The NCAA has granted a waiver allowing 17 and 18 year old players at the D1 level to enter the NHL draft in June. The players will retain their eligibility so long as they don’t play for a pro team or hire an agent.
TOURNAMENTS AND ELIGIBILITY
There are some new rules out there to help bring some sense to the college recruiting madness that people often engage in. I believe several States have limited the time periods that athletes can attend athletic showcases. In the past, many athletes have been skipping high school competition to go to recruiting showcases. In Massachusetts, a hockey player was ruled ineligible to play baseball his senior year because he participated in a hockey tournament at the beginning of the baseball season in the Midwest. According to Paul Wetzel, a spokesperson for the MIAA, the rule is established for the following reasons. "Many of these so-called national championships are no more than money-making businesses; the tournament organizers are no more than travel agents, profiting from selling airline tickets and hotel rooms. They are shrewd businessmen who market it by telling the parents that there will be plenty of college scouts at these tournaments and [will] aid in their chances of getting a college athletic scholarship." The difficulty I have with these rules is that the college recruiting process is an important process for many families and simply playing high school athletics is not enough. While I agree that there are a lot of tournaments and showcases out there are making a lot of money off of kids who might not be skilled enough to play in college, its important that players get as much exposure as possible, and if missing a baseball practice in March to go to a hockey tournament where many college coaches will be in attendance and that can aid in my recruiting efforts, I think you have to take into consideration the situation of the family and what they are trying to accomplish. If I am playing high school baseball for fun, but trying to get a hockey scholarship or get recruited, you have to understand the needs of an individual family, especially with the rising tuition prices these days. This player appealed to the MIAA and his school, but was denied because the invitation to this tournament was not formal and personalized to specific players, but rather invited any player. If you have concerns, contact your state high school athletic association before you lose your eligibility as well.
INTERESTING INTERVIEW
I found an interesting interview online with the Mississippi Women’s Soccer coach. Here is a brief excerpt. For the entire article, please visit the link to the full interview. (Just to warn you, most of the questions do not discuss recruiting, that’s why I pulled out these three for you)
http://mississippistate.theinsiders.com/2/247517.html
I noticed that you have almost 30 girls on your roster but only have 12 scholarships. That's very similar to baseball and a few of the other sports. How does the limit in scholarships affect you?
"Next year, we will have between 22 and 24 girls. That's about 50% (scholarship money) each. Some girls get more money than others. While we don't have the advantage of the Hope Scholarship like other states have, we do have the out-of-state tuition waiver if (a player) has a certain ACT or SAT score. We are very fortunate that women's soccer players, as a general rule, are very academic and a lot of them qualify for academic scholarships. The ACT requirement is 26 and the SAT is 1170. And you have to maintain a certain GPA while you are at State. I would say that 40 to 50% of our girls the last four years have had ACT/SAT waivers and that helps tremendously because it offset costs. If you add in the waiver, that takes our scholarships from 12 to 16."
Do you have specific states that you recruit such as Mississippi, Texas and Tennessee? I ask that because most of your players are from those three states.
"The way recruiting works is we go to major tournaments around the country because we can see 100 to 200 teams in a weekend rather than going to high school games where you will just see 22 players. We go to Texas, Florida, Georgia, the Midwest and the west coast. We then contact the young ladies after we see them. If they show interest in us, we show interest back. We've had players as far away as Washington, Oregon and Colorado. Because we have become a well-respected program, we are now in a position where we can nationally recruit and internationally recruit because my assistant coach and I are from Europe. When I first got here, we were 237th in the country out of 259 teams and we hadn't won very many games, so it was very difficult to recruit."
What periods during the year are you allowed to go to tournaments and recruit?
"We don't have a recruiting calendar; we can recruit all year long. So, we can go to as many as we want to. My assistant coaches travel during the season. I won't travel during the season unless it is a special case."
