Through his nine-year tenure as an assistant coach at Susquehanna University, Alan Zemaitis kept coming back to Penn State.

Just 60 miles from the campus he’d spent five years growing to love as a Nittany Lion, three times winning All-Big Ten status as a cornerback with a second-team All-America nod in his fifth-year senior season, Zemaitis’ trips back weren’t the allure. Rather, working to lift a middling River Hawks program Zemaitis turned to the lessons he’d learned throughout his time at Penn State.

“One of the reasons why I was so successful at my last job was, I just put myself back at Penn State to sell that university,” Zemaitis told Steve Jones Thursday evening during the Penn State Coaches Show. “Susquehanna University is a very good academic school. We feel like when we get them to campus we can (get) that player. And then, being a tight-knit community around the university, very similar to Penn State. So that's how I was successful at Susquehanna. Now that I look back on it, it was a dry run of how I would sell Penn State.”

These days, Zemaitis is doing a lot of it with his alma mater.

Named the program’s assistant recruiting coordinator for the Nittany Lions in March, Zemaitis has since looked to translate his experiences throughout his career into building the future of the program.

Now working alongside Kenny Sanders, who returned this February after a brief stint with the Oregon Ducks, Zemaitis helps work through the process of identifying and evaluating prospects to determine if Penn State is a possible fit as a recruiting destination. Citing the Nittany Lions’ talent pool as “a little smaller” and “very selective” due to the stringent standards of the program and university, Zemaitis detailed how the process works from that point forward.

“There are certain boxes that need to be checked here to be a player here at Penn State,” he said. “Once we evaluate those guys, we bring them to the staff and we go through another evaluation process, and then we make a determination whether we're going to keep on evaluating him or we're going to go ahead and offer him. And once we do that, that's when the recruiting process starts.”

Crediting his extensive experience both as a player, selected as a fourth-round NFL Draft choice by the Tampa Bay Bucs, then briefly landing in the CFL, as well as the experiences of the likes of Paul Posluszny, Michael Robinson, Dan Connor, Justin King, and Derrick Williams, among others, Zemaitis said they all build a knowledge base from which he works.

“When I'm talking to these recruits, there's literally nothing that they can ask about that I don't know about. And when it comes to Penn State, I don't talk about myself often, but putting on the blue and white and actually performing... playing in front of that crowd and being successful, I've done it,” he said. “I've walked through these hallways as a student, having a great semester and semesters that weren't always great. Relying on the support staff academically, with Todd Kulka, to get me to where I can graduate and have a meaningful degree.

“From the coaching aspect, when you want to talk football, we can talk football. If want to talk about cornerback play, we can talk about that. If you want to talk about scheme and defensive play.”

Further, he said, the trajectory of that Susquehanna program, most recently putting together a 10-1 season in 2019 before the 2020 campaign was derailed entirely due to COVID-19, as well as his experience with Penn State in the 2003 and 2004 seasons before 2005’s Orange Bowl campaign, all offered him a perspective useful to the Nittany Lions this year.

“If you want to talk about team and chemistry, we can talk about that because the Susquehanna experience, they weren't that good in the beginning and we built that into one of the better programs in the country. I've seen that process. And I also was a captain here when there have been lulls at times, and then having to regroup as you see this year,” Zemaitis said. “One of the things that when I got here, seeing the leaders on the team, identifying who I think those leaders are, and seeing how they've gone through summer workouts and gone through spring practice, it was something that I've seen before.”

Now heavily invested in not just the success of the program this season, but the success it is aiming to achieve in the immediate and long-term future, Zemaitis reminds himself of the experiences that collectively landed him in this place.

“Coach Terry (Smith) uses this phrase a lot, we're a living testimony,” Zemaitis said. “I can literally look back and it all comes back to Penn State. Everything that I've gotten in life, the experiences I've gotten in life, the things that I've learned that have helped me be successful, I've learned here at Penn State.

“So when I'm talking to a prospect about Penn State and the experience that Penn State can give you, I'm literally talking about my own experience in a way.”