Tag Archives: high school players

Your Senior Year and the College Recruiting Process

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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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High School Ballplayers Are Not Conversationalist

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At some point, the high school student athletes will have a conversation on the phone with a college coach. It will happen, trust me it will! Many high school athletes struggle with phone calls from a college coach and it’s only because they are kids. It’s no big deal for parents to get on the phone or make a phone call and/or carry on a conversation with a college coach. Most parents are aware of how important the recruiting process is to their child.

The phone call in the college recruiting process is one of the most important parts of recruiting so, how you sound on the phone could mean everything to your success. I’m sure the coach does not want to have a conversation with someone when all he or she can say is “yep” or “nope” or “I don’t know” all through the conversation.

Most experienced college coaches understand that they are talking with shy teenagers who are better at having a conversation with there peers. That’s why Facebook and Twitter are so popular; you can write your thoughts and get your point across better.

There is so much pressure these days on high school student athletes to perform in the classroom every day. They must have good grades, they must be great athletes, they must be great in their community and they must get to the next level, all of which is a lot of pressure. On top of all of this is the phone call from a college coach. Up until now, most of theses kids just had to deal with the day to day part of being an athlete without much outside intrusion.

The phone call is as much to recruiting as the official visit. At least on the visit you have your parents with you as a back-up but on the phone with a college coach, it’s just you and no one else to back you up or jump in when you get stuck on something.

What can you do to make having a conversation with a college coach an easy process?

Preparation: have a list of questions to ask when the phone rings and it’s a college coach on the other end waiting to talk with you. That way when the phone call does come in, you are ready and not all that nervous or slow with your answers. Another great idea is to have your list of questions by the phone, that way you are ready to go the moment the phone rings and it’s a coach.

In the beginning, the coach will be the one asking the questions so make sure you give good answers and not a bunch of one word answers that will make you look or sound bad. One-word answers are not good. I think the more you can add to the conversation with a coach, the greater it will be for you and will make you stand out over some other nervous kid whose going through the same thing.

Practice what you’re going to say to a college coach when they do call; use your parents or a teammate to play the role of the coach. Role-play the phone conversation and write out possible questions that may be asked by the coach. If you’re not sure what a coach may ask you, I would talk with your high school coach and get their feedback on this or better yet, talk with other student athletes who may be going through or have gone through the same process. They can be a good source of valuable information.

The reason the phone call is important is because the coach is going to ask you questions about your grades or your season and stats and there could be a question about who is recruiting you and always be honest in your answer, never lie to a college coach because there could be an offer made or the coach may ask you if you’d be interested in coming in for an unofficial visit or, maybe a little down the road, come for an official visit.

Keep in mind, not many student athletes will get a phone call from a college coach. This is a big step in determining your interest in that school’s program and if your answers to their questions seem slow and or you sound uninteresting to that coach they just may cut the conversation short and you may never hear from that program again.

Never close any doors to college programs because you never know how the recruiting process will end up for you. Many student athletes hoping for maybe bigger college programs to call, sometimes act distant on the phone. Never do that because nothing has been guaranteed to you in terms of a scholarship.

Keep the doors of the college recruiting process open. Student athletes you can make the call first to a college coach. I would bet that many high school student athletes do not realize that they can call a college coach. Yes, the high school student athletes who may have a list of college programs that you think you have a realistic chance of playing at, you can call the coach.

Don’t wait for them to call you. Calling a college coach shows that coach that you are serious about your athletic future, that you are a mature high school student athlete and also you can get right to the point with that coach by asking this question: “are you recruiting me?” or even better: “will you be recruiting at some point?” Use the phone to your advantage.

During most of their young athletic lives, it has been someone else’s job to pick for them. It’s been the high school coach’s job to tell the players what to do and more or less when to do it. So is it really any surprise that many high school athletes who are being recruited for the first time are not totally trained to handle the conversation even one that is as serious as dealing with their high school athletic futures.

These days, with the high cost of a college education and the value that is placed on an student athlete to win that scholarship, don’t you think more should be done in helping prepare the “golden ticket” we call athletes for that conversation? In most high schools they have many elective classes surely, they could have a class that covers the right or wrong way to deal with college recruiters.

Sports at some high schools is a big deal. The high school players are talked about in such a way that they are treated as celebrities; we want to know everything they do from how they played in the game to who’s recruiting them. Every aspect of their athletic lives is scrutinized in such a way that they are not real. Even though they are just kids, sometimes we look at high school athletes as something more.

We want them to go to a great college or maybe the college we attended, we want that school to win games, we want that player that we have followed for years to have big-time success in college and we care what happens to that player once his high school days are over.

The conversation with a college coach is the starting point that can lead to a scholarship at a major college program and to maybe a pro career, who knows.

Parents just want to be helpful but these are kids and sometimes you just have to let them keep that phone in their hands. Remember, it is just a conversation you are having with someone else over the phone. Just be cool and relax.  It’s only your whole athletic future that’s riding on that phone call! (Just a joke there!) It’s all a conversation, that’s all!

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High School Players: Are They Unstoppable?

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Would you agree the term “high school student athlete” brings on extra responsibility?

Just having an extra title on top of ‘student’ brings added pressure to high school ball players.  Because you’re a high school student athlete you are expected to be different, to be special and to be unstoppable.

That last sentence is talking about the pressure and the added responsibility of high school student athletes.  There are some high school students that only want to go to school, do their class work and go home but if you are an athlete, then all eyes are on you. 

Some high school athletes can handle the added responsibility of being an outstanding student and a superior athlete.  I believe many of the successful people in this world have an athletic background.  Many of our top government leaders, businessmen and women, who were once unstoppable student athletes.  This is why I believe these kinds of people have always achieved great success in their lives.

The only reason I believe high school student athletes receive full athletic scholarships is because they are unstoppable.  The superstar athletes are the first ones at practice and the last ones to leave. They’re always doing extra things to get better whether in the classroom or the weight room, these athletes are the unstoppable ones.

The unstoppable high school student athletes are the ones who find a way to get the job done and never make excuses.  To achieve a high level of success every single day, you can’t make excuses because it will only hold you back.  The unstoppable student athletes are always first in everything; you can always tell who they are by how they dress, the words that they use, what they say in the classroom and how they respect their teachers, teammates and coaches.

The unstoppable high school ball players always show leadership skills.

To be an unstoppable high school player regardless of the sport is a privilege.  Very few athletes can accomplish that goal.  Many of these athletes do not have the attention to detail in the classroom.  There are many players that don’t have the passion for their sport.  Any of these qualities that you may be lacking makes you a non-relevant factor in sports.

A successful student and a successful athlete will always be a success in life and will always be unstoppable.

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The disappointment of the Letter of Intent

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The Letter of Intent in the college recruiting process is a written agreement between the high school athlete and a college athletic program binding the two together for one year.

Today, many high school football players will be signing their Letters of Intent but there are twice as many athletes out there who will not be signing a letter anytime soon.

Many of these outstanding high school football players for one reason or another slip through the cracks of the college recruiting process.

Whose fault is it?

Many high school athletes will not know for months where they may end up playing college football and many will end up at lower level college programs where maybe they could’ve played at a higher level if they were given more exposure and more help by their high school coach.  Too much pressure sometimes on high school athletes.