MORE IRRESPONSIBLE STATEMENTS FROM RECRUITING SERVICES
“When parents and their student-athlete try to initiate the recruiting process themselves, they are in a no win situation. If they don’t send the student-athlete’s information out to college coaches, they won’t get noticed by coaches, yet if they do send it, the college coaches can feel as though they are being chased.” Ridiculous! You need to initiate as much contact with college coaches as possible. They would like to hear from you directly and need to know who you are, what position you play, what your grades and test scores are, they want to know you are interested in their school and they want to know what your grades are and tournaments or showcases you will be playing in this summer. However, some student-athletes try to contact coaches before they have done research on their program or evaluated their own skills as it applies to schools they are calling. Coaches don’t really enjoy hearing from these athletes, because you have some responsibilities on your end to evaluate your talent and try to find schools you fit into. If you are not a Division 1 basketball player, the Duke coaches probably don’t want you calling, but the D2 or D3 school near you might love to hear from you if you think your skills would allow you to play there. The only reason services use sentences like this is so you get scared into not contacting coaches on your own and sign up for their service, thinking their way must be the right way. They don’t want you contacting coaches on your own because you might actually get recruited that way and not have to sign up for their service! That’s how you make money in the recruiting services business, don’t encourage families to take a proactive role in their recruiting process, scare them into thinking they can’t get recruited another way, and tell them your way is the wrong way and their way is the right way!
RECRUITING LOCALLY AND NATIONALLY
In the Making of a Student-Athlete we spoke about the University of Oregon and how they were the first D1 program to offer girls lacrosse in the Northwest. We also mentioned that there were only 16 high schools in Oregon that offered girls lacrosse, and until those numbers rose, it was a good bet that U Oregon would have to look elsewhere for lacrosse recruits. Depending on area talent and the needs of an individual school, some coaches have to look far and wide for recruits, and other can look right in their own backyard. You also have coaches who recruit their entire roster at one event. Here are 3 interesting examples below.
Oregon Lax coach recruiting nationally
http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=4427&SPID=251&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=30356
Central Missouri State University basketball coach recruiting locally
http://www.sedaliademocrat.com/Sports/280175157818644.htm
Coach recruiting entire class at one event
http://www.theithacajournal.com/news/stories/20040401/localsports/185574.html
ATHLETIC SCHOLARSHIPS
Athletic scholarships fall into two categories, HEAD-COUNT sports and EQUIVALENCY sports. Head-count sports are NCAA Division I football and basketball for men and basketball, gymnastics, tennis and volleyball for women. “head count” means these sports above cannot distribute more scholarship money to players on the team than the maximum allowable scholarship figure set by the NCAA for that individual sport. I will try to put that in English for you. Men’s basketball has 13 scholarships and football has 85 scholarships. Those sports are fully funded meaning every D1 basketball and football team in the country offers the maximum amount of scholarships. But, these sports cannot divide scholarship money up to more than 13 players for basketball and 85 for football and there are no partial scholarships. Unlike a sport like baseball where a D1 team is allowed 11.7 scholarships, a baseball coach can award athletic scholarship money to 30 players if he so chooses and divide the money up any way they like. Not so in head count sports. It gets even worse for other head count sports like volleyball or tennis. In D1 women’s tennis, a coach is allowed 8 scholarships per team, but since tennis isn’t a revenue generating sport, rarely will you find all D1 programs as offering 8 tennis scholarships (aside of the top schools with lots of money). If a D1 tennis coach has 2 scholarships for the entire team, they can divide that money up to 8 players, but no more than 8 players, and some teams consist of 12 players and 4 will get no athletic aid. Again, if this were softball and a coach had 3 scholarships available, they could divide that money up to many players. Sometimes you are in a no-win situation. In equivalency sports, the coach may offer you only a few thousand dollars because they are giving money to many players and in head count sports, the coach many not feel you are a D1 scholarship basketball player but may ask you to walk on, in that case you get no money at all.
