By: Dave Galehouse
Director – Varsityedge.com
TOOLS FOR THE HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL RECRUITING PROCESS
With high school baseball players taking the field this spring, many have hopes of being recruited by a college team. The New England area is home to 97 college baseball programs at the D1, D2 and D3 level. Throughout the country there are over 900 NCAA college baseball programs. Here are some ways to get ahead in the recruiting process.
While some recruits are discovered, all college coaches rely on players contacting them and expressing interest in their program. To succeed it’s important to research colleges that will be a good academic, athletic, social, and financial fit. Applying to a college that is too strong academically or trying to play at a program that plays at a level higher than your abilities will hurt your recruiting process. Recruits can initiate the recruiting process via online recruiting forms that all college athletic websites now provide. This form allows recruits to submit important academic and athletic info as well as contact info for both the recruit and any high school or summer coaches. Submitting this form will signify to the coach that you are interested in their school and program. While the NCAA has strict contact rules for D1 and D2 colleges, recruits can phone coaches at their own expense at any time. At the D3 level, there are no restrictions on phone calls or emails for either coaches or recruits.
VIDEO
One of the first ways to establish a relationship with coaches is via a recruiting video. Most college coaches operate on a limited time and budget so it’s difficult for coaches to see all the recruits they would like or to travel great distances for recruiting. A recruiting video can provide a college coach insight into your abilities. Video’s should be short (4-7 minutes) and highlight several hitting, fielding, or pitching drills from different angles. Include live game footage if you have edited out action that isn’t useful to the college coach. While video can play a role in the recruiting process, college coaches use video to determine if they should invest the time to see a recruit play in person.
Videos can be mailed as DVD’s and should always accompany your full contact information, graduation date, SAT/ACT scores, and GPA. More coaches are also using services like YouTube to view videos recruits have posted online. While videos are not the magic bullet that many recruits think they are, they are a good start for a recruit to get on a coaches radar screen. While a video alone will probably not get you recruited, it can start you down the road to being recruited! Mike Glavine, assistant baseball coach at Northeastern University says video plays a role in recruiting but cautions recruits about its use. “Video has a place here at Northeastern in recruiting but it does not play a major role in the process. We try to watch every DVD that is mailed to us and we also watch videos attached to the emails we receive. For us, the video can be a starter in the recruiting process but ultimately we are going to try and see recruits play in person. As a staff we will probably see thousands of kids play each summer. We always prefer to trust what we see in person more than a video.”
CAMPS
While summer baseball camps are not run for auditions, they offer an opportunity for high school players to display their skills to college coaches. Not only do you get to perform in front of the coaching staff for several days, but it gives you opportunities to check out a college campus. If you are trying to use summer camps as a recruiting tool, make sure the college program is one where your ability would allow you to play at. If a coach is interested in you, he may ask that you attend his summer camp if he doesn’t have the opportunity to see you play in person. You may also find coaches from multiple college programs working at the same summer camp which can provide additional recruiting opportunities. Merrimack College baseball coach James Martin is a believer in camps. “Camps give a recruit so much exposure to a specific school and allows recruits the opportunity to show their abilities to the entire coaching staff. It’s a chance to see the campus and facilities and talk with the coaching staff for several days and that is a huge advantage for both coaches and recruits.” Coach Martin will be hosting a fall baseball camp in 2011 which he hopes will provide an advantage to recruits who had a busy summer.
SHOWCASES
Players looking to broaden their exposure might consider a showcase. These one or two day events offer high school players the opportunity to display their skills to college coaches and are a way for coaches to see speed, arm strength and fielding skills. While showcases offer more exposure, a college coach will rarely recruit from a showcase performance alone, but use that event to decide if they want to pursue certain players further. One of the challenges of showcases is that despite the attendance of many colleges at a given event, a certain recruit might not have the skills or academic background to play or gain acceptance to several of the schools in attendance.
While you may be “showcasing” your skills to 30 colleges in one day, realistically, a recruit might be only to play at 4 or 5 of those schools based on his ability. Rather than attending random showcases, it is important to evaluate your ability as it may apply to different colleges in the area and then try to determine what colleges will be attending a given showcase. Northeastern University assistant baseball coach James Pinzino approaches showcases as follows. “Showcases have become an important recruiting tool because of the numbers of players we can see at once. However, a player’s ability to compete, particularly in the pressure of an important game, is a huge component of success at the college level. The only way to evaluate this is to see players compete in real games where something is on the line. So like video, we use showcase performances as a tool to decide who we want to pursue further!” While most showcases such as Top 96 or The Blue-Grey Classic take place in the summer, Northeastern Hosts a big showcase in January on campus which allows recruits to get exposure before their spring season begins and allows seniors to get a last look. College coaches throughout New England attend so recruits can get more exposure to multiple New England colleges!
Dan Capra, a junior at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg used both the video and showcase route to aid his recruiting process. “I attended the Top 96 showcase in Lowell which generated offers from several D2 and D3 colleges in New England, but I really had a desire to attend school in Florida. The challenge for me was finding a way to display my skills to a coaching staff 1,500 miles away that wasn’t coming to New England to recruit. I reached out to the Eckerd coaches and sent video which gave them an idea about my abilities which helped in my recruitment, but I still had to go down there and prove myself on the field.”
Capra offers a good example of how the recruiting process can be challenging. “I had a good tryout with another D2 College, and it was a school I wanted to attend, but I didn’t get accepted, so I had to expand my recruiting process to other colleges that were a better fit.” Capra was also able to take advantage of an NCAA rule that allows Division 2 colleges to hold tryouts at their campus which is not allowed at the D1 or D3 level. Tryouts are also allowed at the NAIA level (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) as well as at the Junior College Level. If you are interested in one of these schools, contact the coach and ask what tryout opportunities exist.
