Boise State’s ‘Swiss Army knife’ oversees football recruiting. She’s only 23
Thinking about the college football scouting process, images conjure up of wily old coaches traveling across the country to get cozy with potential recruits, eating the family’s best spread for dinner while trying to sell their program.
There are crazy stories. Like then-Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin telling five-star recruit Alshon Jeffery he’d end up “pumping gas for the rest of his life” if he committed to the University of South Carolina. Jeffery, a wide receiver, made the NFL and won a Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles after leaving Columbia.
Then there are, well, crazy and endearing stories, such as former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh attempting to climb a tree to impress the family of top cornerback David Long, who indeed played for the Wolverines.
But wackiness aside, the nuts and bolts of recruiting go far beyond what antics coaches get up to on the road.
A big part of the football machine for many schools is the director of recruiting: the person who coordinates on-campus visits, ensures that the program is in compliance with NCAA rules and remains in constant communication with recruits’ families — over what can sometimes be multiple years.
And that’s not including the actual scouting side of things, such as evaluating the character of potential recruits, identifying areas of the country where the program can make inroads, and helping determine which areas of the team need the most attention.
It’s no easy job, and it requires countless hours.
Boise State thinks it’s found the person to lead the charge.
And she’s only 23 years old.
Meet Shauny Fisk, the new director of recruiting, who’s jumping up the organizational chart despite having joined Boise State University just over a year ago.
“She’s a Swiss Army knife,” Boise State football general manager Brandon Jones told the Idaho Statesman. “I can see down the road her projecting to be more football ops; she has that front-office type of potential.”
As Boise State begins its transition to the Pac-12 Conference, here’s what to know about the woman who’ll play a big part in helping determine the success the Broncos see on the field in years to come.
Who is Boise State’s new director of recruiting?
Sitting in yet another position meeting, Fisk was starting to get restless.
As a student and recruiting assistant with Central Washington, she was part of an entourage that traveled to Boise State for a professional development day in 2023.
Fisk, who was a key defensive specialist on the school’s volleyball team, is the daughter of then-Central Washington football head coach Chris Fisk — who became Portland State’s head coach last December. The family also had stops at University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, and at Southern Oregon in Ashland.
Moving from place to place, football was always a central part of Shauny Fisk’s life. She began helping with camps and recruiting as a sophomore and quickly fell in love with the recruitment side of football.
But, as someone more interested in player evaluation than in watching game film with coaches, she decided to take a stroll around Boise State’s Bleymaier Football Center — after all, she’d cut short a scouting fellowship with the Seattle Seahawks to travel to Boise, and she was going to make the most of it.
“I stumbled upon Brandon Jones’s office,” she told the Statesman. “I just knocked on the door and sat down with him, and I thought it’d be a 10-minute conversation. ... It was like an hour and a half that he let me hang out. After that, he just asked for my resume, to keep in touch, and we did.”
Jones was impressed by her willingness to “grab the ball,” and by January 2025, she found herself in Boise as a graduate assistant for football recruiting operations.
With both of her parents hailing from Pocatello, Fisk arrived in the Treasure Valley as a full-fledged Broncos fan. She says she still feels like a kid when she walks into the facility and sees the Fiesta Bowl trophies and a huge photo of Kellen Moore plastered on the wall.
That prior love for the university is what kept her from taking her newfound position with the football program “lightly.”
“She was working with the on-campus recruiting side of it, and did a great job enhancing some of our processes of visits and getting guys on campus,” Jones said. “ ... Shauny was one of those who was grabbing every bit of the process while she was here in the GA position. She transitioned so well into that.”
How will Fisk handle the Boise State recruiting job?
There was no warm-up period for Fisk ahead of her first transfer portal as director of recruiting. Boise State approached the new year expecting the then-director, Kyle Young, to continue in his role. But after he took a job at Oregon at the start of the year, Fisk swiftly went from being told what to do to telling people what to do.
Some days, her job consists of hunting down coaches for traveling expense reports and working with the creative team to produce graphics for recruits. Other days, it includes emailing questionnaires to recruits, communicating with families about how official visits work, and figuring out how to maximize a recruit’s visit — from visiting with strength and conditioning coach Benjamin Hilgart to exploring the city.
“It’s my job and my team’s job to make everybody feel really comfortable,” Fisk said. “It’s how can we best showcase what makes Boise State so great. ... This is who we are, this is Boise State culture, and it started before us, and it’s our responsibility to continue that culture.”
But even in the seemingly mundane, Fisk said she is finding ways to evaluate recruits.
For example, if a recruit fails to respond to a questionnaire and needs to be reminded multiple times, Fisk will let the coaches know that the player may not be the kind of person they’re looking for.
A team of graduate assistants works under Fisk, assists with official visits and can also serve as a source of information.
“If someone said something poorly to one of our interns, they come tell me, and I’m gonna go tell our GM,” Fisk said. “Because we’re trying to find the best fit for Boise State. And the No. 1 thing we look at is the wiring, the character, the academics.”
But her job isn’t all just organizing visits.
Fisk works directly with the coaching staff to identify geographic areas where rival schools recruit and whether Boise State can make inroads there. She’ll also evaluate the recruiting process for athletes Boise State didn’t land, what might have gone wrong and where they can improve next time.
She’ll also help coaches focus on specific areas of the team that may need attention, and thanks to her multiyear collections of notes and evaluations on recruits, she can pinpoint specific players for the staff.
“She’s that extra set of eyes,” Jones said, “to anticipate those corners for us to make sure that we’re not missing anything at all.”
