ARTICLES OF INTEREST

This article is a year and a half old but very good. I love this quote from it - "If parents only knew that there were 30 times more dollars available for financial aid based on academics rather than athletics, maybe they'd have their child at home reading." – We heard the same exact thing from an admissions official at a college in January. Read Article

- With official visits beginning soon and National Letter of Intents soon to be signed I thought this was a pretty fitting article. Hard to have an opinion on this. Yes coaches are free to leave schools and break contracts (sometimes with a penalty) but students cannot get out of an NLI unless the coach lets them out. I guess more than anything it can be a student’s first real encounter of how the decisions they make come with boundaries and consequences, which is excellent training for life. Read Article

The first paragraph and last paragraph of this article are really funny because they make absolutely no sense together. This is the second time in recent months I have read an article about a college athlete who chose a Division 3 program over other division 1 programs because they didn’t want sports to rule their life. I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news but most division 3 programs take their athletics very seriously and while you might not play as many games during the season, you will still have as many practices and other requirements during the season and off-season as many D1 programs. Read Article

Article on summer camps and their role in recruiting. Read Article

ADMISSIONS CRITERIA
According to a College Board Survey in 2000, the following criteria was most important when reviewing a college application

• High School GPA
• SAT/ACT test scores
• Pattern of High School Coursework
• College level work in high school
• AP course enrollment and grades
• Letters of recommendation
• Essays
• AP exam grades

• Declaration of major
• State of residence
• Minority group membership
• Country of residence
• Age
• Gender
• Financial Need

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CONTROL OF RECRUITING PROCESS
I was recently asked the following question. – “How much of the recruiting process can we control?”
Excellent question. And the answer is, unless you are Albert Einstein, the best high school athlete in the country, and wealthy enough to pay for any school, not much!

Here are the things you can control…
1- What schools you look at
2- Your academic success in high school
3- How hard you work in the classroom and on the athletic field

After that, I am having trouble forming a list. Here is what you cannot control
1 – Who the coach wants to recruit
2 – The talents of other players
3 – Your acceptance to a particular college

OK, so how do you give yourself more control? There are very few high school athletes that have total control over the recruiting process. For the OJ Mayo’s of the world, players like that will basically have their pick of schools assuming their grades are at least normal. For the other 99.9% of high school student-athletes there is only so much control they can have over the process because there is usually alternatives for college coaches. If you are not interested in a particular school, there are 30 other kids a college coach probably has spoken to that will gladly fill your spot.

So how can you gain more control?
The only way to gain more control over the process is to put yourself in a position to have more options both academically and athletically. If someone in your high school aces the SAT and has a high GPA, they have instantly given themselves more options than another student who has a 950 SAT and a 2.0 GPA. On a message board the other day a students asks if he can qualify for the clearinghouse with a 2.0. Yes you can, but the real question is how many NCAA schools will accept you to their school with a 2.0 GPA. The higher academic achiever can simply get into more schools than the lower student. It’s a numbers game. In athletics, your skill is your skill and while you can take lessons to improve and lift weights to get stronger, you ultimately will have a ceiling that will be as low or as high as many other athletes. So what you can really control is the number and type of colleges you research and contact. There are some schools that are beating away recruits with a stick because every high school player wants to play there, and there are other schools that less students have heard of that will have a harder time finding the right type of student. Your ability to research programs, evaluate your skills, and communicate with coaches to form a larger list of possible colleges will in the end give yourself more options and in the end, more options will equal more control. While there are thousands of potential recruits, there are many college programs that are looking for a specific type of student and player that will be more difficult to find. The more schools and programs you find like that, the more control you will have.

ODDS N ENDS
My former assistant coach from college (now the pitching coach at Holy Cross) is hosting some Fall and Winter baseball camps at the College of the Holy Cross for 12-14 year old's who are transitioning to the bigger diamond. More Information

I was talking to a parent recently who was at a college camp and started talking to another parent who was also there watching their son at the camp. The two parents started talking recruiting and one parent mentioned how friendly a particular coach had been with them. This comment didn’t go unnoticed by the second parent and a few days later they stopped by the very same school and met the coach. They received a full tour of the university and the coach then spent an hour with them one on one answering and fielding questions with the family without a scheduled appointment. The moral of the story? Sometimes you never know what an innocent question or conversation with another person may lead to. Had they not started talking, the school visit may never have taken place.

Out of the last 364 people to take the recruiting quiz, only 121 people knew how many core courses they needed to take in high school to be eligible to play NCAA 1 or NCAA D2 athletics. That's about 33%.

Here is a fantastic quote from Armstrong - "Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.

Wade Boggs, recently elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, uttered this quote in his speech - "I told you that some day my success would be judged on my ability to overcome adversity.” – Boggs spent 7 years in the minor leagues, 6 of which he hit over .300 before being called up to the show!

I recently read a press release from a recruiting service about a player they placed at a particular college and contacted the coach who recruited the player to ask him what role the service played in recruiting this particular player. The coach emailed me back and said he had never even heard of the service and that he found the player at a regional tournament near his college. The press release for the recruiting company works great because it makes it look like both the coach and player benefitted from the service when the service actually played no role in placing this player. Not very honest!

