SO YOU WANT TO BE A COLLEGE ATHLETE?
Munchies got the better of me the other night and I pulled into a McDonald’s on the highway right by my house to get some nutritious food. It was about 12:15AM and I figured the place would be quiet. As I pull in I see a bus in the parking lot and a big crowd of people eating. I walk in and see all these players in baseball uniforms from Norwich University in Vermont. As I got in line I spotted who I thought was the coach of the team. I asked him who they played today and he responded as follows, “We played Johnson and Wales University and the game was delayed twice because of rain. We should get home at about 3:30 in the morning.” I told him it was a good thing his players didn’t have to go to class tomorrow since it would be Friday (obviously I was joking). These two schools are 223 miles apart. That’s about 123 miles further than the longest bus ride I took in college for any game. That makes for a long day, even for two D3 schools and it’s important to remember that being a college athlete is not all glitz and glamour and there are some long and late days and nights on the road. I imagine the day was even longer for the players who didn’t play. Assuming a 4-hour drive I gather the team left Vermont at 10AM and got to Providence at 2PM for a 3:30 game. If they get home at 3:30 AM as the coach predicted, that would make for a 17 and ½ hour day to play one baseball game!

ODD’S N ENDS
Buyer beware. I came across yet another online recruiting site that simply isn't telling the truth to parents and students. The site had several athletes listed with athletic scholarships to certain schools. One girl and boy were listed with tennis scholarships to two D3 schools. Well, D3 schools do not offer tennis scholarships or athletic scholarships for that matter. They may offer academic aid and grants, but calling that a tennis scholarship is extremely misleading. I also checked the roster of one of the schools and one player wasn't even on the roster, which leads me to believe he didn't have a tennis scholarship.

The last day to register for the June 4th SAT test is May 11th!

I read a great quote from a coach who was trying to sum up the recruiting process in one sentence – recruiting is part investigation, part observation, part numbers crunching, and a good bit of gut feeling. My role is to help guide the student-athlete in making a good college choice.” I would say this would go for a recruit’s perspective as well.

After reading loads of junior hockey articles the last few months, I have a question I was wondering if anyone could answer? Why is hockey the only sport that has a junior program that basically encourages kids to give up public high school and move away from home to play hockey all day? Why doesn’t this exist in football or basketball? You can try to sell me on the fact that minor league baseball is the same way, but those kids are not 16 years old and they are affiliated with a Major league team.

And people wonder why more and more youth baseball players are having arm problems and arm surgery at a younger age? Ray at athletesadvisor.com forwarded me this quote from an AAU baseball coach of a 13-year-old team after they won the championship. “All he did was win the must game over Greensboro (10-0 shutout), then came back on one day's rest to win the semifinal game over the Orlando team, 2-0." The team played 60 games in a year. Does anyone else think that’s a lot of games, and does anyone think one day’s rest for a 13 year old pitcher is enough rest?

7 high school students scored a perfect score of 2400 on the new SAT test from Massachusetts, 13 from New York and 24 from California. Considering the test has a new essay portion that is subjective, I would say that is pretty impressive. Now those students can apply to Yale and get rejected as Yale rejected 100 people with a perfect score of 1600 on the SAT a few years ago that had applied to the school!

Northeastern University (Boston, MA) signed 12 soccer players in April. Northeastern certainly isn’t known for their soccer program, but they take their athletics fairly seriously. Signings came form PA, NY, CT, FL, IL, VA, and one player from Western Massachusetts thrown in for good measure. I can’t imagine Northeastern soccer has a huge budget, but the coach obviously recruits from a pretty wide area. The current roster also has players from Norway, 2 from Ireland, and 1 from Istanbul Turkey. I talked to coach Donahue and he said that he was recruiting several local players but they chose to ultimately attend other schools. Coach Donahue also said the conference they are entering is Virginia based (The Colonial Conference) which increases the visibility of his school, and allows him to expand his recruiting area and bring in kids from other parts of the country.

NEWS ON INDIVIDUAL COLLEGES
Harvard students are on the protest. Not over the war or minimum wage, but over cereal. Harvard decided to replace the cereal in the cafeteria with generic brands instead of Captain Crunch and Lucky Charms. Students are up in arms. That’s not all the students are complaining about. According to a Boston Globe article, student satisfaction at Harvard lags many other elite schools. Apparently Harvard has a lot of big classes taught not by professors but temporary instructors and teaching assistants.

