Bust these commonly-held myths about applying to college as a student-athlete. https://insights.collegeconfidential.com/myths-applying-college-student-athlete
If you are on the outside looking in, it’s hard to appreciate how hard it can be to find a team that wants you at a school you really want to attend.
Often the school you love has no interest (maybe they recruited for your position last year) or you are ho-hum about the schools where the coach is loving you. This can force someone who has devoted a lot of their life to a sport they love and who has a lot of their identity tied up in that to decide between attending their top choice school (if they can get in without being a recruit) or playing their sport.
I agree, Athletics can really complicate the process for recruits and often force compromises that wouldn’t be necessary without the sport (for many this means abandoning the state flagship which would otherwise be a good fit).
What isn’t mentioned in the article is how time-consuming and frustrating the recruiting process can be for recruits, with all the research, phone calls, texts, visits, etc. Not to mention the inevitable ghosting by coaches who at one point seemed enthusiastic. It is not always a joyride.
Myth #5, assuming coaches will find you, is the biggest issue I see with potential recruits. In most sports, recruiting is not the efficient meritocracy many kids and parents assume. Most athletes will need to reach out to coaches at some point. Especially those who aren’t nationally or regionally visible.
I’m anticipating a long and rocky road ahead for S22. He lives and breathes his sport so Myth #2 isn’t an issue. I’m hoping a measure of clarity will come post-June 15th when coaches can contact him directly.
Coaches don’t find athletes. Athletes find coaches. The student-athlete should be driving the bus and determining what schools, athletic programs and coaches fit them and their goals. They should be focused on the school first. Coaches come and go.
When they find a school they are interested in, they need to get in touch with the coach, visit the school, go to any camps the program puts on and find out what tournaments etc the coach goes to so they can showcase their skills. This process takes years. They should really start their first forays into it as a sophmore (this can depend on the sport and division of course). The process really ramps up as a Junior.
You need to have numerous schools that you are interested in because inevitably you are going to be let down by programs that tell you “no.” And those rejections aren’t necessarily a reflection on you. Your position may be filled already. They may have a bigger need elsewhere. They may not have the recruitment slots they need, etc., etc.
It is a long, hard, challenging process. Make sure you want to play in college. It is a big commitment to make it work and it continues on once you have been recruited and accepted into a school. There are the lifts, practices, team meeting, travel for games and more. But it can be an amazing experience as well.
But it can open doors. My daughter was a very average (but loyal) player, very small, and young for her hs class. She got to go to a school we could never have afforded without the athletic scholarship. She was recruited by lot of D3 schools that are good schools but she had no interest in (Smith, Oberlin, Kenyon, Centre).
We looked at it as a three-legged stool, with each leg equally important for her to be happy and attend - sports, academics, finances.
We have a good friend who was a hs superstar and coaches did recruit him and call him at home and call his parents. It wasn’t quite The Blind Side but close. He chose a lower ranked school (academically) which is probably where he belongs and a lower ranked school in the sport, where he is still a superstar. That school could give him a full scholarship where a higher ranked team could not. His three legged stool is supporting him just fine.
I think that the help in admissions is a big draw. At least it was for us. In D3 there are no athletic scholarships so that was the help.
High school athletes should also keep in mind that fun and competitive intercollegiate club teams are available at most colleges and universities. The existence of a club team can you get comfortable with choosing a school for academics while not giving up on the idea of playing your sport competitively in college.
My DD was recruited by strong academic D3 schools but chose to attend an Ivy where she was not recruited. She knew the Ivy had a competitive club team in her sport, however, which made the decision much easier. Trying out for and making the club team gave her a built in network of friends before classes even started freshman year and allowed her to continue playing the game at a high level, as the team was good enough to advance to Nationals where they played some amazing club teams from the huge flagship public universities.
Myth #2 is a big one because it drives many families’ actions when their kids are very young in the form of investment in club sports. In my community it is not uncommon for parents to spend tens of thousands of dollars for their kids to participate above and beyond the school programs with a belief that their kid will end up with a full ride at a prestigious university. This highlights another myth that is not mentioned in the article - “If you are recruited you will have a full tuition scholarship”. We were amazed at the number of people that thought my daughter had a full ride because she was signing an NLI for XCTF. They don’t realize that of the 20 that are “signing” (really just making a ceremonial commitment to the school of their choice), only a handful are actually signing an NLI - many got no scholarship and many of the scholarships are small. Only one girl had a full scholarship as she was a basketball recruit, yet most looking in from the outside assume all got the full ride.
I would like to “bust” the myth contained in Myth No. 1. Incidentally, I most certainly agree that not all excellent athletes will get recruited. Where I disagree is that recruiting efforts can be reduced to a few emails with coaches and filling out the recruiting form. Both have their place, but neither is enough. I also disagree that you should start this process by the end of junior year.
Rather, the athlete that wants to play competitively in college should have a comprehensive plan including videotape, showcases/camps, unofficial visits to combine with the emails and profiles.
There are plenty of folks who feel that they started their recruiting efforts too late. Few feel that they started too early. When you start early, you can always abandon the ship. You can never make up the time lost by starting late. The end of junior year is late to get started. This isn’t meant to discourage those who haven’t started by that point. It should just encourage the other folks to think about things well before then.
@gointhruaphase I totally agree that early is always better than late. My son started his “one-way” communication with many schools the fall of his freshman year. He attended a camp that winter and the coach told parents, “If your player is a freshman you’ve actually made a great decision coming to this camp. We’ve just begun compiling our potential recruit list for this class.” You never know. It doesn’t cost anything to email coaches.
I think early or late really depends on the sport. Some sports just aren’t early recruiting. I’m most familiar with Track and Field, which recruits fairly late. For most athletes in that sport, sometime during junior year, or after, is going to an appropriate time to start contacting coaches. There are a handful of recruits that might post recruitable marks earlier than that but even then recruiting doesn’t need to be a priority until after sophomore season ends. What recruits should be thinking about is what sorts of schools and programs they’re interested in.