ODDS N END’S
I seem to say this every other month, but if you are a junior or senior in high school and have aspirations to play college athletics and you don't even know basic recruiting concepts like the number of core classes you need to take in high school to be eligible to play at the NCAA level, I have no idea how you actually expect to be recruited. 11 people took the recruiting quiz in the last few days and only 2 people got this question right and one of them was an 8th grader and the other was a 9th grader!

I watched an ESPN story last month about a high school football player who plays football with NO LEGS. He runs with his arms and plays the line. The next time you are feeling inadequate or frustrated with something in your athletic career, think about what this player endures.

According to Dave Keilitz, executive director of the American Baseball Coaches Association, about 5 percent of Division 1 baseball student-athletes sign pro contracts every year. That's about 500 of 9,600 players annually.

I was reading an article about a local hockey player who shunned the prep schools and junior hockey leagues to stay at high school. He shattered pretty much every school record and got a full scholarship to one of the top college hockey teams in the country and saw meaningful minutes as a freshman. The article concluded with a quote from a college coach that said, “if you’re a hockey player, you’re a hockey player. We are going to find you no matter where you go.” While playing in more high-profile leagues can give you more exposure, at the end of the day, if your skills are far superior to other players, and you give college coaches a reason to see you play, it doesn’t really matter where you go, it’s what you can do. This flied in the face of an article the previous month that discussed how high school players are abandoning their hometown high school for prep schools and junior hockey programs in order to get noticed by big time college hockey programs. In the end, there is no right answer, and what works for one person may not work for another. If you can play, you can play and that’s all that matters. If you are the best player on your team or in your league and your league happens to be less popular among college coaches looking for players, you are obviously going to have to work harder to get their attention. But if you are skating circles around your competition like this player was in high school, getting the attention of college coaches shouldn’t be that difficult! Call them and give them a reason to come, but don’t sit at home expecting them to show up at your games.

Worst advice I found online this month from a website for a high school volleyball club. Have your school counselor pull up all the schools that have volleyball teams and that offer some type of financial assistance. - I dare someone to ask this question, I would like to see what type of reaction you get. I will also save you the trouble of pissing off your counselor - LINK - For the record there are 80 men’s teams at 3 divisions and 988 women’s programs at 3 divisions. Every one of the 80 men’s programs and 988 woman’s programs will offer “some type of aid” Your counselor better get started soon.

If I was a really good baseball player, I may not look at Boston College or Northeastern University simply because the weather stinks in New England in March and sometimes in April. However, both teams take a great trip to Florida in March where they get to play the Boston Red Sox! NU had a tough game this year getting shut out 17-0. They had no hits and had two batters reach base, one by a walk and one by a hit batter courtesy of a 90 MPH fastball! (that hurts for so many reasons). While most of these players will end their baseball career at college, they can say they played the Boston Red Sox. For the record, Northeastern plays an a beautiful all astro-grass field (435 to center) for all you long hitters and BC is moving to a new stadium next year I believe (or rebuilding their current stadium). And of course, both schools are world-class institutions in a great city, perhaps the most important trait of all!

There is a term the NCAA has called a grayshirt. A grayshirt is someone who signs with a school in the fall, but delays their enrollment till the spring, or takes a limited amount of classes in the fall but doesn’t work out with the team. According to the NCAA a grayshirt cannot practice with the team, and cannot have any supervised workouts with coaches and cannot watch practice unless their school has practices open to the general public. Once the spring starts you are eligible to work out with the team, but I believe you cannot compete in competition against other teams until the following fall.

Florida Marlins pitcher Dontrelle Willis opened up spring training by giving up 6 hits and 6 runs in 2 1/3 innings in his first start. Unfortunately it was against the University of Miami baseball team! I guess they are pretty good.

Wow, this is an incredible quote. - "A kid scores 20 points in basketball at the age of 8, his parents think he's the next Jordan, If a kid gets 100 on a math test, they don't think he's the next Albert Einstein."

