The school could also conduct a meeting for sophomores and juniors about the NCAA rules of recruiting, signing, what getting a scholarship means for merit aid or need based aid, what the NCAA clearinghouse is and when to submit the form.
Our athletic department secretary did know a little, and submitted the transcripts to the clearing house, but didn’t really know anything about how scholarships work or what to expect. I found that the most confusing - can you ask for more? can you accept scholarships, Pell grants, state aid?
My children attended a private high school which has a dedicated person in the college counseling department for aspiring collegiate athletes. Over the last few years several schools in our area (Southern CA) have added this position.
All- great advice!
Early on I had asked alum from son’s HS who were still active in their recruited sport if they could come for a meet and greet and share info…even what’s it like to be a student athlete at the collegiate level.
I agree that networking (for a lack of a better word) amongst parents and alum is helpful.
CC community has been immensely helpful too. Would have missed FA pre-read and many other details if I hadn’t stumbled across this site!
Would second the various comments. I have never viewed high school coaches as a “guide” to college recruiting, but candidly I wouldn’t rely on club team coaches or a private school advisor for that either. Fenway does it again by pointing out the recruiting variations between sports, but just as importantly, you need individually to assess the best way to market your kid. That may not be the same path as your kid’s high school or club teammate. Parents and recruits should take full responsibility for the process.
That said, high school coaches often do serve a function as a reference. Recall that most college recruiting questionnaires ask for the high school coach’s contact information. Some college coaches call high school coaches. One college actually asked for a high school coach’s assessment with the recruiting questionnaire.
I think it is a good exercise for kids to ask the high school coach early on if they would be a reference. Once again, this is no different than in the working world. That way the high school coach knows his name is appearing on recruiting documents (although he or she probably should know this anyway) and will be prepared to provide a few good words.
The coaches who didn’t get a direct referral from the high school coach definitely called, and they contacted the club coach too.
My daughter’s college coach is only in her third year recruiting in the south, and now has 5 recruits out of a total of 21 from this club/high school coach. I think you could say they have a connection! However, it’s not like every student can just go to this school. It is expensive, and it’s an engineering school, so the student needs the grades to get a merit scholarship because the athletic scholaships is not going to be enouh, and the student has to want to study one of a limited number of majors, mostly in science or engineering, math, business or psychology. It’s not the school for a liberal arts major.
Now to complicate the discussion. What if a HS promotes itself as a premiere sports school which has placed its student athletes at competitive college programs AND has had many alum go on to the professional level…very successfully.
I know a neighboring HS with very similar profile does in fact have a dedicated staff member who guides/provides info about the recruiting process…
In my opinion if the school is using its athletic programs as a draw for potential future students (with the thinly veiled hype about “where” some student athletes get placed) I would think there is an assumption on the part of incoming families that guidance is provided.
But again I could be wrong…
Well, it is your example which none of us know anything about, so none of us can say you are wrong.
Couple of observations for youngsters and parents who may be reading:
If your kid has Power 5 or pro potential, as many at the "premier sports school" apparently do, there won't be urgent need for advice about how to get recruited. More useful would be advice about how to sift among competing offers. In my limited experience, that advice comes from coaches who know the youngster and family personally for an extended period of time, not from some school administrator. If a school is selling itself for its athletics, I would expect it to be selling its coaches' reputations, not the reputation of some athletic guidance counselor.
I don't know what "guides/provides info about the recruiting process" means. If it means explaining about the NCAA Eligibility Center and what an NLI is and stuff like that, I think that is fairly standard, if not ubiquitous at larger public schools. If it means giving recruitment advice about a wide range of sports at D1 NLI schools, Ivies, D2/D3/NAIA, I think it would be an exception rather than the rule at public schools.
The state of our public schools is a community-by-community issue. In the public schools I am familiar with, I think there are higher priorities that need attention than spending money on administrators who can help the handful of kids who would like specific information about athletic recruiting. I see athletic recruiting as being more of an individual and family responsibility than an obligation to be funded by the community's taxpayers
As for private schools, the administrators and families who pay tuition can decide as they wish, I think.
@fenwaypark
Helpful feedback.
Specifically to #1 there are two levels; student athletes looking to be recruited and student athletes who have distinguished themselves and then are faced with negotiating the wave of interest that follows. Our son was in the second group and we found the whole experience very stressful in that we were ill prepared for how to deal with it all. My son’s coach is very young, albeit talented, and worked as a teacher at that school full-time. For athletes in the first group, it may be more difficult to develop a path to recruiting on their own. Maybe I’m a bit dense here but if you step back from it all it can be very confusing. Additionally it seems a common theme that many HS coaches are spread thin and are doing coaching as a supplemental. Many just don’t have the time to give their athletes that attention.
