Can someone help me understand what is expected of a high school coach when it comes to creating connections between players and college coaches. Is it just a lucky break if a high school coach happens to know some college coaches, or, is it expected for them to nurture these relationships and help those kids who come along and want/can play in college?
And this is for your typical suburban high school; not a feeder school or anything like that.
I get the impression by reading around here that most of the connections made (at least for D3 schools) are so via the player reaching out (not the coaches making introductions).
Any info on this would be really helpful.
Depends on the coach. Some HS coaches are well connected and enjoy using their networks. Others are almost useless. Many connections are more likely local than national, e.g. the coach played ball at local U/ local HS and therefore can help with local U or JC’s in the area. That was the case with both of my kids’ HS coaches. The travel ball coaches generally have better national connections. In fact, many travel ball organizations tout their relationships. It is important to keep the HS coach updated on the recruiting process of your kid in case a college coach decides to call the HS coach for info.
Unless your kid is a true phenom, you and your kid will need to do most of the legwork to get on radar screens by 1)targeting schools based on academic and athletic fit, 2) reaching out to those schools/coaches through the online questionnaire and emails (including when appropriate, attached or linked video) and 3) finding opportunities to get in front of the targeted coaches through camps, tournaments, showcases they will be attending.
IME HS coaches generally don’t have the relationships with college coaches to be very helpful in the recruiting process. Sure they will answer questions/talk up the student if a college coach calls, but they aren’t generally proactive. The onus is on the student and club coach to manage recruiting, and of course some families use third party recruiting consultants…some of these consultants are worth it, some not so much.
The default is that the high school coach provides little more than a reference. If your coach does more than that, like for example, @kjs1992, that’s a real bonus. Public high schools – even the high achieving suburban publics – are just not set up for coaches to be an affirmative force in recruiting. Not only that, college choices are personal decisions. Can you imagine if the coach pushed for a kid to attend a D2 state school, when the student wanted a D3 elite academic institution.
Plus, recruiting – while rewarding – is a lot of work. I can’t imagine teaching during the day, coaching in the afternoon, and reaching out to college coaches in the evening.
I do think it a good idea for the student to reach out to the high school coach and inform the coach of his or her college ambitions. Ask if the coach would be a reference. Sometimes, this can have a subtle effect in coach decisions, such as playing time, leadership roles and coach nominated awards.
I think it varies by sport. The three with which I have some experience, baseball, swimming and gymnastics, have nothing to do with the process in our geographic area. Colleges recruit solely from club teams. My son’s HS baseball coach would like you to think he’s heavily involved and can make or break your son’s collegiate hopes; he is not, and he can’t. (And we have this on excellent authority from a very good friend who is actually a local college coach.)
My daughter never had a high school coach who was also a teacher. The first was a dad who had zero connections in women’s lax, the next two were former college players. Her club coach, who also happened to be the high school coach and a teacher at the neighboring high school, was very helpful. She met with the team and gave suggestions, passed on info from college coaches looking for players. She also took the club to showcase tournaments and was willing to talk to any college coach who wanted to know about her high school or team players.
High school coaches (including my daughter’s club coach) tend to get into a groove with certain college coaches. At one time my daughter had 5 teammates from her club team on the college team, and that’s a lot (25% came from that club team). If you look at some college rosters in hockey or soccer or swimming, you’ll see several listing the same high school or club team. Yep, a connection has developed between the coaches.
Help might be there if you look. In some cases, it is the younger asst coaches who might have the connections, or a parent of another player, or even a guidance counselor who knows how prior recruits went through the process.
A high school coach may be able to tell you how previous players have fared in certain college programs and help you understand how you compare with those players. So if Zack and Jack, who were much stronger players than you, got no playing time at ABC U, it might indicate that ABC’s program is not one that is likely to be interested in you. The caveat here is that teams change and their needs change, so your coach could mischaracterize programs by using the past to judge the present.
