NCAA NEWS
The NCAA clearinghouse has decided to not use the essay portion of the new SAT test when calculating eligibility for the time being.

FINANCIAL AID
Interest rates on Federal loans are scheduled to rise this summer. The Stafford loan will rise by 1.93 percent to 4.7. The PLUS loan will rise to 6.1 percent from 4.7 percent. This is a pretty good website for more information on different loan programs - www.studentaid.ed.gov

NEXT STEP MAGAZINE
How to read your financial aid reward?
Receiving a letter with those words is the goal of every scholarship seeker. - Read Article

TRYING SOMETHING NEW
Does anyone remember Michael Landon, the actor from Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie? I recently read as story about him in a book called Awakening the Giant Within by Tony Robbins that I wanted to share. Michael grew up in a difficult family environment and by the time he got to high school he was a skinny kid that lacked any self-confidence. One day, the gym teacher took some kids out to the football field to throw an old javelin. Michael was pretty apprehensive about throwing but by the time his turn came and went, he had thrown the javelin 30 feet farther than the farthest throw. That day he said, “ I found something that I could do better than other people!” Michael asked the coach to take the javelin home with him for the summer and he practiced all day long. In his senior year Michael broke the US high school record for the javelin throw and earned an athletic scholarship to the USC. He lost some of his confidence in college and his distance dropped. This caused him to work harder and eventually he worked so hard, he was injured and ultimately lost his scholarship. He took a job unloading freight at a manufacturing plant where he was ultimately discovered by a Hollywood agent who asked him to try out for Bonanza. As Tony Robbins says in his book, missing his dream of becoming a track athlete had given him his future. The moral of the story is that there are lots of opportunities out there if you are only willing to try something sometimes. Maybe you can jump high but aren’t good at basketball, maybe you can run fast but aren’t a good football receiver, maybe you can kick really far but aren’t good at soccer, maybe you could throw a shot put, run hurdles, or kick field goals. I even read a story last month about 3 girls from the same high school who took up lacrosse in the spring for fun. They were so good that they all got recruited by the same college coach and all signed to play lacrosse at that college. Had they not picked up a lacrosse stick, who knows what their athletic future in college might have looked like?

ODDS N ENDS
Confidence goes a long way in life. “Can you win the US Open?” “I don’t know.” Rocco Mediate responding to a TV reporter after being the first round leader in the US Open in June. Age 42. “Can you win the US Open?” “ABSOLUTELY!” Morgan Pressell responding to a TV reporter after being two shots back in the first round of the US Women’s Open in June. Age 17. Pressell lost on the last hole on the final day. Mediate lost after he made that comment after round one!

I recently read an article about an Ivy League Lacrosse coach that recruits 90% of his players from private high schools. There are two reasons for this. One is the academic side of things as Ivy Schools are extremely difficult to gain access to and I know you don’t want to hear it but they accept a lot of students that do well at private schools. The athletic side of things is pretty obvious as well. While there are many good high school lacrosse programs, there are also many talented prep school lacrosse programs. Since some Ivy teams are very good in lacrosse, the best players in the country want to play there. Finding talented kids that can play lacrosse at a high level and gain acceptance to Ivy Schools may be easier accomplished by looking at prep school players. While it’s always possible to get recruited from a less-known public school, it pays to know what types of players a coach often looks for and where they look for them. Is it possible to get recruited from any school? Well yes, anything is possible, but you need to know what the coaches habits are and how you are going to position yourself if you don’t “fit the typical mold” or don’t play where they typically look for players.

Last month my 8th grade science teacher and coach for baseball, soccer and basketball in junior high retired after 36 years of teaching. This guy was known for breaking rulers and was more or less a hard-ass. As I got a little older and “more mature” I realized that he wasn’t a hard ass at all, but that he simply cared more than other teachers cared and didn’t want to take any crap from kids and wanted them to pay attention and learn something and the only way to do that was to let them know who was in charge. I think anyone that wants to work with 7th and 8th graders must be insane and must also be a really great person as well! Best wishes in retirement.