I do think your point about public school funding is important. Having a dedicated point person for athletes would seem silly if other needs aren’t being met.
Our’s is a private school and as such may have more flexibility.
Again the idea posed before of a resource “library” where students can do research seems a good place to begin…
As a side note when I asked our athletic director about LL he referred me to my son’s guidance counselor as she, “was the person who would know best”. She knew nothing of likely letters or the time frame for EA/ED as it relates to recruited athletes. I figure her primary responsibility was to the academic portion of the picture, not athletic…with good reason.
We have one big, superstar high school here. Public, but academically and athletically miles ahead of most public or private schools. The children of many of the professional athletes go to school thereand id guses at least 50 kids a year sign NLIs. I’m sure many of the individual coaches are well versed in athletic recruiting, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they not only had a coordinator in the athletic department for recruits but a guidance counselor who is a specialist too. However, if they don’t, the students have the resources to pay professionals for help too.
There are a few private schools that also send a good number of athletes on to NCAA schools. Do you think Missy Franklin or Christian McCaffrey needed a lot of help from the guidance office navigating the NCAA waters? I’m sure Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas has extra help for their many football players who want to play in college, but I don’t know if Snoop Dog’s son needed that help.
My son’s former high school has several successful athletic programs. The way it works at that school is that there is an assistant AD who is responsible for handling the administrative side of recruiting. As many here know, there are different deadlines and requirements for proving NCAA compliance and providing info to schools prior to the normal deadlines for “regular” students. When transcripts need to be sent, what needs to be done before official visits, a lot of these requirements are the same regardless of the sport involved, etc. That same individual holds a couple meetings a year for sophomore parents, usually before the fall and spring seasons start, to kind of walk people through the ABC’s of the recruiting process. Yes, there is a lot of variability in the recruiting process based on individual sports. When we went to that meeting a coup,e years ago, it was about very general stuff. Recruiting calendar for early signing and February sports, the different rules that covered school and campus visits, etc. There is also a specific guidance counselor in the High School who has experience with recruiting from the school side in the Ivy, Patriot, NESCAC and Service Academy world. Pretty much every athlete I know headed that way has or had that counselor, so I assume that is a conscious decision by the school.
In the stronger sports, where a number of kids are recruited every year, there is a specific coach who handles recruiting matters on each staff. In football, this coach met with each kid they thought would be a potential recruit and his parents after the sophomore season and then after the junior season. The purpose of these meetings were to give the kid (and parents) a realistic idea of level, some more sport specific information, and things to work on. AFAIK, wrestling operated similarly. Baseball and track operated a bit less formally, and both of those coaches also coach big club teams, so I really don’t know how much they do as a HS guy as opposed to a club guy. I don’t really know much about the other sports. I know one crew guy and his parents told me they got very little help from the program, so my guess is that it really is a matter of necessity. The more college interest the program attracts, the more there is a need for a formalized process.
I would also point out that kids at the top of the recruiting ladder need help just like the kids headed to D3. The advice is obviously different, but I know a handful of four and five star guys and just because every school in the world wants you doesn’t make the process easy. Dealing with social media, talking to stringers, which camps to attend, when and where to take official visits is a complex dance. Schools who see recruits like that with some frequency provide a lot of resources to those kids. I’m sure BG does.
If I were a gambling man, I would bet that the school described in the post above is a private school. Maybe all-male?
Pretty much every known athlete headed that way? Parents and youngsters: doesn’t sound like a public school experience to me.
As I said before, I think it is fine for private schools to do whatever they think they would like to do about providing specialized athletic recruiting resources. Public schools–another story.
@Ohiodad51
May need to copy or outline what you’ve presented here and bring it to our AD at my son’s school. Very thorough!
Again my kid’s done with the process and is incredibly fortunate to be going to an amazing D1 Ivy next year due to his sport (and no it’s not one of the more popular sports)
I just wanted to try and pay it forward by suggesting ways to improve the process for future athletes at my son’s school. I know of many guys on my son’s team who were decent athletes and could have been placed at collegiate programs but they and their families didn’t know where to begin the process.
And @Fenawaypark I absolutely agree it’s different for public schools.
And yes my son’s school is private and all boys. That has its advantages…the assault on my sense of smell during endless carpooling to the boathouse may disagree
That is very nice of you, tonymom. A teammate of my daughter’s was dating the lacrosse goalie on the boys team. His family was in no position to help him be recruited or even apply for a local schools. The girlfriend’s mom did it all for him, helping him get the paperwork in, even paying his deposit. He had to redshirt his first year due to grades and was not able to return, but it gave him a shot even though it didn’t work out. Great kid, great athlete, not so great student.
I’ll see your stinky rowers and raise you stinkier hockey players.
