshman softball pitcher Lindsey Richardson was named Big East pitcher of the week after pitching back-to-back shutouts against Seton Hall last weekend. Richardson is 8-3 with a 1.86 ERA for Ken Eriksen's team, which is 3-0 in conference play heading into this weekend's three-game series against Notre Dame.