NEWS ON INDIVIDUAL COLLEGES
College of the Redwoods had to suspend its volleyball program because the team did not have enough players.

The NCAA placed Illinois on probation for one year Thursday because a booster improperly provided payments and other benefits to a football prospect.

Humboldt State University has accepted an invitation to join the California Collegiate Athletic Conference, effective with the 2006-07 academic year.

Geneva College will become the ninth member of the Presidents' Athletic Conference (PAC), pending completion of provisional Division III membership

Guilford College announced $1.1 million in gifts from the Edward M. Armfield Sr. Foundation and other donors to support renovation of the Armfield Athletic Center, where the school's football and lacrosse teams play

St. John’s University opened a new basketball practice facility part of which is available to the student body.

Lewis & Clark College announced the suspension of the conference portion of its football team's 2005 schedule, citing safety concerns stemming from low numbers on the team roster. As a result, the squad is playing games on four consecutive weekends beginning September 17, against Occidental College, Colorado College, Chapman University and Claremont McKenna-Harvey Mudd-Scripps Colleges, but will not play its Northwest Conference opponents this season. After several years of decline in the size of the team roster, this year's team has 34 players,

Mount St. Mary's University will break ground on its new $3.5 million athletics stadium and field. The 1,000-seat facility will be named the Waldron Family Stadium

Edgewood College announced plans to add men's and women's track. The move will increase the school's intercollegiate teams to 14

Maryville University of St. Louis will add men's and women's indoor and outdoor track and field this year.

Towson University is adding women's golf to its varsity athletics program beginning next fall.

The NCAA has placed Ohio Northern University on two years probation and banned its football team from 2005 postseason competition for conducting a number of impermissible out-of-season practices.

GateWay Community College will kick off it’s inaugural baseball season in February.

The NCAA has placed Texas Christian University on two years of probation and penalized the former head track coach for violations involving impermissible inducements, extra benefits, academic fraud, unethical conduct and failure by the institution to monitor its track and field program. The school is loosing official visits, 2 scholarships, and cannot compete in post-season competition next year.

ODD’S N ENDS
I received an email from a parent in October that had purchased a book and said that they were originally going to buy the book months ago but that some of the things I had written about recruiting seemed somewhat cynical. Well, after a few conversations with other parents in which he learned about scholarships being pulled and college coaches stocking their rosters with too many people he purchased a book. I usually don’t try to sugarcoat anything and the recruiting process can be an extremely difficult thing for many people. Most people who call or email me seem to think that their son or daughter will be playing basketball for Duke and while I try to never discourage anyone from pursuing their dreams, it’s important to be educated and realistic in this process and be prepared for the pitfalls that can come with it. He concluded his email with this – “I recently talked to a parent who saw his son's scholarship pulled, after his son did not gain 15 pounds. I also in the commercial real estate business, and I could relate to Yes meaning maybe or no, and a letter of intent - not really meaning much at all. I can't put your book down and I find I am learning as much or more about academic admission to college, as about athletic admission.”

The State of New Jersey has signed a bill to ban smoking in college dormitories in the state of New Jersey. Two other states, Connecticut and Wisconsin have banned smoking in dorms at public universities.

A college student from a school in Boston was expelled in October for posting offensive and incriminating remarks about the schools hierarchy on a website BLOG including remarks about the president of the school.

Derek Jeter made 56 errors in his first full minor league season at shortstop.

Two college basketball players were recently suspended for one game because they played in a charity 3-on-3 tournament during the summer. When in doubt, check with your coach or NCAA liason first before you compete in any strange events during the summer.

A parent contacted me recently to tell me that their high school aged son was in a ball game where the opposing pitcher threw 207 pitches in a 10-inning game (and was diabetic). Is winning really that important? My friend in high school threw 180 pitches one game and had arm problems the rest of the year and never won a game after that.

The Acton-Boxboro, MA football team (featured on ESPN last year) went for their 52nd straight win and lost in September. At a spring recruiting seminar we gave there, the AD spoke about how proud he was of the team for all their accomplishments. He also said the team hasn’t had one D1 scholarship football player come out of the program during those 51 straight wins in 4+ years.

I was perusing a message board last month and came across a post a parent had made about wanting to play baseball for an Ivy League school. The parent was wondering if there were any showcases specifically for Ivy League coaches? Whether there is or isn’t (my guess is there isn’t), it doesn’t really matter. There are only 8 Ivy schools, thus only 8 baseball coaches and the easiest way to go about this would be to simply contact all 8 coaches and find out how you could be possibly considered for recruitment, what they need from you, and what events they will be at this summer. All 8 calls could be made in less than an hour and it will be a lot more effective than trying to find out where they “might be” during the summer by asking other people who have no idea what the coaching staff is planning for the summer. Don’t make the recruiting process any harder than it already is and don’t invent reasons not to contact coaches. If you want to know where they will be and what they look for you will only find that answer by speaking directly to them. Only the coach himself knows where they will be!

