What Are College Coaches Looking For In Recruits? 

Positive impact are the influences student-athletes can bring to a college program from the point of view of the college coach. 

A bad attitude, rotten apples, or the bad seeds can upset the apple cart in terms of selecting the wrong student-athlete to recruit.

They don’t want you. The last thing a college coach ever wants to deal with is an orchard of bad apples, meaning student-athletes.

The off-season is as important as in-season in terms of recruiting. The deep investigations the college coaches undergo are analyzing every aspect of a student-athlete’s life. 

The questions are: What type of attitude does the athlete have?

How do they react if they lose a game or two? tell me about their work ethic? Is he/she a great teammate? These are the intangibles being scrutinized as though it was a grocery store shopping list.

The intangibles are the ingredients, like chicken noodle soup.

A bad attitude and poor work ethic will get you dumped in the trash. A selfish attitude and poor demeanor means you will be passed over even though you may have superior athletic ability.

None of that matters if you’re a jerk.

Understand, they’re watching the warm-ups, your interaction with your teammates, how you respond during timeouts or when you’re sitting on the bench.

Your behavior is constantly under the microscope.

Can you accept the coach? Do you argue visibly with your coaches? These are the aspects college programs are watching closely.

All negativity will eliminate you from the recruiting process quicker than you can turn off the light switch in your bedroom.

If all the criteria is not being met, then you’ll end up at a college program beneath your athletic ability. You’re too much of a headache and you will be dropped from one college program.

You will latch onto another one only to be dropped again because the negativity follows you around like bad gossip.

Your athletic future is being destroyed because of your negative actions, but you’re too dumb to see it.

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The Wear And Tear On Student-Athletes 

We already know that high school athletics is a year-round commitment. 

At the conclusion of the season student-athletes in enormous numbers are flocking to club teams that travel to showcases and tournaments. These young men and women are attending camps with a whole lot going on. 

A year-round commitment is there to help develop student-athletes and to capture the attention of college coaches. Is there a problem with them playing too many games? Is it too much wear and tear and destructive?

Burnout is a real possibility.

The game is supposed to be fun. Competition fuels their activity and their love for the game, but is it too much? Are they playing far too many games in a short amount of time? Are parents overdoing it?

The adults control the aspect of the game from coaching to criticizing their observation and their passion.

Some parents are pushing the student-athletes as though they were professional athletes.

Are they looking at the big picture of the student-athletes’ well-being or are they looking at it through a different lens?

Every high school sport has a club component attached to it.

The blazing hot summer months is the time where student-athletes are competing. It’s a great time of fun, joy, and excitement. The passion to compete is amazing.

The thrill of victory, accompanied by the agony of defeat, is all part of the rugged territory of athletics.

This is why they do it all the time, they’re competing every day and it’s joyous.

Just an observation: Are they playing too many games during the summer months? I know there are tournaments with many games associated with it.

When that tournament has ended, there may be a few days of downtime before heading off to the next tournament.

That cycle repeats itself throughout the course of the hot summer months.

Is it too much? Just a thought.

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I Promise It Will Be Worth It 

It’s a seemingly ongoing battle, journey, climb, and struggle in developing athletic talents into recruitable student-athletes. 

Middle school is two years, high school is four which, added together, is six long years of striving for greatness, being coached by multiple people, the grind of practice, and the unbelievable grind of the travel season.

Student-athletes are the best with a dual title and double responsibilities. Your greatness is deserved and earned.

There’s so much that goes into the development of student-athletes. It’s amazing looking at the responsibility and the maturity these young people possess. Yes, sometimes they act silly and do goofy things.

It could be their way of blowing off steam because the pressure is enormous.

The spotlight is always on them. Everyone is always watching, looking, wishing that maybe they were them, wanting a glimpse of the life or a piece of the spotlight.

The constant practice, possible injuries, aches and pains is part of the life of a young student-athlete. 

The frustration associated with winning and losing, going to camp, being coached again, the pressure to win, the pressure to look your best, be your best when the spotlight is shining on you, in front of college coaches.

