Monthly Archives: February 2011

Information on College Recruiting Steps for Parents

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Whether you play football, volleyball, run track or you’re the best baseball or basketball player in the state, the college recruiting process is all the same.

For parents who will spend money on their very talented kid, here are some things that could be helpful:

1. Take the SAT or ACT tests early and often and keep trying to get a better score each time. The test scores carry more power than the GPA. Many student athletes make the mistake and wait to take the test in their senior year. At the latest, take the ACT or SAT during your junior year. You can take the practice tests, too.

2. Go to camps or events or showcases where you know there are going to be a number of college coaches in attendance. If enough college programs can see you play over a long summer then that’s a good thing. Never go to an event and there are no college coaches there.  You’ll be wasting your money.

3. Get a good DVD made. This is very important because college coaches are not coming to high school games anymore. Get a copy of a good game and mix in some highlights. Make sure you identify who it is in the DVD. I would say get 100 DVD’s made and mail them to 100 college programs.

Mix up your list of programs of big programs and small programs. Also, make sure you have the talent to play at any of these programs before you mail the DVD. Have some extra DVD’s just in case someone did not get one or you think of another college to mail to or better yet, a coach calls and asks for a DVD.  You can have tape or film when talking to a college coach. It’s all the same. Get them a DVD!

4. Have the student athlete in the family call the coach or an assistant coach and let that coach know who you are and that you have an interest in their program. If you’re a little shy, write them a hand written letter. That will make a great first impression! Email will at first get lost with all the other junk that’s out there so write to the coach.

That is just a small list of things you can do to get you going with the steps you need to make it to the next level.

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5 Ideas That Could Revolutionize College Recruiting

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For the most part college recruiting is like a jigsaw puzzle with 100,000 pieces and sometimes some of the pieces don’t fit or even worse some of the pieces are missing.

Any parent or high school student athletes who are getting involved with the college recruiting process for the first time, my advice to you is to have plenty of money and give yourself plenty of time to make the college recruiting process work for you.

I thought I would come up with some ideas that could help revolutionize the college recruiting process.

1.  Give high school coaches more time to properly help student athletes with the college recruiting process. I think it is almost impossible for a high school coach, who may also work as a full-time school teacher, to effectively work with student athletes and their parents in the day to day details of college recruiting.  I believe the high school coach should be given an extra hour or two per day towards college recruiting.

2. The NCAA should ease up on the rules on when college programs can come out and evaluate high school student athletes. The reason I say this is to prevent talented student athletes from slipping through the cracks of the college recruiting process.  I believe if college programs had more time to evaluate a larger number of student athletes, it would be a huge benefit for the college programs and the student athletes.

3. Give parents more control and input in the college recruiting process. Maybe a parent can work closely with the high school coach with college recruiting.  For example, let’s say your daughter plays on the softball team and all the parents who come out to support the team would perhaps like it if a parent could be some sort of liaison between the parents and the coaches and could assist the coaches with college recruiting.

4.  I believe information is power; if more resources were available to parents about the college recruiting process then maybe there would not be as many problems. Maybe at the beginning of the school year, there could be a week-long seminar about the college recruiting process.  Many school districts could put their financial resources together and bring in college recruiting experts to discuss various ways to make the college recruiting process work.  If parents and high school coaches had more information and resources, it would effectively improve how student athletes are getting exposure to college programs.

5.  Employ or bring back old coaches who may have retired whose job could be to assist in college recruiting. There are many ex-high school and college coaches who could come in or maybe on a volunteer basis assist high school coaches with recruiting.  Who better to help understand the college recruiting process than maybe a former college coach who has knowledge on how the college recruiting process will work.  There are a lot of former coaches out there who are retired from school district or from coaching in general but just don’t want to sit around the house watching the grass grow. This would be an excellent opportunity for them to stay involved with young people.

Final thoughts: These ideas may not be totally unique but should give everyone something to think about on how we could change college recruiting.  The high school student athlete should not have their career end at the high school level.  Student athletes of all talent levels should be given an opportunity to be all that they can be at the college level.

There could be more creative ways to improve the college recruiting process from the player’s perspective, from the high school coach’s perspective and clearly from the parent’s point of view.  If all parties can work together and set aside egos and stupidity, then the players will be the ultimate winners in all of this.

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Ohio State Football Recruit Chris Carter Was Arrested

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Chris Carter, football recruit from John F. Kennedy High School in Cleveland, Ohio, was arrested for basically pulling up girls’ shirts.  According to the story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Carter is accused of molesting teenage girls.

What a fool to be arrested for doing something so stupid! This young man had a golden ticket to play college football at Ohio State, one of the top major college football programs in the country. Ohio State has every right to pull Carter’s football scholarship for his stupid, foolish and totally irresponsible behavior.