VIDEO
In August I watched a prospect video of a baseball player online that was an outfielder. While the player looked like a decent athlete and ball player, there were two problems. One, it’s hard to shoot outfield drills for a prospect video indoors in a small space. But the bigger problem was that the player had god awful technique in fielding and throwing balls. It’s important to understand your position and understand what the basics are for fielding your position. Making a video that shows poor technique will in the end not help your cause. I was a bit surprised because this player was part of a baseball academy and paying for lessons and help, and in this case he was probably hurting his chances of being recruited.

DON’T LET LEGACIES AFFECT YOUR DECISION MAKING
Flutie verbals to Boston College. No, Doug doesn’t have any eligibility left but nephew Bill - a talented athlete and football player from Natick MA - recently verbaled to the Boston College Football team. Flutie will enroll in the fall of 2006. He says Boston College recruited him as an “athlete” and will give him a shot at trying out for quarterback which he really wants to play in college. Flutie also kicks and may try out at receiver or safety. He also says he is interested in possibly playing baseball. I have never met him or seen him play, but if you really want to play quarterback and also play baseball in college, my advice would be to enroll in a school that is recruiting you to play quarterback and also doesn’t mind if you play baseball. No word on how the baseball coach feels about all this either but with the BC baseball team also entering the ACC, I am sure the head coach isn't looking for part-time players, unless you are Dieon Sanders. To make matters worse about 2 weeks after Flutie verbaled, he broke his ankle requiring surgery and will miss most if not all of his senior year and it will be interesting to see if BC still has an NLI for him to sign in February. Chances are they will because if they didn’t the PR fallout would have far worse implications!

STARTING OFF ON THE RIGHT FOOT
Now that high school is starting again, it’s time for everyone to the responsibility of recruiting and eligibility. In June I wrote about the disconnect I had been witnessing between coaches, counselors, parents, and students and I heard from several parents who said they had seen the same thing. I have also gotten several inquiries as to whose responsibility certain recruiting tasks are so lets address that. The recruiting process is ultimately the responsibility of an individual family. They are responsible for researching schools, taking classes that will make them eligible to play at the NCAA level, contacting coaches, and putting themselves in a position to be recruited. Basically, they are responsible for pretty much everything. A high school coach should be responsible for at least the following…

• Helping players evaluate their skill as it may apply to college
• passing along any mail that is addressed to players that comes to you
• mentioning your name to college coaches that might call as someone who is interested in playing at the next level.
• Finding someone who may be able to help you with some recruitment if they cannot. Another coach, or someone else they possibly know?
• Writing a recommendation
• Filling out recruiting surveys (a reasonable number)
• Placing a few phone calls to coaches/schools you are extremely interested in to discuss your skills and character.

• For them to start researching 40 or 50 schools for you to play at. Teachers don’t research schools for non-athletes, so you shouldn’t expect your coach to do the same. Researching schools within the context of your skills and academic achievements is your job. Your coach may have no idea what opportunities exist at different colleges or know anything about those programs.
• Calling 40 or 50 coaches. At some point you are going to need someone knowledgeable with you and your skills to make some phone calls, but your coach cannot possible call 40 or 50 schools to talk to 40 or 50 coaches. You are going to have to narrow down your focus before your high school coach can have some meaningful conversations with college coaches.

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NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK
For everyone that thinks college coaches have thousands of high school athletes to choose from, I give you this quote from a female college golf coach. “Recruiting is brutal, because we are looking for good golfers with an average SAT score of 1300 and the ability to pay $36,000 in annual tuition, room and board.”

Some schools have trouble filling their women's teams, so even if you shoot 120, you can find a place to play. The men's team is among the top 10 in Division III and has a scoring average of 77 The women's team is starting its third year and is looking for players who can break 95 consistently. "I've walked up to female students and asked whether they would be interested in playing golf," says the women's coach. "That's how desperate we are."

So what’s the deal? Well, there are many schools and many sports that have a much harder time finding the right student-athlete at the right time. While many coaches have hundreds of students contacting them for recruiting purposes, the number of students with the athletic skills to play for the school, the academic record to get into the school, and the finances to pay for the school is usually a much, much smaller pool of student-athletes to choose from. This is what many D3 college coaches face as they are looking for a very specific athlete and those can be hard to come by. You have to not only find someone with the skills, grades, and finances to come there, but you have to find someone that wants to come there. Sure there are kids who fit that mold, but many of those don’t want to go to a small D3 school and pay $40,000 for college or any school for that matter that cannot offer a significant scholarship package. So what’s this mean for you. If you are that student-athlete (one who possesses skill, academic success, and finances), it may mean more opportunities to play, more opportunities to be recruited and more opportunities to receive some academic aid and grant money from a school that is in dire need of your services as a student and as an athlete. While you may have to work a little harder and dig a little deeper on the recruiting road, ultimately if you fit that mold, you will be in a position to select from more colleges than say someone with limited grades, finances and athletic skills. The trick is to find programs that have not only a need but a hard time filling that need. If you are going after the schools everyone else is trying to play at, then there will be more competition and probably less opportunity for you.

Here is another example - Article - The College of Saint Joseph (Vermont) canceled their soccer season because they only had 10 players on the squad this year.