The pressure is enormous, the responsibility is great.

Striving for the scholarship and going to the next level is the goal.

The climb to the top is a long journey met with many bumps in the road.

Being thrown off course with no map, no guide, or GPS, what is a student-athlete to do? Who do they turn to for help?

The conclusion of the journey, getting your name into the hands of as many college coaches as possible, is worth it. You may not know it now or totally understand the process because it’s a puzzle.

Many of these pieces of the recruiting puzzle are confusing and makes absolutely no sense, but one thing that holds true is your work ethic, determination, your drive to succeed, and your activity in the classroom to achieve superior athletic strength.

In the end it will be worth it, I promise you.

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High School Athletics Has Become Year-Round Athletics

The days of the off-season are long gone. In the old days you played your season and at the conclusion you were done or you moved on to another sport. 

Nowadays, to excel in an individual sport, the commitment is towards the year-round development which is almost impossible to comprehend the time that must be allocated to just one sport. 

Regardless of the sport you play, the commitment has intensified due to the pressures of the recruiting process and the strategies that accompany it, which are confusing and impossible to understand to the naked eye.

Student-athletes are competing on a fiercely competitive level to gain the attention of college coaches and, more importantly, to rise above the competition from outside their city, town, or their state.

There are intense battles in getting recruited, with some that require the student-athletes to be committed to their sport year-round.

College coaches are under intense pressure to recruit the best available talent. 

Their futures are on the line. One misstep in selecting a student-athlete and giving the wrong scholarship to a player who has not committed could cost that coach his or her job and all their assistants as well.

The pressure has intensified for student-athletes to stay on course for their season. It’s critical and equally important during the off-season.

Club teams that travels to exposure events, tournaments, and showcases are all about the exposure. Are you working diligently on your individual fundamentals that are required to achieve success athletically? Now this is a year-round commitment. Are you up to the challenge?

When it comes to the year-round commitment a key component is, video. If there is improvement from one year to the next, how will you attract the attention of college coaches without steady improvement? How will you show how much you’ve improved? 

You are in the laboratory of development a mad scientist working on all aspects of your game away from the viewing public.

Once you have  emerged from the Laboratory of Athletics you are now in superior condition, head and shoulders above the competition, and strong enough to attract a full scholarship which has been the coveted prize all along.

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The Offer

It’s packaged nicely and presented to the student-athlete. Inside is the offer that student-athletes desperately seeks and their parents, with huge anxiety and fears, hoped for.

The recruiting process is a jungle filled with many traps, quicksand, falling trees, wild animals, and a multitude of obstacles that’s almost impossible to navigate without a blueprint or guide. 

What’s really inside the offer from a college program: The belief that every school is offering a full athletic scholarship which is not true. 

The problems with recruiting are the student-athlete is receiving an offer from a college program, but it ends up being a disappointment. It’s kind of like opening a box of a brand new pair of Nike’s only to find out there’s only one shoe in the box and it’s the wrong size.

That’s a huge disappointment, wouldn’t you agree?

Being recruited buy multiple college programs is the goal. The offer is made, but if you are only being recruited by one school the offer is nothing of any real value.

The major college program may like you, they may even love you, they may even offer you a full scholarship, but it could quickly turn into a walk-on opportunity and not much other than that.

You are hooked on the thought of a bright future, the bright lights of division one. You’re tempted to accept this offer, but it’s really a trap. You’re going to end up paying out of your pocket. Just sit  the bench. That’s not much of an offer in reality.

Be aware of the bright lights. Every college sport is different in terms of scholarships or financial package offers.

Ask questions about the scholarship. Will you receive one? Will it be a full scholarship or how much money does the school plan on giving the cover academic side and athletic side? 

It’s critical in nature to include as many college programs in your search as possible. Multiple offers is your goal. Let everyone know who’s recruiting you, that will drive the price up and could lead to a full scholarship or all of your education being paid for.

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