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Question:
How do we go about identifying good D-2 and D-3 baseball programs in California, specifically Southern Cal? We are looking for a medium sized school with good tradition, academics (he is an A student with good PSAT so far), a true campus life... and good baseball program?
Answer:
This is somewhat of a generic question that cannot be easily answered in one article but there are some additional steps you can take get closer to what you are looking for. My first two recommendations are to consider purchasing The Making of a Student-Athlete which will help you understand how to answer these questions and to consider purchasing the College Coaches Online CD ROM, which will give you access to every college athletic program in the country by sport, state, region, division, and will include information on tuition prices, size of school, academic ratings, coaches contact info and more. Ok, enough shameless promotion.
So, how can we start to research schools given the qualifications above?
15 years ago this would have been a more daunting task, but the Internet can make quick work of this. Lets start with two conference web sites.
www.goccaa.org - This is the California College Athletic Association (Division 2)
www.thesciac.org - This is the Southern California Athletic Association (D3)
There is a good chance that schools in each of these two conferences will be similar in academics, size, social makeup and athletic talent to one another. The athletic talent part is key obviously. If one or two teams are so much more dominant than the others for each sport, the conference wouldn't make sense. While there may be several teams that are always better, it's likely that gap between the best team and the worst team in a given sport will not be as monumental as say USC football playing in a D3 league with schools that have 1,500 total students and 40 kids on their football team. Since most conferences are pretty even, each school/team will usually attract similar talent. If you can play for one school, it's possible that you can play for the other 9. This isn't always the case but it's a start.
The good thing about being able to be recruited by one school in a given conference is that your skills will probably be applicable to the other 8 or 9 teams in that conference. This is 8 or 9 new opportunities that might be a possibility for you to continue your college career. Remember, being recruited is about matching your academic and athletic talents with schools that you can gain acceptance to and that have a need for your talents on their roster. If you are a match to one school in a conference, it's possible you are a match to the others. Possible I said!
If you don't live in California, you first need to check the rosters of different schools to see what their recruiting habits are. If all the players are from California, it will be more challenging to get recruited if you are from outside the state. The Pomona (D3) baseball roster has multiple players from Oregon, and one from New York, Washington, Arizona, Minnesota. There are 3 players from Oregon which leads me to believe the coach has some contact or access in that area, past kids have told their underclass friends about Pomona or high school coaches in Oregon are aware of Pomona. It could also be a coincidence, but I am guessing there is a reason. Cal Lutherin, another D3 school in the same conference has more players on the roster, but most of them are from California. Coaches cannot afford to travel country and in reality they have no need to if there are thousands of talented players in southern California that have the ability and desire to play for local schools.
If you look at the Sonoma State baseball roster (a D2 school) you will see something really interesting. Not only is every player more or less from California, but there are about 11 kids on the roster from Junior Colleges. Without even looking at the baseball rankings, I can tell by the roster that Sonoma State is an extremely competitive program with the JUCO kids coming in with at least one year of college baseball experience if not 2 at their past JC school. Now when I look at the national rankings I see they are ranked #10 in a pre-season poll for D2 schools. I would also imagine it's tough for freshman to get playing time with a lot of JUCO kids coming in each year.
The Cal Davis (D2) roster is even more compelling. There are 39 players listed on the roster and all 39 are from California. Aside of the local talent that's available to the coach, their is another big reason why many California schools are largely made up of California residents. The Cal State schools are much cheaper to attend for in-state residents ($5,000 as opposed to $16,000 for Cal Davis) and the State prides itself on giving access to their state school system to residents first, which there are quite a few of. Cal Chico had one out-of-state player on its roster, and so on and so on.......
This is what many recruiting services don't understand when they start emailing and mailing resumes of stats all over the country to hundreds of schools. The coach (even if he/she looks at them) will say "Ya you may have good statistics, but you live 1,000 miles away, I haven't seen you play, I can't see you play, and I have 500 players that live within 2 hours of my school that I can go see play and ultimately recruit. Aside of this sheet of paper I got in the mail that has numbers on it, how do I evaluate you and why would I take you over 20 prospective student-athletes that I just saw play yesterday that are interested in playing for my program that can play $10,000 less per year to go to my school than you can?"
While we didn't address the other questions in this question about looking for a medium sized school, with good academics and tradition, those are questions that can be answered online and answered by school representatives by simply contacting them and reading more about the school. As for baseball, there are only 10 D2 baseball schools in California and there are 11 D3 baseball schools in California for a total of 21 schools. There are also 11 NAIA programs. The process of elimination in this case is not as daunting as it seems. Massachusetts alone, a much smaller state - has 31 D3 baseball programs.
For more information on the college recruiting and application process see The Making of a Student-Athlete
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