FINANCIAL AID INTERVIEW
Someone recently emailed me to criticize an interview I did with an assistant director of financial aid at a large D1 University that I posted a link for on a message board. The interview took several hours to perform and a few more to write up and offers some fascinating insight into how financial aid works for not only athletes but for all students at college. The gentleman’s complaint – Why don’t you provide the name of the school? Well, I told the school I would keep the interview anonymous until I received permission from their department even though there wasn’t any secret information revealed. This guy doesn’t like me much anyway, and apparently he believes that I may have faked the entire interview or something. I hope I have earned enough credibility with regards to recruiting by now for this not to be true? Read the Interview.

GOALS
I had a fantastic interview (Read the Interview) with the new Lacrosse Coach at Saint Leo University. Saint Leo is a small division 2 University in Florida and the lacrosse program is moving to varsity status in the fall of 2005. I know what you are thinking, why would I want to go to a brand new program? Well, here are a few reasons. Because the coach needs players, because he has scholarship money to offer, because Saint Leo is a relatively affordable private school, because you have the chance to play right away, because they have great criminal justice and biology programs, because you are sick of shoveling snow out of the driveway, because it’s a chance to play college lacrosse, because the schools you want to go to aren’t recruiting you, because you don’t have the grades to get accepted to the schools you want to go to, because you cannot afford to pay $40,000 for college (Saint Leo is only $20,000 and I say only in a relative sense!).

One of the things we discussed is the proliferation of summer lacrosse showcases and tournaments and whether those are good or bad for kids. While the coach acknowledged that these events are necessary to college coaches to see a large number of players in the summer when they have time to actually recruit, there are some growing concerns he had. Concern number one was the sheer number of events and how college coaches cannot possibly attend all the events that are held. Concern two was the high number of events that individual players were participating in each summer, feeling some kids were attending so many events in a row, by the 4th or 5th event that player was already burned out and were hurting their cause by their poor play. Perhaps the biggest concern was that players aren’t putting any thought into what they actually want in and out of school (perhaps the most important part of the process mind you!). They attend these events simply to “get recruited” and think that the goal of recruiting is to get recruited by 60 schools. While it’s good to have options, the coach commented that parents and players need to work harder to find 10 or 20 schools that would be a potential match for them and then work at marketing themselves to those specific schools. At the end of the day, even if you have 60 schools that want you to play for them, it’s unlikely that those schools will be the right academic, financial, or social fit. It’s also possible you attend an event with 15 or 20 coaches from programs that you simply don’t have the talent to play for, while the coaches are there, your presence at the event will do little for your recruiting efforts for those schools of which you cannot play at.

Part of this showcase craziness stems from a lack of goals from families because they never sit down and ask themselves what they actually want in and out of school. Their thought process is, we better attend as many events as possible so we can expose ourselves to college coaches because everyone else is, rather than, I think I would like to play at lacrosse at a small D1 or D2 school in the Northeast that’s relatively close to my home and I would like to possibly study marketing and International business. Doing the former may give you “more exposure”, but exposure to whom? Doing the latter will force you to research all the programs that fall within your criteria where you might be able to perform at athletically. This is what student’s do that don’t want to play athletics in college, they evaluate what they want and they look for schools to apply to. If you are not a high caliber lacrosse player, you can cross off Navy, Syracuse, & John’s Hopkins from your list, but there are 25 other schools you could possibly look at. From there, your goal should be to identify 15 or 20 programs and begin communicating with the coach your desires and find out what the coach needs from you in order to possibly recruit you. Some events have 300 to 400 players at them, and if the Fairfield coach doesn’t know you are interested in their program or interested in studying business, you may run right by him and he may never notice you. If you call that coach in the spring and say, “coach, I am interested in possibly playing lacrosse for your program and I am interested in studying business at a small D1 school in the New England area, and I was wondering what you need from me or what events you will be attending this summer?” Now when you run by him at a summer lacrosse showcase he will already have your name, your grades, your desires, and he will be watching intensely. Your chances of being recruited will vastly increase if you have the skills to play at his level.