I talked to a parent at a showcase in May and they said they had narrowed their list of schools down to every D1 team in the country.

I emailed the admissions department of a D1 University recently to ask a question via an email located on their undergraduate admissions section of their website. Here is the response I got back - Thank you for your message. Your request for undergraduate information is being processed. Please note that we are unable to respond personally to your message due to the high volume of e-mail communication we receive daily. If you need immediate response to your undergraduate admission question or concern, you are encouraged to call our office at 1-800-360-2522 between the hours of 9:00 am to 4:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. Err, so what’s the point of having an email for admissions in the first place? I email lots of people, but at the end of the day nothing beats a phone call to an actual person!

In June we wrote about a Boston College basketball player being arrested for passing a $20 counterfeit bill. The player said he had no idea the money was fake and charges were reduced and the player payed a small fine. Last week it was made public that the player went to a convenience store and bought a Gatorade with one of the fake $20 bills. The player then crossed the street and went to a Dollar Tree store and purchased an inexpensive air freshener with another fake $20 bill. I guess my question is why didn't he use the 18.50 in change he had left over from the Gatorade purchase and who buys an air freshener in the middle of the night? His friend was also caught with 3 fake $10 bills hidden in well, a safe place! This is just one of a long list of incidents involving Boston College Men's Basketball players over the last several years.

COACH AND COUNSELOR DISCONNECT
I had an interesting conversation in May with a guidance counselor. We spoke for about an hour on a variety of topics. Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned is that there is a complete disconnect between high school coaches and high school counselors (at this school at least) and it became clear that no one is communicating with each other. This makes everyone’s job extremely challenging. A counselors job is hard because they have to work with so many different types of students. When it comes to athletes, the job of a counselor becomes sometimes impossible.

There are several factors that make it difficult. (1) The counselor usually has no idea what your athletic skill is and how it applies to different colleges – This makes recommending schools (from an athletic standpoint) difficult. (2) The counselor often has no idea what colleges may be sending you mail or calling you and often has no idea what types of conversations you are having with different college coaches or the level of interest. This makes it very hard to make recommendations. The counselor I spoke to says year after year she is left “picking up the pieces” from students that thought they were getting recruited or thought that they were going to get recruited and now have nowhere to play and didn’t apply to enough schools or enough schools within their academic range. When she tries to make recommendations to avoid having no options at the end of the year, many kids think she isn’t supporting them or doesn’t believe in their ability. But it’s not about belief it’s about experience and past experience and giving yourself many different options as opposed to putting your eggs in one basket. You have to remember that your counselor has been down this road before and when they make suggestions or recommendations, it’s because they know what happens if they don’t. Don’t take their advice as a sign they don’t support you, take it as a sign they are trying to help you in any way possible based on their experience and expertise.

The fact that coaches and counselors are not communicating is a little disturbing because each party can and needs to play a role in helping each student-athlete move on to college. If the coach doesn’t know what types of schools an athlete could look at academically and a counselor doesn’t know what types of schools a student might be able to play at athletically, then I have no idea how anyone is able to form a list of schools to target. I am also not sure what the solution is but everyone needs to start communicating more.

NEWS ON INDIVIDUAL SCHOOLS.
Colonial Athletic Association Commissioner Thomas E. Yeager announced that the conference will sponsor football beginning with the 2007 season. "College football, with all of its tradition, pageantry, and rivalries, creates an interest and excitement on campus and across communities that is unmatched. We look forward to having the CAA name attached to such a distinguished group of institutions and building on the successes that those members have had in the past," Yeager said. Members of the CAA's Division I-AA football conference will be the University of Delaware; Hofstra University; James Madison University; the University of Maine, Orono; the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; the University of New Hampshire; Northeastern University; the University of Rhode Island; the University of Richmond; Towson University; Villanova University; and the College of William and Mary. All 12 teams currently are members of the Atlantic 10 Football Conference and will continue that affiliation through the 2006 season.