Stony Brook University (NY) has been placed on probation by the NCAA for 3 years after it was discovered 50+ athletes were improperly certified. The certification infractions came when Stony Brook was attempting to move from D3 to D1 status. The infractions seem to be more about students forgetting or not being aware that they had to fill out additional paperwork. As part of the penalty the school has to cut 12.5 scholarships from 10 sports during 2005 and 2006

Longwood University has announced plans to construct two competition facilities for field hockey, women's lacrosse, and men's and women's soccer. The team is attempting to move to Division 1 status in 2007

Benedict College has been placed on probation for recruiting violations.

The Ohio Valley Conference has approved Austin Peay State University's request to be reinstated for conference football competition, effective with the 2007 season. Austin Peay State, which dropped from scholarship to non-scholarship football after the 1996 season, will leave the Pioneer Football League after the 2005 season. In 2006, Austin Peay State will move from non-scholarship to partial-scholarship status as a Division I-AA independent, then rejoin the Ohio Valley as a full-scholarship member in 2007.

Montana State University-Billings, announced that baseball will become the school's 13th varsity sport beginning with the 2005 fall semester. The Yellowjacket baseball team will begin official competition with the 2006 NCAA spring championship season. Since 1996, the school has added men's and women's soccer, men's and women's golf, softball, and now baseball

The Presidents' Athletic Conference will add Thomas More College as its seventh member in 2005-06

The College of New Jersey has begun construction of a sports complex that will include a new softball facility and soccer field. Both sports' facilities will include spectator seating and a press box, while the softball field also will feature dugouts and the soccer facility will boast a synthetic surface

STATISTICS
Found a new recruiting service that says athletes are judged by the numbers they produce. Well, no, athletes are judged by their ability and potential and if you have ability you will eventually put up numbers. When a major league baseball team drafts a 17 year-old high school player, they could care less about his statistics in high school against other kids that will be quitting their sport after high school. They look at potential and try to project what kind of player they will be in 3,4,or 5 years, sometimes even longer. They know over time that player will grow both physically and grow the talents of his game if given a chance to play more.

College coaches usually could care less about stats, and there is a leading scorer on every high school team in the country. There are over 25,000 high schools in the country, which means there may be 25,000 leading scorers on the boy’s varsity basketball team. Are those players all college prospects because they are the leading scorers on their team? NO. Most parents call coaches and gush about stats and how their son or daughter is all-league, all-star, averages 20 points or 2 goals, or 4 assists, or hit .400. That information doesn’t tell coaches how you run, jump, kick, throw, hustle, support your team, listen to your coaches, handle adversity, the passion you have for your sport. If you had 10 field goals blocked, whose fault is that, yours or the offensive line? If you are an offensive lineman, what type of numbers will you have? If you are a soccer or lacrosse defenseman, what type of stats will you have that will display your skills? If you are a pitcher and your team is awful in the field and you can’t score any runs, how will your stats look? What if your team has 2 or 3 other players that are D1 prospects and take all the shots during a game, how will your stats look when you get to take maybe 5 or 6 shots and they each take 20? What type of numbers will you have if you are recovering from a separated shoulder or ankle injury? What if you are a quarterback and your team has 3 running backs that each run for 100 yards a game. Our high school QB used to throw the ball no more than 3 times per game because of that very scenario. How do you think his stats looked? Dave Winfield was drafted in college by an NFL team. Dave Winfield didn’t even play football in college! How do you think his football stats looked in college? No tackles, no interceptions, no runs, no blocks, no receptions, no kick returns, no punt returns, no sacks, NO NOTHING. Why was he drafted? ATHLETIC ABILITY and POTENTIAL.

