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Spring Recruiting plans.
Your individual time-line for recruiting will vary greatly depending on your level of skill and exposure, the sport you play, and the types of schools you are looking at. Football players have different time-lines than baseball players and coaches at elite D1 schools have different time-lines than D3 coaches at small colleges down the street from you. Depending on what year you are, what sport you play, and where you live, different student-athletes will have to approach the process in their own unique way. I am not that big on time-lines, simply because there are too many factors that go into the recruiting process, to formulate a specific timeline. Some kids are way ahead in their athletic ability and can start to research schools and contact coaches earlier than others, some people will have more coaches calling them and others will need to call more coaches, etc.
SENIORS
Hopefully by now you have either signed a NLI at a D1 or D2 school or given a D3 coach a strong indication that you are attending their school. You may also have secured a fairly strong walk-on opportunity. Most acceptances go out between March and May so you should have at least an idea of what school you are attending. If you are not involved in your sport in the spring, try to stay busy by working out both on your conditioning and on your sport. You can always get a little stronger or faster or work on an individual weakness you may have.
For those of you who never received offers or didn't get accepted to certain schools, it's time to swallow your pride and either find a school to play at for a year that may not be your first choice or a school to attend for a year with the hopes of transferring into another program. I never advocate to people to plan on transferring, but inevitably, we all find ourselves in situations that are not ideal. The most important thing to do is put yourself in a position to have a productive school year somewhere, take classes that have transfer value (math, English, history, science or any core classes for your major like accounting 1 or something along those lines). Continue your recruiting process by keeping relationships with coaches you have previously spoken to and building new relationships with coaches at other programs. A simple phone call to a coach saying, "Hi coach my recruiting process got started a little late, so I will be attending [insert college here] for a year, I would like to explore the possibility of transferring and I am interested in your school."
It's also not too late to contact other schools and coaches about acceptance. While schools have application and acceptance deadlines, they will always take qualified students up to the start of school if they have the room. Coaches will also take additional players on their team that have the abilities to play in their program. We always advocate not to burn any bridges in your recruiting process and to treat all coaches with respect and honesty as it's possible you might have to call a coach that you previously didn't express interest in last year. A simple "coach, I was wondering if there is still an opportunity to attend your school and play for you", might go a long way at this point. D3 coaches especially hear this all the time, because they know there are many players who were hoping for offers from bigger institutions that never arrived.
If you find yourself without a school to attend or a place to play, try and backtrack through your recruiting process and contact coaches that may have contacted you. You never know what opportunity might arise, and you may also get some recommendations from them as your best course of action.
NOTE: Upon graduation from high school, your counselor must send the NCAA Clearinghouse a final copy of your transcript that confirms your graduation from high school and will determine your eligibility for NCAA D1 and NCAA D2 athletics.
JUNIORS
The spring of your junior year can and is an extremely important time for recruiting. If you play a spring sport such as lacrosse, softball, or baseball, your spring season of your junior year is realistically your last opportunity to impress any coaches that might be attending your high school games. May of your senior year is far to late to impress college coaches (at least college coaches that are doing their job right with regards to recruiting). At that point, acceptances have usually long gone out, and college coaches are busy recruiting juniors in the spring, and keeping an eye on sophomores, (and smiling at good freshman from afar).
Use your spring to plan both your summer recruiting plans and your summer athletic schedule. It's important to start contacting coaches, plan trips to different schools, plan what tournaments or camps you are going to attend, and most of all, you must plan to communicate your plans with college coaches. You should be contacting as many coaches and schools in your area as possible or anywhere for that matter, getting your name out, so coaches can look for you at different venues in the summer. You can also find out where they will be and adjust your schedule to allow you to display your skills to different coaches.
The NCAA has recently modified their contact rules for D1 coaches that allows them one call in the month of March (football and basketball being the exception), so recruiting for many will start earlier. You are allowed to contact them at any point if you initiate the contact. Yes, you read that correctly, you can call a coach at any time in high school if you initiate the call, even freshman year. If you leave a message, the coach cannot call you back until the right time, but you are free to keep calling them and you can always communicate via email as often as you need.
While many of you are hoping for an athletic scholarship, there is unfortunately not that much athletic scholarship money available. After football and men's and women's basketball at the D1 level (the only fully funded sports), most college teams have a much smaller amount of scholarship money that they divide up amongst many players. We know several D1 programs that have only 1 or 2 scholarships they must use for their entire team which could be 10 or 20 players. The good news is, as an athlete, you have the advantage of not only being able to go after some athletic scholarship money, but financial aid, grants, and additional scholarships. For parents wondering how they are going to pay for education, we highly recommend you take a look at the Money4College123.com Program. Money4College123 is an online financial aid tool that guides families through the entire process, assists with filing the proper forms, and provides financial aid data on over 2,000 colleges. Many families wait far too long to start the financial aid process and are scrambling around at the last minute trying to estimate their taxes and get their forms in on time. Most schools need financial aid data when applications are due, so they can use that information to make decisions. This means that you need to have your information in by February or March at the latest (it will vary by school).
The financial aid process should be something, like recruiting, that is planned out over the course of a year or two so you understand all the pieces and make the right decisions. Giving yourself more time and more knowledge will make the process much easier. Check out Money4College123.com
NOTE: You need to register with the Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse at the end of your junior year if you want to be eligible to play at the NCAA D1 or NCAA D2 level. You can register online at ncaaclearinghouse.net or through forms your guidance counselor should have.
SOPHOMORES
While very few if any sophomores have any clue about college athletics yet, this doesn’t mean that you can’t accomplish some recruiting tasks. My first suggestion is to educate yourself on the recruiting process and what is going to be required of you (that’s a nice way of saying purchase The Making of a Student-Athlete from varsityedge.com so you save yourself a lot of headache and heartache later). My second suggestion would be to fill out some online recruit forms at the end of your sophomore year at some lower level schools to simply get your name in coaches databases. You will find instances where coaches go to games to see seniors and juniors perform and if they have your name and know what school you play at, they may take a look at you as well when the time comes. While your skill-level will not be ready for college, college coaches can spot athleticism, size, and potential, and if they like what they see, they will keep you in mind for next year. Some families also like to find out what tournaments and showcases college coaches will be attending so they can plan their summer activities accordingly between their sophomore and junior year. At this stage, it’s not necessary to start calling coaches, as it’s a little too early for them to pay enough attention to you as they have their hands full with juniors and seniors, as well as their own team.
What makes this hard for sophomores is often the amount of playing time they have received in high school thus far. Some players are more physically mature and have had 2 years of varsity experience, while others are still playing JV ball and may not be ready to submit any information to a college coach as of yet.
FRESHMAN
Have fun, work on your game, study hard and try to be the best person, athlete, and student you can be. College is 3 years off and now is not the time to be worrying what you want to study in college or where you want to play. If you are wondering if you should purchase The Making of a Student-Athlete right now, we can tell you that 99.5% of the information we have written will be relevant in a year or two when you need to use it, and any updates or rule changes will always be placed in our book purchaser section so you can get the most accurate information available at any time. Reading this book as a freshman or a parent of a freshman will give you a completely different perspective on school and your high school athletic career, and you will be way ahead of other parents come recruiting time. Like anything in life, the more time you give yourself to learn and plan for something, the better off you will be when the time comes to implement what you have learned.
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