Pennsylvania State University approved final plans for a new baseball park to be shared by the school's baseball team and a minor-league team. The new ballpark will be named Medlar Field at Lubrano Park. A gift by Anthony Lubrano in honor of Charles Medlar, a long-time Penn State head baseball coach, is among the funds devoted to building the facility, which is expected to be completed in June 2006

Belmont Abbey College has been accepted as the 10th member of the Deep South Conference beginning with the 2005-06 school year

The University of Miami will add women’s lacrosse in 2007

Temple University announced that the Owls will become a football member of the MAC effective for the 2007 season

Bucknell University announced plans to rejoin the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association as the league's 14th member in 2005-06

The University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton is adding Men’s Golf program this fall.

Florida A&M will be reporting several hundred violations by the athletic department to the NCAA and will be recommending scholarship cuts in every sport.

A Barton County Community College coach has been charged with embezzlement, it was announced Wednesday, the third basketball coach at the junior college to face federal charges for taking part in an alleged ring of fraud.

Nicholls State University has been placed on probation for four years and faces several other penalties for "gross academic fraud" and other NCAA violations in football, men's basketball and volleyball. The case involved three former employees – the head basketball coach, an assistant football coach and an athletics academic advisor – committing academic fraud using online correspondence courses from Brigham Young University (BYU). The fraud involved 28 student-athletes and one prospective student-athlete. The penalties include public reprimand and censure; four years of probation; and exclusion from the conference television packages in football and men's basketball. The exclusion from the television package and three years probation had been imposed by the institution. Other penalties imposed by the committee included the loss of one scholarship in men's basketball, independent of any reductions in scholarships due to new NCAA academic reform standards. Further, the football team must implement the following reductions through the 2007-08 academic year (imposed by the university): reduce by five the number of official visits; delay the start of preseason practice by three days; reduce off-campus recruiting by football coaches by seven days; and award no more than 60 scholarships in 2005-06 and 2006-07 (the maximum is 63). The volleyball team, meanwhile, must vacate all wins from 2003 in which a particular student-athlete (student-athlete 29 in the report) competed; the football team must do the same for victories in which student-athlete 1 competed. Among other penalties, the volleyball team must also vacate its 2003 Southland Conference championship and pay a $10,000 fine for student-athlete 29's participation in the first round of the 2003 NCAA volleyball championship (university imposed).

The explosion of lacrosse
For those of you unaware, lacrosse is one of the fastest growing sports in the United States. Since 1995 there has been an increase of almost 1,500 high school lacrosse programs. The growth of the sport is creating more parity at the college level as well. Princeton and Syracuse who have won 11 of the past 13 national titles had trouble in the 2005 tournament as Syracuse lost to Umass Amherst to start the tournament and Princeton didn’t even make the round of 16 as there are many more talented lacrosse programs throughout the country.

The sport however may be heading for a disaster as high school players attempt to play in college. There are currently only 54 Division 1 lacrosse programs in the country, an increase of only 3 programs in the last 10 years. In that same time period there have been 180 new women’s soccer teams added (in 3 divisions) and about 60 new women’s crew programs (also in 3 divisions) at the NCAA level.

While the sport is booming at the high school level, opportunities for players to play at the collegiate level are not growing. This is going to create some serious recruiting problems in the near future for players as there are simply not enough roster spots at the D1 level to accommodate the growing list of talented lacrosse players who want to play in college. If those 54 programs recruited 10 players a year, that’s 540 players throughout the entire country at the D1 level. While all D1 teams are going to become better, many talented high school players may simply have nowhere to play in college if the NCAA cannot find an equitable way to add men’s lacrosse programs without disrupting the Title 9 balancing act.

 
 
 
 
 

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