Monthly Archives: September 2011

High School Athletes And College Recruiting

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Every year millions of high school student athletes look to being recruited by college programs this is the dream of many high school ball players to play their sport in college.

The college recruiting process is not the same for every student athlete some student-athletes may have An advantage over other athletes or two athletes with similar abilities the college recruiting process can be totally different.

My advice would be to start the college recruiting process early at least by your sophomore year and no later than your junior year is the perfect opportunity to begin the long journey that he is the college recruiting process.

Starting the college recruiting process two or three years before your senior year will give you the necessary time to make sure you have not missed anything to also recover from any mistakes you make during the college recruiting process.  A college recruiting process is a challenge good luck.

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Why Would You Want To Be A College Recruiter For University Scouts?

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If you have no previous experience or training, then why would anyone take a job with University Scouts to become a college recruiter?

The other day I saw this e-mail: “HELP WANTED. NEW OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME A SCOUT. IF YOU HAVE EXPERIENCE AS A COACH, REFEREE, ATHLETIC DIRECTOR, TOURNANMENT DIRECTOR OR AS A FORMER COLLEGE PLAYER PLEASE CONTACT BRETT WILSON NATIONAL SCOUTING DIRECTOR 646-323-5583.”

Being a college recruiter requires years of training and many years of experience.  The experience part can be if you were a former high school athlete and most definitely a college athlete.  This will help you to understand sports and recruiting.  The training must come on the job where you’re out there talking to players and parents about college recruiting.  That part of the job is also easy.

How it becomes extremely challenging is when you have to ask parents for money.

Working with University Scouts is like being involved with selling Avon or Amway products; can you remember anyone getting rich selling these products?

There are many people who love high school sports and are very interested in becoming college recruiters or starting their own business.  There’s nothing wrong with doing any of that.  Being a college recruiter is not an easy job; you just can’t go to a ball game and expect to get names and phone numbers of the players or assume that their parents will jump at the opportunity to write you a check.

People who write about players in newsletters, on their websites, blogs or message boards are people who just evaluate talent and then post their opinions about players.  Being some fat guy watching sports or a game on TV and taking notes is not a college recruiter. Anyone with half a brain can do that.  A real college recruiter is someone who looks like they played high school and college sports, has a college education, is physically fit, has years of training and connections with college coaches and most importantly, has the ability to close the sale.

If you fall short in any of these high points then you’re not going last very long as a college recruiter.

University Scouts may be a good college recruiting service, I don’t know. I don’t have any statistical data to prove whether they’re any good or not but many of these recruiting services that ask you to be a college recruiter will pay you based on the sales you make.

In other words you’re being paid by commission only.

My advice to anyone looking to become a college recruiter is to do it for free for couple of years.  Help get student athletes in college and go to all the high school games that you can where you can be seen.  After a couple of years you’ll be the ‘go to’ guy in your community and when it comes time to get paid, you will be totally prepared. Just work to be your own college recruiter that way you get to control the entire process and all the money.

 

My Thoughts On High School Recruiting, The Parents and The Players

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Many high school student athletes screw up the college recruiting process, do you think that’s a true or a false statement?

In my opinion the statement is true!!

Because many student athletes are totally unsure what they should be doing when it comes to recruiting, all high school student athletes want to play division one sports and that right there clouds their judgment.

Student athletes should be focusing on a college program where they will be treated fairly, have an opportunity to play their sport and receive a college degree.

Being recruited is confusing for high school student athletes.  On one hand, everyone is in their ear telling them how good they are all the time.  On the other hand, it’s the reality of how good are you really?

The parents get caught up in the recruiting mixed messages of conversations because they want only the best for their sons and daughters.

There are so many players at the high school level who are extremely talented and sometimes they let that talent get in the way of academics.  There are some student athletes and parents who still believe to this day that if you are a superior athlete that somehow colleges are going to overlook their shortcomings academically.

The bottom line is if you do not have the grades, you’re going to end up in junior college in some far away town or a valuable employee at McDonald’s.

When I was going up I wanted to play basketball for theUniversityofMarylandbecause, at the time, that was one of the best basketball programs in the country and their games were televised all the time.

But no one was telling me how important taking the standardized tests were. I paid no attention to taking the SAT and I ended up going to junior college.  After junior college, I ended up going to West Virginia State College and after that I played basketball professionally inArgentina.

It worked out for me!

My advice to parents and student athletes is to get involved in the recruiting process at a minimum of 24 months before graduation from high school.  This will save you a lot of time, frustration, aggravation, humiliation and, most importantly, disappointment with the college recruiting process.

Recruiting can be a very humbling experience!

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Talk To College Recruiter Al Woods Today

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I am an experienced college recruiter that helps high school student athletes and parents with information on the college recruiting process.

Sometimes the college recruiting process makes absolutely no sense and receiving valuable information and college recruiting tips can be extremely helpful.

I’ve always said that you get one chance to go from high school athlete to college athlete and you should do everything in your power to see that you achieve this goal.

Parents only: If you’re interested in talking live with an experienced college recruiter, I’m providing a one-on-one college recruiting phone call to everyone who’s interested.