One college coach asked my kid if they could talk to his high school coach, and I think this was helpful to my son.
But basically, the expectation should be that it’s all on you.
My son had a wonderful track/XC coach with many years of experience, but he did very little to help in the recruiting process. It was all on us.
Thank you, everyone. For the record, this is not in regards to my S20. He does not intend to play sports in college outside of intramurals. It is more of a general question. I am on the selection team for a new HS coach and one of the parents put it in my ear to ensure that the new coach has a lot of college connections. My initial reaction to that was essentially what all of you said (how can a coach possibly have connections to enough schools to meet the academic requirements of most players???). Sounds like the only expectation is that the coach provide a reference and basic info about the player, if asked. As opposed to literally reaching out to college coaches to find a spot for a kid (which is what this parent expects). Thank you al!!!
Well, some high school coaches DO have a ton of connections. It might really depend on the sport.
Our first high school (private) hired a boy’s lacrosse coach (not a teacher) who was well known and well connected, and that is why he was hired. I think a parent paid his salary for two years, while the child was a student and it really was for the connections (especially to east coast schools).
I’m sure the football coaches in Texas have a lot of connections in the college world, especially in the Big 12, SEC, and Texas conferences but might not be as connected in Iowa or Virginia. If you are on a hiring committee, you can ask the question and it can be a consideration but probably not the controlling one.
My D’s sport is basketball and the HS coach never reached out to any colleges and no college coaches ever reached out to him. There was some contact between D’s AAU coach and colleges coaches, but it was minimal. So I don’t think non contact hurts, but I am sure it may help.
I agree with the posters that it depends on the sport and the coach. Some sports have recruiting that is all from club teams; for those sports, HS coaches will be peripheral to the process on average.
The best way a HS coach can help with recruiting is to develop your child as much as possible. In my primary area of knowledge (glax), a typical club season might be 24-36 games, but all crammed into 3-4 weekends. A HS season is on the lower end of that range for games, but you play twice a week for a few months, so there is a lot more opportunity to develop real skills. Anything else is gravy!
Coaches whether they are club or HS can have contacts and experience to help your kid. For my kid the HS coach has decades of experience and he steps in when things get serious to ask the tough questions. He makes sure you know exactly where you stand on the coach’s list. My kid’s club coach is great and the colleges like him, but he focuses on athletic prestige more than we like.
My point is you need to get the best advice and advocacy you can regardless of where it comes from.
Interesting situation. I can think of a private school near us that has coaches who DO have connections, and the reason is that they remain coaches of an elite travel team. And they recruit kids from the travel team to the school, which both keeps the school teams very competitive and ensures good college placements for those athletes. This is important to the school because prospective families see “big” names on the list of college matriculations and that helps with admissions. So in their case, that coach is important to the school 's overall strategy, not just kids seeking recruitment.
At the risk of stating the obvious, it could be really valuable to your search committee to clarify how this coach is expected to contribute to the school. Is it purely to serve the players or does this sport play a bigger role in the school strategy/prestige than that? And are most of the players going to be college recruits or will this be a more typical high school program?
@gardenstategal Where I live, coaches at private schools are not allowed to recruit students for sports teams. While some do things like hold camps during 8th grade summers, if a coach is caught talking to a student about playing on his or her high school team, it doesn’t end well. And I think those rules are pretty much followed. While certainly if a player expresses an interest in a HS, the sports teams are highlighted as a benefit. But all 3 of my kids were strong athletes in middle school and all could have contributed to at least some of the private school teams around here, none of the coaches (who interacted with them lots) ever said a word to them about playing for them.
But our HS is a public school. There is no strategy to support the school’s brand through sports.
Update: Coach has been found and hired. His connections to college coaches was not a factor that I considered. Thanks all!