This is right off the NCAA handbook for prospective student-athletes…
Association’s members total more than 1,000 schools. You may qualify—by both your interest and your athletics performance to become one of 360,000 students out of millions enrolled nationally in America’s colleges and universities who combine education and athletics in college. Your likelihood of ultimate recruitment into professional leagues is small, so for most of you, your years as a student-athlete in college will be the peak of your athletics experience. Remember, good athletics is about winning at competition in games. Good academics combined with athletics is about winning in life. So, keep education your top priority. This new phase of your life can be a wonderful experience that will result in a lifetime of friendships, memories and happiness.

FINANCIAL AID
When you are reviewing financial aid data on colleges through various websites and publications it’s important to be aware of a few key facts.

• While many publications will say that certain schools provided aid to 100% of students that needed aid or 95% of students that needed aid, that information alone doesn’t tell you that much. If the school gave $1 to a student in the form of aid, they would go into the percentage pool of students who received aid.
• Many publications publish the average aid package and many private schools will say that the average aid package is for example $18,320 dollars. This may sound great, but doesn’t tell the whole story. Some of this aid may be work-study or low-interest loans from the school. While technically aid, it’s aid you either have to work for or pay off later. Colleges will provide you a breakdown of where your aid is coming from and if you have additional questions, it’s important that you work with them. Most aid offices have people who are friendly and understand your needs, and while they may not be able to meet all your need, they will try to help you in any way they can. In a sense they work for you if you are paying to go to school.

HAVING YOUR SCHOLARSHIP OFFER PULLED
I was talking to a friend of mine in the Midwest who was assisting a family with their football recruiting process. The player was an extremely talented running back who was getting low-level D1 attention and offers. The player ultimately verbaled (said he would sign with them basically when the school said they would offer him a scholarship) to a D1 school and shortly after that turned down several other official visits to other D1 programs that were interested. Two weeks before the signing date the school told the family that their scholarship offer was no longer on the table. The father flipped out! Why would something like this happen. – Well, no one said the recruiting process was easy for families or for coaches and schools. While the NLI (National Letter of Intent) brings closure to the recruiting process and guarantees a scholarship for at least a year, getting players to commit to your program and getting schools to commit to you is another story. The problem lies with the fact that a coach really has no idea if a player is indeed coming to their school until they sign, and a player has no idea his scholarship offer is guaranteed until they sign the NLI. Coaches tell many players they are interested and players tell many schools they are interested, but in the end there are usually more offers on the table than the coach has spots on the team. What likely happened is this. Since a D1 football team has about 21 scholarships available each year, it’s possible they offered scholarships to 25 or 26 players and assumed that not every player was going to come. My guess is that the school had more players commit to them than anticipated and they had to pull several offers from recruits before the signing period. It’s a difficult game, because in the end coaches have no idea what players are going to sign and they often sit by the fax machine waiting for NLI’s to come in. In order to make sure this doesn’t happen however, most schools will not extend more offers than they have in the initial signing period, but will do an initial round and then extend offers to additional players in a second round of signing. This is risky because you are basically expecting or telling scholarship players to wait until you sign other players. But coaches are certainly not extending offers to 75 kids hoping only 21 or 22 sign in a given year.

NEWS ON INDIVIDUAL COLLEGES
Massachusetts Maritime Academy has a new football coach named Jeremy Cameron and is building a staff and program this winter. It’s an opportunity to attend a fine institution and have a meaningful impact on a new program.

Yale University (CT) has joined Harvard in offering free tuition for any student whose family earns under $45,000. Considering Yale is $40,000 a year, I guess that’s a good thing.

The University of Oklahoma will be requiring prospective student-athletes to undergo criminal background checks as part of their application to the university.

Northeastern University is scheduled to add 2 new dorms to campus for roughly 1,500+ students. For years, area residents have been complaining about student sprawl in the immediate area, so this is Northeastern’s attempt to address the problem of students living off campus. Now the residents are complaining, the buildings will take up too much space. Welcome to life in Boston, where everyone complains about everything no matter what.

The NCAA has placed Texas State University-San Marcos on probation for three years for violations involving impermissible financial aid and excessive practice sessions for the football team. The institution had their scholarship allotment and financial aid cut for the following sports, football, golf, baseball, softball, men’s basketball, and men’s and women’s track.

