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The College Recruiting Process By Al Woods
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Tag Archives: college recruiting process
Three Really Huge Mistakes to Avoid in the College Recruiting Process
Every high school student athlete dreams of one thing being a college student athlete. Sometimes it is not easy going from high school athlete to college athlete therefore, any student athletes along with the help of their parents, high school coaches or other outside resources are heavily involved in helping student athletes reach the college level.
There are situations where student athletes and the individuals who are assisting them do make mistakes. No one is perfect; mistakes are bound to happen. I want to talk about three mistakes to avoid in the college recruiting process.
1. The lack of a real deal strategy: I believe that in the college recruiting process there has to be a starting point. The problem is that many student athletes and parents do not sit down to figure out a strategy to get their son or daughter recruited for college.
There are a lot of very talented student athletes; college coaches can’t recruit them all. As parents, what is your strategy to get your son or daughter’s name on the list of some college programs? Parents and student athletes often sit back and wait for college coaches to come to them when it should be the other way around.
Other than a strategy for contacting college coaches, what is your strategy for academic success? What is your strategy for the summer months which is a critical time for exposure? Parents and student athletes need to come together and figure out their strategies on how to contact these college programs.
You just cannot sit back and wait for coaches to contact you or wait until the last minute to decide which standardized tests to take. Without a real deal strategy many student athletes are going to miss out on the recruiting process and may end up in a college program beneath their athletic ability.
2. No academic vision: Outside of having a good grade point average, if you do not score high enough on the standardized tests, you will end up going to a junior college. This mistake is lack of planning and preparation for the standardized tests. I understand that taking the ACT or SAT can be a little bit intimidating and stressful. But if you prepare yourself in advance then you can eliminate anxieties and fears about taking this most critical test.
A strategy would be to take the study guide books on standardized tests with you during the summer months as you travel around the country participating in tournaments, camps and showcase events. I believe the summer months gives you the best time to study that way as the school year begins, you will be prepared to score very high on the standardized tests.
3. The summer months and exposure: I believe the recruiting process is about being seen by college coaches. Regardless of the sport, you need to participate in as many camps where college coaches are in attendance, tournaments where college coaches are there to evaluate players or showcase events where college coaches are present.
College recruiting has changed somewhat; it use to be that college programs would go to high school games to recruit players. Those days are over and it makes better sense for a college coach to see a large number of players in one setting. The mistake for parents and student athletes is not participating in a number of these events.
It’s very important to be seen by college coaches; they’re not going to recruit you until they can see you.
Your Senior Year and the College Recruiting Process
Generally speaking, the senior year is suppose to be the where you find out where you’re going to play college sports. I can tell you from experience there will be a huge number of student athletes who are very talented but are not going to be recruited.
There are student athletes in their senior year who have very little to choose from when it comes to being recruited or have totally weak prospects for their college recruiting future.
Oftentimes, student athletes believe that if they are good enough college coaches will somehow find them. That particular thought is ridiculous because names of student athletes just don’t appear out of thin air and end up on the desk of a college coach.
There are many student athletes whose high school careers could more than likely end at the high school level because something went wrong with the college recruiting process.
Think about this and see if it applies to you: student athletes who are seniors did not go to enough exposure events, combines or tournaments and did not perform at a high level athletically during your senior year. You did not score high enough on one of the two standardized tests and therefore you are invisible to college coaches. Maybe you have a high school coach who could care less about the college recruiting process and did not lift a finger to help you. Maybe you did not network with enough college programs during your high school career. These are just a few examples of things that some student athletes and their parents do not focus on when it comes to college recruiting.
If you’re a high school senior and you’re being under-recruited or not recruited at all, I don’t think there’s any hope to correct the problem. The reason I say that is because scholarships are disappearing so that means there’s one less scholarship for you. If it’s a division two program, they have very few scholarships to give and the rest is a financial package so the money that would go to you is slowly disappearing. Some student athletes who were outstanding ball players could be forced to go the junior college route.
There are some issues with the junior colleges, one of which is that they’re only going to recruit a player who can play division one sports and if you’re not one of those players then those junior college coaches will have no interest in you.
Another option would be to go to an NAIA college program or a division three program. The problem with that is there is very little money to offer to pay for your education. And if you take out a student loan you could be paying that back for a long time.
If you’re a high school student athlete and you did not take strong and serious action early in your high school athletic career, more than likely your career will be over.
Now there will be some student athletes who believe that their athletic career will not end at the high school level. Those athletes will continue to chase the college athletic dreams by going to prep school or junior college all with the hope that their athletic careers will continue. All these athletes are doing is wasting time and setting themselves up for years of frustration. If college programs are not recruiting then it’s all over; go somewhere and be a student, get an education and somehow, someway once you’ve gotten over the bitterness of losing your athletic career give back some kind of way to athletics.
Final thoughts: The college recruiting process does not always work out for each and every high school student athlete. Some athletes are going to end up extremely disappointed on how it all turns out for them. For those who are reading this and are freshmen, sophomores or juniors in high school you still have time to develop a strategy to gain exposure to college coaches and get recruited.
If you waste one day by not contacting a college program, that’s a day wasted and can never be made up; that’s a day that was lost. The student athletes who are working early in the recruiting process, just look at what is happening to the seniors you may know at your high school and other high schools in your area. How did it all work out for them?
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Stretching the Truth in the College Recruiting Process
If you ask high school athletes, “Who’s recruiting you or where are you going to college?” and things like that, many of them will stretch the truth.
Many high school athletes will say that they have committed to a particular college when it’s not true or they will list or name a lot of colleges when none of those colleges have contacted them at all.
This is just part of the recruiting process. You hear about it, you read about it all the time and in most cases a lot of it is not true.