Thanks, @gointhruaphase for the shout out. I do think it varies by coach and by sport. As a former HS coach here’s what I did:
I would do my very best to determine who the athletes were who were interested in college athletics. We would have those very realistic conversations after sophomore, going into junior year for most kids. After the 1st two seasons, you had a pretty good idea of who was continuing on and who wasn’t - sometimes you knew when they were 5th grade (haha). Also, as a club coach, I tried to keep open communication with their club coaches if they didn’t swim for me.
By junior year, I would also come up with a working list of schools where they’d be able to swim. In essence, I was doing a lot of the grunt work for them. We kept it broad much like planning a college list. It wasn’t uncommon for kids and parents to leave with a spreadsheet of 20 schools based upon a) where they wanted to be geographically/size school b) anticipated major and c) swimming. They could add or pare down the list as they wanted - it was just a brainstorm list. Then we’d get a little more specific on the swimming side too (what sort of program- high level D3, lower level D3, mid major, etc). I worked with the guidance counselors on the academic side, and I’m lucky I’m also in the school to have that resource (it definitely took a village). The counselors liked that I was proactive and keeping them involved. The parents, I hope, feel like they had some direction.
Swimming is a sport where you either have the times or you don’t and most swimmers, save the very elite, need to sell themselves. For instance, a 1:55 male 200 freestyler isn’t going to be swimming at UVA…but there IS a place for that kid, and I felt it was my job to help them with those opportunities if that’s what they wanted.
What I could also do was help them in their process of selling themselves. I was more than happy to assist in the process of communicating with coaches. I would help them construct emails to the coach, but I would not initially reach out and contact the coach on their behalf - because time and time again we heard that coaches want to hear from the athletes. I was always open to reaching out to a coach once the kid made the initial contact (unless the coach reached out first…) and did so many times, thereby creating several relationships. I was also there (and still am) to answer any questions regarding pre-reads, committing, overnights, this vs. that, who’s giving them the love and who’s not, etc.
It was always important for me to let the parents and athletes drive the train, but be there for support, and provide them with guidance. They’re in charge, and this is a process. What a kid loves one month can change in a heartbeat. What I love for a kid might be polar opposite of what they love - not for me to decide. But, the little extra guidance, and being an extra set of eyes and ears added to their support system goes a long way.
So, the long and short is, while I didn’t make the connections I helped as best I could to bridge that gap for the kids and tried to help guide them through the process.
@kjs1992 Thanks for the perspective of a coach who does a great deal for his athletes. While none of my kids’ coaches were as helpful as you are (via the parents of athletes I know who did seek recruitment), this one parent I spoke of earlier expects even more. She’s one of those folks who lives by the ‘it is not what you know, but who you know’ rule. While relationships seem to play a role in some part of this process, it is not like getting into a country club. Thanks again for your very helpful perspective. Your athletes are lucky to have you.
@cypresspat , I have no idea if that rule exists here but if it does, this coach has found a way around it! We personally know 2 players (both previously coached by my spouse) who were “recruited”. To be fair, I think they both ended up getting a better education than at our LPS, and the school isn’t super selective, so no harm done. And this coach makes it easier for the kids to continue to play high level club, and that’s not a small thing. Glad your work had a good outcome!
The individual sport does matter in cases where there really aren’t top club level leagues available. Then the high school coaches may represent the best team a student can be playing on and coaches can end up as the best adviser or reference available. (Think football or hockey, for example.)
Kids need to drive the process regardless of the sport, but that appraisal @kjs1992 was talking about above is very important and the high school coach may need to be qualified to deliver it.
Depends on the level of the sport at the high school. For DS’ HS, they have very good basketball and field hockey teams (top or near top in the state and nationally ranked with some fantastic athletes), college coaches come to school to watch the kids play and HS coaches have the influence and connections.
For swimming, DS’ club is at a much higher level. So his HS coaches have no help whatsoever (not involved in the recruiting process at all). DS directly communicate with college coaches after filling out recruiting questionnaires. Club coaches give guidance, make suggestions, but in the end, the kid does most if not all the work.