OFFICIAL VISITS AND COACHES HONESTY
I got a call from a mom last month who wanted to ask a few questions as they got closer to making decisions for their son’s recruiting process. The first question was how to decide what schools to take official visits to. Since they could only go on 5 and had more than 5 schools that were interested or that they were interested in, some decisions needed to be made. I try to back off from making personal decisions for people, so here is what I did. Through the process of elimination we were able to get to 5 pretty quickly. One was a school her son had already visited informally and the coach had expressed serious interest in her son. (one down). Another school was a local school they were interested in. Now, normally I don’t encourage official visits to schools you can simply drive to, but the mother said that turning down an official visit and going unofficially, would be a bad message to send to the school, so we put that school on the list (two down). Another school she said they had already visited and been given a personal tour of the school and facilities by someone on the baseball staff. She also mentioned that there were other potential recruits there who did not get that much attention, so they felt the school was interested in them and paying them particular attention. (ok, three down, two to go). Another school she said had been recommended to them by a scout they know that has ties with the coaching staff at the school and presented another good opportunity (four down). The last school had also expressed interest in her son and they felt it was a place they were interested in so we added that one to the list. Now, I actually didn’t have to make any recommendations and I didn’t make any choices for her, I simply got her to tell me what type of contact they had up to that point and what schools they were interested in. The list of 5 school naturally formed itself simply by reviewing what they wanted and what contact to date they had with each school. Pretty easy!

The second question was as follows – “How are we going to know which schools are really interested and make offers.” That’s a really great question, and I wish I had a really great answer. The answer is you don’t really know. D1 baseball teams have 25 visits to offer and in most cases, programs will not be recruiting 25 players in a given year. So some players will get visits and not get offers. Coaches have a few scenario’s they can use. Invite their top recruits and make offers during those meetings and solicit feedback and in some cases verbal offers. “We would like to offer you a roster spot and scholarship if you could commit to us today.” If the athlete commits, it’s likely the coach may not extend all 25 official visits. If the athlete wavers, the coach will go down his list of other positions players. Some coaches will extend all offers with the goal of identifying whom they actually want to make offers to, sort of a meet and greet sort of thing. Some coaches will understand that your college choice is an important decision and will not force you into a decision. Some could care less about other schools you are looking at and will try to get you to make a decision on the spot by giving you a take it or leave it opportunity. I have even heard coaches say the following – “We are offering a position to you, but only if you cancel your visit to xxxxx school that you have scheduled later this week.” That is some real pressure put on there by the coach.

At the end of the day a lot of coaches are telling prospects what they want to hear and prospects are telling coaches what they want to hear (and sometimes everyone is lying their butt off!). We try to tell families that if it’s a school you really want to play for and the coach really wants you to come there, then honesty is the best policy in this case and you should tell him this is where you want to be, and if you don’t want me let me know so I can look at other schools. When you express interest and the coach makes an offer, 99% of the time, it’s going to work out and then every once in a while you will read about a team or kid who got screwed. Until you sign a Letter of Intent, nothing is guaranteed, and sometimes after you sign a Letter of Intent, you are still not guaranteed admission to the school.

Have you heard of Arjun Atwal?
I hadn’t either until April. Arjun Atwal was the 23rd alternate at the PGA Tour BellSouth Classic in the beginning of April. 23rd alternate means you have no shot of competing unless 23 other players drop out of the tournament, an extremely unlikely scenario. Well, because of rain on day one and day two of the tournament, several players dropped out to get ready for the Masters the following week. Arjun Atwal went from being the 23rd alternate to seventh alternate to second alternate. By Friday when two more players dropped out, Arjun Atwal was told he would be in the tournament. Round one of the BellSouth classic was played on a Saturday and low and behold there was Arjun Atwal playing in a PGA tournament. Arjun Atwal opened the tournament with a 77 and was way behind the leaders. In round two Awtal fired a 67 and moved up the leader board. In round 3, Atwal shot a tournament best 64 and found himself in a 5-way playoff. While Phil Mickelson eventually went on to win the tournament, Atwal had his best finish ever on the PGA tour, the kind of finish that can literally change a golfers career on the PGA Tour. One of the most amazing things about this story is Arjun Atwal was supposed to be on his honeymoon the week of the BellSouth Classic, but storms cancelled their trip and he came back to the States with his new wife. The moral of the story is what often seems like an unfortunate event (a storm on your honeymoon) and a hopeless scenario (23rd alternate in the tournament) can literally change at a moments notice. Perhaps you are not playing well today or didn’t get recruited by a certain school today, but who knows what tomorrow may bring? Keep working on your game, keep working on your academics, keep contacting coaches and researching schools - and perhaps a storm will blow in and change your future one day like it did for Arjun Atwal!
 
 
 
 
 

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