Chris Carter, an African American young man from the inner city of Cleveland, Ohio, could potentially become a victim of this foolish and idiotic behavior that is typical of most young African American men who have no direction in their lives.

For high school football players all across the country, today is “National Signing Day” where players get to pick the college football program they want to play for.  Going off to college to play major college football is sort of like winning the lottery.  Chris Carter could potentially lose his lottery ticket and his future could be totally destroyed.

I have no sympathy for star athletes who have all the opportunities in the world and turn around and do something totally stupid to mess up their entire future.  What Chris Carter did will more than likely have an effect on his future for the rest of his life.

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The 2 Things I Dislike Most About High School Student Athletes

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Sometimes we forget that high school student athletes are just teenagers; that they are really not that far removed from eating cereal with a plastic spoon.  Sometimes we forget that they’re just immature adolescents at an age where the majority of them cannot think for themselves or make decisions.

When it comes to the college recruiting process, we want to think of these kids as young men and women who can make strong decisions.  I believe sometimes this is the problem with high school sports; were placing high expectations for these student athletes to make decisions that they’re not capable of making.  These are things about student athletes that I don’t like.

Division one college athletics is the main focus of many high school student athletes. All they think about and dream about is the D-1. The sad part about all of this is that most of the student athletes cannot come close to playing college ball at that level, but somehow, somewhere they believe they can or someone told them they can.

Just about every high school student athlete I’ve ever talked to only mention the major college programs that they want to play ball at.

The reason I believe so many student athletes are stuck on the thought of playing only at major college programs is because those are more recognizable names.  College programs play on TV and have a huge following so it’s easy to understand why they are so fascinated by that.

My problem with the student athletes and parents is that they will put everything they’ve got into a major college program believing it’s for them.

Division one college athletics is a curse because of the amount of time and attention put towards believing that you are a division one player.  Student athletes should focus on going to the best college program that fits their athletic ability.

High school student athletes are not entitled to anything. You have some student athletes who have had a privileged athletic career.  These athletes feel that they are owed something because they can play their sport very well.

When the so-called privileged high school athlete does reach the college level, they quickly realize that the other players on their team are just as good as they are and are now finding it a harder at the college level because it is now a challenge to be the best.

I also believe the high school athletes should work harder, keep their mouths shut, quit complaining and try to improve their game every single day. I’ve seen so many high school athletes who thought they were the best only to crash and burn once they saw how tough it was at the college level.  The college level is no joke; all the players are good, all the players are more than likely the best player from their high school team.

Sometimes you get these kids who turn out to be cry babies and really had no business being at that college program in the first place.  I believe this is one of the big reasons you see so many transfers because these kids could not cut it at the major college level.

My final thoughts are that high school student athletes should just stay focused on being the best high school athlete they can possibly be. There are so many high school athletes who are trying to achieve the same thing: getting a college scholarship. The competition is extremely competitive but that’s what’s important about competition; only the best will succeed.

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Parents, Recruiting and $1,000

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The college recruiting process is not free. There are so many things that will cost parents a lot of money and sometimes the amount of money that parents have to spend can be ridiculous just to get their kids exposure to college programs. Parents if you had $1,000 today, invest that in your high school athlete’s future.

I have some suggestions on how parents can best utilize $1,000 towards college recruiting.  Keep in mind, in some situations you may need a little more money because every high school athlete is different and may require just a little extra cash.

Seeing is believing when it comes to college recruiting. I would invest in a small hand-held digital camera.  Regardless of the sport, college coaches need to see a student athlete play and you can get a good video camera for around $300. This will be a powerful in gaining exposure to college programs.

The videos you create can be uploaded to websites like Youtube or turned into DVD’s.  Sometimes, if college coaches can see a high school athlete early enough this could get that high school athlete a huge advantage over many other high school athletes who may not be able to afford to purchase a good digital video camera.

All high school student athletes need to participate in some kind of exposure event where college coaches will be in attendance.  It is a critical must for athletes to participate in summer travel events because college coaches need to see you play.  This type of exposure could be extremely expensive depending on the number of tournaments or camps in the summer months.

College recruiting athletic resume: this is a profile of a high school athlete’s athletic and academic abilities.  This information, along with the DVD, must be emailed to college coaches.  The parents and student athletes must come up with a strong list of college programs, somewhere between 75 to 100 college programs and then mail this information along with the athletic resume.

By now, you’re probably broke; $1,000 just doesn’t go as far as it use to.  In my opinion, the information I just provided would probably be the best way to go if you have $1,000 to spend on the college recruiting process.

In most situations, I believe it will probably cost much more money than $1,000 to get a student athlete from high school to college. There are still so many more things that you would need to spend money on in trying to gain exposure to these college programs.

The college recruiting process for many student athletes could begin at different grade levels during their athletic career which could mean that parents may have to spend even more money.  The ultimate goal is to get the high school athlete in college where they can receive an all expense paid college education. That’s why parents will be investing their money.