You will receive a 30 minute phone call with Al Woods for the low price of $35.00.

Once we receive confirmation of your payment via PayPal, I will email my phone number and available dates for our phone conversation.

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Central State University Football: A Program That’s Going Nowhere

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Central State University football has not done much of anything for a very long time.  For the last two years this program has been led by E. J. Junior, a former NFL football player who I’m quite sure brings a wealth of knowledge to this football program.

In two years as head coach, E. J. Junior has won 2 games and lost 19.  Now entering his third year as head coach, I think we’re going to see much of the same with this football program.  It does take time to turn a program around when there’s a new head coach.  Sometimes it may take an entire recruiting class, which is about four years, to turn this program into a winning program.

The most impressive thing about this program is the level of coaches who have NFL experience and they would be helpful in coaching and practice techniques and attracting recruits to the program.

Some of these division two programs lack in scholarship money and they’re automatically at a disadvantage in trying to recruit top talent out ofOhio. I guess they have to rely on players paying their way or players doing a walk-on to attract talent.

I don’t remember the last time Central State had a winning record and I would bet it is a challenge to recruit players to a program that hardly ever wins games.

In 2012,Central State University will be moving to The Great Lakes Valley Conference. I hope moving to a new football conference will help this football program win more games and attract better players for the overall future of this football program.

It does take time to turn a football program around but my question is: how many new head coaches do they need and how many years do they need to turn this football program around?

One of the other problems for Central State is the lack of scholarships. I believe this football program has less than 15 scholarships to give and there’s absolutely no way any college program can compete without scholarships.

It costs money to make money and until Central State University improves their scholarship problem this football program will amount to absolutely nothing in the years to come.

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My One on One Interview with Corey Saunders, Former Basketball Star at Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore, Maryland

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On Tuesday, September 6, 2011, a big story broke that was reported by Yahoo! Sports about 20 up and coming basketball players who all thought they were enrolled in a top prep school in West Virginia only to find out that the whole thing was a scam and many of the players paid up to $500 to be part of this prep school basketball program.

These young men all have dreams of playing college basketball and this was a step in the process (or so they thought) to reach the college level.

It is horrible to think that there’s someone out there scamming these young men who were looking for an opportunity to play college basketball and to get an education.

I hope the FBI is hot on the trail of this con artist and when he is caught, hopefully he receives the maximum sentence for his crime.

I first interviewed Corey Saunders last October while he was still a senior at Frederick Douglass HS. At the time, Corey was being recruited by a lot of junior colleges and was receiving interest from many of the top prep schools.

There are thousands of high school basketball players all over the country looking for an opportunity to play at the next level and it just seems to me that many of them are willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal.

It’s unfortunate that this happened to these young men. My hope is that some legitimate recruiting organizations will step up and help these young men get connected with college programs.

I’m going to do my part to assist as many of these basketball players as possible.

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Don’t Sleepwalk On The College Recruiting Process Now That School Has Started

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All across the country, school has finally started for many high school student athletes. This is the most important time of their life.

The recruiting process for all high school student athletes never ends and this is more important for student athletes who are entering their senior year.

There are millions of high school student athletes out there all believing that somehow they will be found by college coaches. Parents and student athletes are misled into believing that college coaches will be interested in them because they are seniors.  This, of course, is not true.  College programs are only interested in the players that they know about and have established relationships with over a number of years.

In all my years of experience as a college recruiter I’ve spoken to thousands of parents who believed the recruiting process takes place at the end of the student athlete’s season.  This is the worst mistake any parent or high school coach can make when it comes to recruiting.  The longer you wait, the more opportunities disappear.  The longer you hold off the recruiting process, the longer it will take to get college programs interested.  The longer it takes for you to get a DVD into the hands of college coaches, the longer it will take for them to view it.  The longer parents and high school coaches take in helping a student athlete with recruiting, is days and weeks of wasted time that could have been used to contact college coaches.

You are sleepwalking through the day to day details of the college recruiting process.

The only way the college recruiting process actually works is by actually doing something to make it work.  Someone, whether it’s the parents or the high school coaches, must contact college coaches on a consistent basis for a period of years.  The longer you delay this process the more opportunities that will be missed that you can never ever get back.

Think about how easy the recruiting process would be if parents, high school coaches and student athletes were consistent in contacting a large number of college coaches over a period of 2 to 4 years.  With that kind of consistent effort I believe there would be a larger number of college scholarship opportunities but because many parents, high school coaches and some student athletes are sleepwalking through the entire college recruiting process opportunities are going to be lost forever.

When parents realize that there is a major problem with recruiting it’s generally at the end of the student athlete’s senior season which, by then, there may not be any time left.  Parents are now scrambling around trying to find a quick solution to their college recruiting problem. 

I focused a lot this conversation on parents because they are the ones with check writing power and are responsible for the student athlete in their family.

Because of money, laziness or being totally misinformed, parents are totally responsible for the success of the recruiting process or its failure.

I just think the college recruiting process is the last thing parents, high school coaches and student athletes should be sleepwalking through.

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