CHOOSING COLLEGES
I was reading an article this week on financial aid and choosing colleges and there was a high school student featured in the article that was choosing between a few schools. One school was about 1,500 students and the girl said “I like the school, but it’s so small and I don’t want it to be like high school.”
I had similar fears in high school. My high school was about 1,400 students give or take a few and very “clicky”. There were many defined groups that kept to themselves and I felt most students were pretty immature, catty, and often not particularly nice to other students. I would venture to say that many high schools are still like this today. Since most students don’t enjoy this social atmosphere if they aren’t one of the “popular kids” many students assume that going to a small college will be “just like high school” Well, not so. First off, the majority of students at any college do not know each other at all. Many of your fellow students in high school you have known since kindergarten and over the years you unfortunately formed opinions (good or bad) about them, and over the years the social groups have developed. Everyone is new in college, no one knows you stink at kickball or had braces in 3rd grade, or stole someone boyfriend in 10th grade. It’s a chance to start fresh. Secondly, college students are a little more mature than high school students for the simple reason that they have had more time to grow up. While you will always find students in college that act dumb, I think you will find that it’s nothing like high school, if your high school was like mine. Talk to some students on campus and ask them what they think and don’t dismiss any schools simply because they are small and simply on “assuming” they will be a certain way.
REDSHIRTING
What do you do when you have two senior quarterbacks that are both pretty good and competing against each other? Well if you are Boston College, you give one man the job and redshirt the other. As reported in the Boston Globe, Tom O’brien will award one player the starting job and ask (or tell) the other to red shirt. Many players think that you can only redshirt your freshman year, and here is a good example of the fact that a head coach can ask you to redshirt at any time, even if you are not hurt. The move is done usually for the good of the team, and sometimes the good of the player, giving him a chance to start the next year. This demonstrates the difficulty of finding a program that fits you and that you fit into. One of the quarterbacks was a transfer student, so certain players arriving and departing can affect your career in positive and negative ways, and often you don’t have control over your career or as much as you would like.
CHANGES IN RECRUITING AND SUCCESS OF A PROGRAM
The Boston Globe ran a great article on the University of Massachusetts Softball program. The team has a new stadium and has now won 67 conference games is a row dating back to the 2000 season. Here is an interesting section on how the program has changed and how recruiting has changes.
There have been a lot of changes," said Sortino, who notched her 850th win at UMass yesterday and will be inducted this winter into the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame. "The resources certainly have changed. I remember one of my first teams, having to drive a van down to South Carolina."
Now UMass flies to annual early-season weekend tournaments against nationally ranked teams in Florida, Arizona, and Georgia in February and March. A schedule that has more doubled in size, a new stadium in which the Minutewomen have been almost unbeatable, players from the West Coast and Canada, 15 All-Americans, nine A-10 players of the year, and the 1999 national Player of the Year have spiced the program.
Perhaps the most crucial elements of the rise from a parochial power to one that often is ranked in the Top 25 were the decisions a decade ago to upgrade the UMass schedule to play outside the region and to expand its recruiting territory.
"The game itself has changed -- it's played a lot faster and slicker," said Sortino, who recognized the need to find players whose development was enhanced by the chance to play year-round in climates warmer than New England.
"The kids can really hit the ball and the athleticism has improved. But our players still have a blue-collar mentality."
Though there are only five West Coast players on this year's team (which has just four seniors on the roster), as opposed to nine from Massachusetts or Connecticut, ironically it was the recruiting of Western players that convinced one of Massachusetts's best high school pitchers that she didn't have a chance to earn a scholarship to UMass.
When Boston College, Boston University, Connecticut, and Rhode Island expressed an interest in Lexington's Jenna Busa three years ago -- but not UMass -- she wasn't surprised.
"UMass had the reputation of recruiting mostly from the West Coast. I just didn't think I had a chance," said Busa, who was planning instead to attend UConn.
But a day after the Huskies suddenly dropped their interest, Sortino was on the phone, inviting the Globe All-Scholastic to tour the UMass campus.