Dan Capra playing for the Lexington Blue Sox of the Intercity League
TRAVEL TEAMS
Playing travel team baseball is another avenue high school athletes can use to aid their recruiting process. Not only does travel baseball take place at a time when college coaches have more time to recruit, but they will be more likely to attend a travel game because they know the talent level will be higher and that the players involved all have a desire to continue their career at the college level. There are a lot of talented high school baseball players, but many of those might be playing basketball or football in college after graduation. One such New England based organization is the New England Ruffnecks. Comprised of 5 age divisions, the Ruffnecks play an aggressive summer baseball schedule that includes games in the Boston Metro area as well as throughout the country. In 2010, the teams traveled to North and South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Connecticut and Tennessee. This offers recruits not only the ability to be seen by local colleges but to expand their recruiting efforts to other colleges throughout the country. Participation is not cheap. Tuition runs about $3,000 per year which includes all travel, hotel and meals to national tournaments.
The organization provides financial aid to families that who otherwise could not afford to participate. Steve August, the programs director, believes his program plays an important role in both recruiting and player development. "To find out how good you are, you need to play the best. Sometimes that may be playing locally, sometimes that means you have to travel to other parts of the country. Traveling further leads to broader recruiting exposure and can help our kids understand where their talent matches up with other players in their area and throughout the country. Some of our players can compete with the best D1 prospects throughout the country, while others come back to earth a bit when they play against better competition!" August and his staff also work with players by evaluating their academic profile and try to find colleges where a given player will be a better fit. Ruffneck Alumni include Ryan Westmoreland who was schedule to attend Vanderbilt but was drafted and signed by the Red Sox. Other players have gone on to play at all levels of college at the D1, D2 and D3 level including schools like Rollins College, Boston College, Williams, Stanford, Harvard, Holy Cross, and Penn State to name a few.
Kevin Loftus, assistant baseball coach at Bentley University is very active in New England baseball events. “Our school hosts several events in the summer such as the Bay State Games and the Boston Invitational which is good exposure for our school and baseball facility. The Bay State Games is a good chance to see local high school baseball players and the Boston Invitational draws in players from outside of New England which is an opportunity to see players who might be interested in attending college in this area. We attend the RBI showcase at Stonehill College and the January Showcase at Northeastern which is a great opportunity to see seniors that we might have missed in the summer! These are tools that we use to see recruits that might be able to play at our school, and then we start the process of communicating with players that might be a fit with our school and program and try to find a way to evaluate them further.”
Despite these tools available to recruits, Loftus goes on to discuss how these resources sometimes make it more challenging to recruit. “Recruiting is crazy now and much different than it was in the past. There are so many showcases, camps and recruiting services that kids are participating in. The problem is that when it comes time to select a college, families are trying to recoup the investments they have made in lessons, camps and showcases via an athletic scholarship. There simply isn’t a lot of scholarship money in college baseball, especially in the New England area, but there are so many families holding out for D1 offers that simply might not come. There is far more money available to kids in the form of academic scholarships provided they have a strong academic record.”
To put the challenges of receiving significant athletic scholarship money for playing college baseball consider the following. With D1 college baseball rosters capped at 35 players and a maximum of 11.7 scholarships available for D1 institutions, D1 baseball has the lowest ratio of scholarships to roster spots of ANY NCAA D1 sport. When you add in the fact that baseball is not a revenue generating sport, many smaller D1 colleges as well as many D2 colleges are not afforded the luxury of being fully funded. For many programs, the money simply isn’t there. As Loftus reiterates to families each year, “you have a much better chance of receiving an academic scholarship by being a good student and finding a school and program that has aid to give!”
While these tools can help you get recruited, it’s important to communicate with coaches prior to using them. While some players are discovered, coaches rely on recruits contacting them and expressing interest in their school and program. While you may be interested in a particular program, most college coaches recruit on need and the coach might not be recruiting for your position that year. Establishing a rapport with coaches at colleges you are interested in, determining their recruiting needs, and finding out what steps you can take to help you get recruited by that program via a video, camp or showcase will go a long way to helping you succeed. Most coaches need to see you play in person in meaningful competition before they will recruit you, so that is the ultimate goal! One of the biggest challenges college coaches have in all sports is being contacted by recruits that have not fully researched their program or college.
Before you contact any coach, you need to really evaluate your skills as they apply to different colleges in your area and how your academic record matches up with what colleges are looking for. Contacting coaches at colleges where your skills and desires match up will go a long way in your recruiting process. Recruiting is not an exact science and finding a college that will be a good academic, athletic, social, financial and geographical fit is very challenging for families. It is possible to participate in showcases, attend camps, create a video and depending on your skills or a coaches needs, you still might not get recruited. The more research you do, the more effort you make to contact coaches and find out what their recruiting needs are and how you can go about being evaluated will go a long way to helping you succeeding at the college level and put you in a position to be recruited by more colleges.
Dave Galehouse is a former college baseball player and 1997 graduate of Fairfield University. Today, he is the website director with the Lexington Blue Sox of the Intercity League, a player for the Boston Cutters of the Boston Men's baseball League, and author of The Making of a Student-Athlete: Succeeding in the College Selection and Recruiting Process for High School Athletes, Parents and Coaches. Galehouse is also director of Varsity Edge (varsityedge.com), a website that assists parents, students and coaches with the college athletic recruiting process.
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