@fenwaypark, what is your point? Are only public school experiences valid? I’d bet a fair amount that Allen, Colquitt and Trinity provided assistance in the recruiting process to their kids. Top programs attract too much interest year over year not to have a system set up to handle it. I doubt seriously that it has anything to do with being a public or private school.
And yes, my son’s school was a catholic all boys school, which I would be willing to bet you knew already.
My point is that the typical reader of this forum–not necessarily the avid poster–could reasonably interpret your words to describe what to expect at a typical public or private school, since the distinction was not made clear in your post. No big deal and neither was my response…I thought.
After all, we are not here to chit chat or debate, we are here to try to help others, right? As it turns out, you have confirmed that your post is about your experience at a private Catholic all-boys school, which seems like a pretty special one, even among that category to me.
I am grateful for your clarification, maybe some others are too, for the following reasons.
Private school parents and kids can take your information and propose services they would like to see at their own private schools. Public school parents and kids can take your information and realize what they are missing at private schools, and maybe get their public school districts to upgrade.
Got to say, the references to Allen, Colquitt and Trinity went way over my head. What is that? Names of schools? Seriously, sincere, not joking, I am confused by that and maybe others are too. What are Allen, Colquitt and Trinity?
I had no idea your son went to a Catholic all boys school before you revealed it, and really don’t care.
Guessed from your post that your message was about a private school (not too hard), and from all the recruiting services they provided that it was a long shot that they could do it for both boys and girls sports.
@fenwaypark
To be fair many private schools provide that kind of assistance to both boys AND girls.
And here in California (I can’t speak to other parts of the country) there are plenty of public schools that also provide recruiting guidance to their student athletes. I suspect it has more to do with the kind of reputation they are aiming to foster or if the success of their athletics demand it.
Although it becomes a bit of a chicken and egg scenario…
Invest in the support and do a better job of promoting your student athletes OR invest in them after some success…
Who can tell…
Irregardless I found both of the previous posts helpful and not necessarily in opposition to one another.
And @twoinanddone I can imagine hockey has its own special aroma
@fenwaypark, Allen (Tx), Colquitt (Ga) and Trinity (Tx) are perennial national powers in high school football that have a reputation for sending a lot of their kids to college. For some context, you may remember a story from a couple years ago about a Tx HS building a hugely elaborate and expensive stadium? That was Allen.
Also, I really don’t know how much money my kid’s old school spent on this stuff. It’s not like they had a recruiting department. The assistant AD who handled the administrative side of recruiting did other things. So did the guidance counselor (my daughter’s boyfriend has that counselor this year. He is a band kid). The guy who did the recruiting stuff for football was an older retired coach who did it part time. In wrestling, the head coach filled that role. My guess is that over time this system kind of developed because of the interest certain programs within the school generated with colleges. Eventually, a system develops to deal with coaches visits, requests for film, transcript requests, etc. Know what I mean?
And yes, we were very happy with our son’s school (daughter’s all girl’s school too). My son’s school for years was kind of known as the blue collar, sports heavy school in its region. Several years ago they started putting money into the academic side, culminating in an IB program and a brand new science and engineering wing to the school. Now there is tension seemingly between the athletic and academic side. My son was lucky to kinda catch the crest of the wave, frankly.
I agree that public or private, more resources are better than less resources. But, whatever the level of resources, parents and recruits need to take responsibility for the recruiting process. One club team I know of advertised that it would “get your kid recruited” because they knew all the college coaches. Some parents actually believed that promise.
I have no doubt that some public and private schools provide more in the line of recruiting guidance than others. I also have no doubt that some high schools have good enough coaching and draw enough good players that they have become “feeders” for colleges. That does not mean, however, that all of the players on that school’s team will be “fed” into a given a college.
Many may disagree, but I think we are all just looking for a “fit” in college with an athletic component. That is a highly individualized decision. A high school can help with resources and guidance, but recruiting still falls on the parents and the recruit regardless of the support that a school provides.
@gointhruaphase
Thanks! I don’t think anyone is suggesting parents and student athletes expect their HS to place them in collegiate athletic programs (or I hope I haven’t given anyone that impression) rather it’s about access to reliable information for those involved so parents and kiddos can sit down and make informed decisions. Those parties should never relinquish control of the process to coaches, administrators or GC.
I haven’t come across any HS, public or private, which makes a promise that that will place you at any given college. I have, however, seen much in the way of self-promotion by some schools and the annual “parading out of the athletic recruits” on signing day to know the message is more subtle.
In the end knowledge is power and we all know those athletes with access to the tools to educate themselves about this process stand a better chance of doing well.
My goal was to see if there is a way to make those channels more accessible.
But I agree, parents should never expect a school to do their job…but that could be said of many topics in relation to our kids and education…sadly.