WHEN DISTANCE IS A FACTOR
In September I wrote about how many schools have a difficult time finding potential recruits. These are often smaller or less-well-known schools that are looking for a particular student-athlete that may be few and far between. For every school like this there are 5 schools that have the opposite problem. In talking to an assistant baseball coach from a well-known Division 1 school in the North East this became clearly evident. This school receives roughly 300+ video’s a year which in itself is not such a problem, and they make every effort to watch all of them. The problem lies with potential recruits that contact them from far away, like California or Canada for example. The problem is that many schools including this one, simply don’t have the resources to extend their recruiting reach far enough to evaluate players who live thousands of miles away. In this scenario there are really only two options. One, attend the schools camp, or two, play in a tournament or showcase where the coaching staff will be in attendance. You can have all the talent in the world and the money and grades to play for certain programs, but often many families don’t factor in the barriers many programs and coaches have when it comes down to evaluating recruits who live far away. This isn’t a problem for big-time football and basketball programs as they have scouts they send all over the country, but for the 99% of all other NCAA programs not dripping in money, geography plays a huge part in recruiting. This should not discourage you from contacting schools far away, you just have to understand that it will be more difficult for the coaching staff to evaluate you over other players they have seen in person and you are going to have to be more creative when contacting coaches and planning your recruiting activities. You simply have to ask yourself – “how is this coach going to realistically evaluate my skills in order to make a decision as to whether they can recruit me over other recruits?”

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO PLAY D1
I often run into a lot of questions like this, “how big do I need to be to play D1, how fast do I need to be to play D1, how hard do I need to throw to play D1?” Last time I checked there were 327+ D1 colleges and no two are alike. We spend a great deal of time talking about the differences between schools, divisions, regions, locations and so forth but people still seem to want to classify all D1 schools as the same level. Not to mention the other talented D2 and D3 teams that could routinely beat many lower level D1 teams. What the Arizona State coach looks for in a recruit will be much different than what the Sienna or Rhode Island coach looks for in a recruit and you cannot have an effective recruiting process until you understand that you simply cannot rank and judge schools or your chances of playing there or not playing there solely by Division. There are simply too many other factors that need to be considered and you have to understand the level and needs of individual teams and conferences. Here are several things to look for.
1 – Region. Location plays a huge role in the talent level of many college teams. I hate using this example over and over, but colleges in Florida play baseball a very high level. Why? Because there are several thousand high school baseball players from Florida who play the game all year round at an extremely high level and then the best of the best go on to local colleges to compete. Other regions of the country (New England) don’t allow the game of baseball to be played on a year-round basis and kids up here migrate to other sports in the fall and winter such as football and basketball or hockey. From a skills standpoint, the kids in Florida have an advantage.
2 – Social makeup of the school. This is a tricky one but here is an example. Fairfield University my former college is a small Private Jesuit University in Connecticut with about 3,500 students and is a Division 1 University. Tufts University in Somerville Mass is also a private University of similar size and makeup. Both are expensive and have similar high academic requirements (Tufts is higher). Tufts is also a Division 3 school. Having played for Fairfield and having had friends play for Tufts of which I have seen many games, I would probably say that if the two teams played 20 games, it would be split 10-10. Why? Because the schools are both based in New England, are both private, are both expensive, are both relative in size and are going to attract similar baseball talent because they are going to attract similar students.
3 – Past Success/Reputation. There are some colleges that regardless of level or location, attract superior athletic talent. Williams College, a small D3 school in Western Mass routinely wins the Commissioner’s Cup as having the top D3 athletic program in the country and most if not all of their teams are very good. Other programs like the Kenyon College swim team (25 straight D3 swimming championships), Methodist College Golf team (9 men’s titles in the last 17 years) attract top athletic talent because of their past success. Kids go there to win and winning causes talented recruits to want to go there year after year.

THE NEXT STEP
I received a call from a parent in September inquiring about what to do next. They were a book purchaser and had already gone through the research and evaluation aspects of different college programs and had already sent out recruiting materials to several college coaches where they thought they would be a fit. In situations like this, it’s difficult for me to give advice that you wouldn’t have already read about in the book, but at this point the important thing to concentrate on is communicating with college coaches. There are only 3 scenarios if you have done everything else. (1) The coach wants to recruit you. (2) The coach doesn’t want to recruit you. (3) The coach might want to recruit you. One of the mistakes families often make after they have done everything they can is to sit back and wait for college coaches to recruit them, rather than pushing the coach a little bit for answers. As we say time and time again, you are as much a part of the process as the college coach is and their decisions affect your decisions and it’s important to either get a “yes” from them or to get a “no” from them. While no one wants to hear “no” from a college coach, a no allows you to concentrate on other schools and coaches so it’s an important phrase to hear. I would rather hear “sorry, we will not be recruiting you” rather than sitting at home waiting for a college coach to call me that is never going to call me. So once you have done the research and the sending out of materials, it’s time to communicate with coaches and find out if there is a place for you on their team. Some schools are also beginning to run fall clinics and prospect clinics, so if you think you needed some added exposure at a given school inquire as to what opportunities might be available. Remember, everyone gets rejected in life at some point, usually multiple times, the important thing is to keep making progress with the options you have left rather than complaining about the opportunities you already lost out on.
 
 
 
 
 

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