We’re talking about athletes, who are not major college recruits, listing or naming or talking about college programs that probably don’t even know who they are. This goes on all the time, it’s just a way of making some players feel great.
Stretching the truth is more about getting your name out there amongst your peers. It really has no value and it carries no weight. It’s just a lot of hot air and a lot of wasted time. It goes on a lot with parents, too.
When at various events, football games, AAU events, high school basketball games or wherever you may be, parents are talking about who’s going to what college or who is recruiting who and it’s just a lot of talk.
A lot of the times, it’s really just people stretching the truth. Someone may get a letter in a mail from a major university and now all of a sudden that player thinks that they’re being recruited. When in actuality, it’s not happening at all.
Keep in mind, letters do not mean you’re being recruited.
Stretching the truth has been going on for a long time, in all sports. Players do it, coaches do it, and everyone does it. Do you consider that lying? In my opinion, I say it is lying.
So it’s going to continue to go on. You read in a newspaper that players have made commitments to particular colleges. Players who are just in the 10th or 11th grade and they are already committing to college programs!
High school kids committing to college programs when they’re still in the 9th, 10th or 11th grade is ridiculous. It’s just all hype.
Most of the time, these colleges are not even recruiting these kids and may not even recruit them at all. It’s just a way of a particular athlete who may have some talent to get his name in the paper, to create some kind of buzz and excitement for himself.
But to me, it’s false recruiting. It doesn’t help the kid. It doesn’t help anyone. It’s just more talk, more chatter, and more people writing about it on websites or message boards or blogs.
That’s all it is. I don’t really get into that sort of thing, because it doesn’t make sense. I’m not going to stretch the truth about a player, about a team or coach or his or her situation. I’m going to tell the truth all the time.
So stop stretching people!
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Third Party Resources And The College Recruiting Process
If the high school coach and the parents are not involved in the college recruiting process, more than likely it’s a third party. Third party resources plays a major role in the college recruiting process whether you like it or not.
College recruiting services are the obvious choice of being a third party and resources. Recruiting services have been around it seems forever and play a role in connecting student athletes with college programs. The reason recruiting services exist, I believe, is because of the lack of attention to detail by some high school coaches.
“7 on 7 Football” is a third party resource that is now playing a huge role in the college recruiting process for high school football players. Just like AAU basketball, “7 on 7 Football” is giving student athletes an alternative outside their high school coach to gain major exposure in the college recruiting process.
A long time ago, the high school coach had all the control and the power when it came to recruiting. The coach was responsible (so we thought) for getting information about his student athletes out to college coaches. The problem was too many high school coaches were using their power as a way of control over student athletes and parents. The high school coach was the only choice for recruiting. There were no other alternatives for parents and student athletes. You either had to deal with the high school coach or you were not going to college to play ball.
I believe what has changed the recruiting process is that the players are now starting recruiting services or have developed their own club teams like AAU basketball, travel baseball and 7 on 7 Football. The players from years ago realized that there was a major disconnect from high school coaches to college coaches when it came to exposure for these high school student athletes.
High school athletics across the country is a big deal; it can make or break a young athlete’s future and could have an impact on their education, so the players from years back stepped up and got involved and created alternatives for student athletes and parents. Gone are the days where student athletes relied heavily on high school coaches for everything and anything recruiting.
A “Monopoly” basically means you have control over everything and that’s how it’s been for a long time with high school coaches. I believe third party resources, used the right way, can be a major benefit to student athletes and college coaches. This will eliminate the total control and domination over student athletes by high school coaches.
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There are no shortcuts in the college recruiting process
To get recruited for college require a serious thought-out strategy. Just showing up at game time for student athletes is not nearly enough. Gaining the attention of college coaches could take the average student athlete two or three years.
Many student athletes and their parents are not willing to invest that much time into the recruiting process and are looking for shortcuts. I’m here to tell you there are no shortcuts whatsoever in getting recruited for college.
You must go to the camps or play in tournaments or participate in summer exposure events to gain the attention of college coaches. You must write letters, mail letters, send DVD’s on a consistent basis to college coaches. You must study and prepare for the standardized tests because your athletic future depends on it. These are some of the things that must get done to get recruited for college.
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Parents stop blaming the high school coach for your stupidity
Parents of high school athletes expect high school coaches to do everything when it comes to the college recruiting process and many parents expect miracles to happen.
I believe it’s the parents’ responsibility to help with the college recruiting process. Parents need to get off their lazy butts and do something to help the recruiting process and stop blaming high school coaches for their stupidity.
Most high school coaches are also high school teachers and being a coach and a teacher is a huge responsibility.
Where is the time during a coach’s day to mail out letters to college coaches, to write letters, or to even mail out the DVD’s to college coaches? What coach anywhere in this country has the time and money to do all of that for each of their players? The answer is there is no time.
To me the parents are putting unbelievable expectations on these coaches and the parents should be working with the high school coach providing resources to that coach.
I believe the coach’s job is to help develop that student athlete into becoming a very good athlete for college programs.
When the college recruiting process does not work on behalf of the high school student athlete the first person who always gets the blame is a high school coach.
I think it’s unfair for high school coaches to take full responsibility for anything that goes wrong with the college recruiting process. It’s the parent’s responsibility; they are the ones who can afford to purchase envelopes and stamps to write letters to college recruiting coaches and mail out recruiting DVD’s to a large number of college programs. The high school coach does not have the time, the money or the resources to become a full time college recruiter, it’s just not possible.
I had been totally wrong about high school coaches because it is not their fault if one of their student athletes does not get recruited or placed in college. It’s the parent’s fault and the reason I say that is because for a very long time, all the conversations I’ve had with parents, they had nothing but BAD things to say about high school coaches. It is totally on the parents and the student athletes to make the college recruiting process work for them.