Brown University is raising tuition about 4.9%. The good news is they are raising financial aid as well. Is it just me or does raising tuition and then raising the amount of aid you give away more or less equal the same amount of money at the end of the day?

American College (D1) due to budget cuts, is eliminating the men's tennis, women's tennis and men's golf programs, effective next season. The school has 16 remaining sports, 7 men’s and 9 women’s.

Chemeketa Community College is cutting volleyball, women's basketball and baseball. All three sports are scheduled to be dropped at the start of the 2005-06 school year.

Binghamton University (NY) has not only a new wrestling coach but a new program. Well, sort of. The wrestling program was cut in 2003 due to money. After a few donations and some public outcry, the program is up and running again. While the program still has some former wrestlers attending the school, no doubt new coach Tony Robie, a former assistant at Michigan, is looking for new players to get the program off the ground! Binghamton continually ranks as a top public University in the nation.

NCAA RULE CHANGE

RECENT RULE CHANGES NOT UPDATED IN MOST RECENT VERSION OF THE MAKING OF A STUDENT-ATHLETE
The NCAA has recently modified the core course requirements for athletes wishing to play NCAA D1 or NCAA D2 athletics. The change is not in the number of core classes required (still 14) but a change in what classes you may choose to get to 14 core courses. See chart below

Former Rule (14 Core Courses)		New Rule (14 Core Courses)
4 years of English		3 years of English.
2 years of mathematics (Algebra 1 or higher)		2 years of mathematics (Algebra 1 or higher)
2 years of natural/physical science(1 year of lab)		2 years of natural/physical science(1 year of lab)
1 year of additional English, mathematics or natural/physical science.		2 year of additional English, mathematics or natural/physical science.
2 years of social science		2 years of social science
3 years of additional courses (from any area above or foreign language, nondoctrinal religion/philosophy, computer science)		3 years of additional courses (from any area above or foreign language, nondoctrinal religion/ philosophy,

I found this on a message board. The question. How do you get accepted to Boston College. I enjoyed a good laugh!
Be one or a combination of the following…
1) Be an ATHLETE - your grades & activities are not as important. (I think he means an athlete who wants to play in college and not simply an athlete in high school)
2) Be an Irish or Yankee. If you are a non-athlete, non-Irish/Yankee you almost have NO chance
3) Have plenty of money, unless you are an athlete
4) They only accept a few from each High School. If your school's athletes apply, you will NOT get in.
They rejected someone from my school with a 1450 SAT (immigrant) and accepted one from the same school with a 1250 SAT (Irish-American athlete).

While this is an opinion of one person trying to be a little sarcastic, Boston College is extremely competitive with over 23,000 applications a year for about 2,200 admission spots. Yes, being a recruited athlete is an advantage.

SEMINAR
Ray and I gave a seminar in March at Acton-Boxborough to about 150 parents and students. We spoke for roughly an hour and then heard from Merrimack baseball coach Joe Sarno. Joe talked for about 20 minutes but provided not only great information but capped the night off stressing the points we discussed in our presentation. Coach Sarno stressed that while winning and recruiting good baseball players in certainly important, at the end of the day going to school is about education and growing as an individual and his job is not simply a baseball coach, but a life coach. He recruits players that have already displayed success not only on the field but in the classroom, and he recruits players that are committed to being a student-athlete. Merrimack College is a small college in North Andover. Perhaps the most interesting thing he said was that if you have a 3.0 and 1100 SAT, you are guaranteed to receive $11,000 in academic aid from the school – 3.0 1200 SAT you are guaranteed $12,000 – 3.0 1300 SAT you are guaranteed $15,000 from the school. That is free money and he also have athletic scholarship money to give as well. That is also money you get before any financial aid or grants have been awarded, so it is possible to get more once your EFC has been calculated. We always stress to families that there is far more academic money and grants available to top students than there is scholarship money available to athletes. I think that example above illustrates how important academics is. This is a common theme we have been hearing from coaches and admissions officials lately, that high school athletes would be better served at spending more time on raising their academic standing and less time trying to become a better athlete.

We fielded several questions from parents after our presentation. If you would like to see some of the questions, click here.


 
 
 
 
 

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