NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

by Chris Krause, NCSA Founder and President

Getting recruited to play college sports means paying attention to all of the important dates that are a part of the process.

Earlier this past week, we reached one of those important dates:  September 1st.

That’s the day that Juniors – the class of 2010 – can start receiving detailed recruiting information and materials from colleges that are seriously considering them for their programs, according to the NCAA recruiting calendar:

• Personalized letters from coaches at the college.
• Photocopies of newspaper articles about the team, the school, or the coach.
• College media guides.
• Schedule cards for the team.
• Official university and admissions publications and paperwork.

And, the contact for Juniors is not restricted to just mailings.  September 1st is also the date that coaches can send e-mails to you, and reply back to the e-mails that you send them.

So, with those facts in mind, it’s a good time to do a little self-assessment in terms of where you stand in the recruiting process today:

Have you received mail from a college coach yet?  If you are a Junior, be on the lookout for mail from colleges.  If you are a top prospect, it’s likely that you will be hearing from a college coach soon.  

The rules allow for even earlier contact if you are a men’s basketball or men’s ice hockey prospect:  College coaches within those sports can contact prospects as early as June 15 after a prospect’s Sophomore year.  

It’s certainly safe to say that if you are a Senior, and you haven’t yet received any mail or any contact from a college coach, you are not being recruited.  I would advise you not to wait to hopefully be discovered at some point during your Senior year.  Coaches at the college level need your information as soon as possible.  Click here to start the process.

Have you received an e-mail from a college coach yet?  If the answer is “no”, and you are a Junior or Senior in high school, that is a possible red flag as well.  E-mail is a very convenient, inexpensive way for coaches to communicate.  Many college programs opt for e-mail communication over regular mail, and any recruit that is on a coach’s radar is probably going to be receiving e-mail by now.  If you aren’t, you are probably not being seriously recruited by any schools (yet).

Whether you are getting initial contacts from colleges, or you find yourself on the outside looking in when it comes to recruiting, there are a few things that you can do to ramp-up your recruiting activity:

• Register with NCSA to ensure that coaches are matched with your athletic and academic skills.  It’s one of the best ways to make sure that every possible opportunity is uncovered.  Plus, you’ll have a former college athlete and recruiting expert from our staff personally assigned to you to answer your questions and help you through the process.  Doesn’t it make sense to have an experienced guide help you through the process from start to finish?
  
• Call a coach yourself.  The recruiting rules placed on coaches by the NCAA allow them to accept phone calls from prospects of any age, at any point in their high school career.  The advantage to picking up the phone and calling the coach yourself is that not many athletes do it.  They are intimidated, shy or just plain lazy when it comes to the idea of being proactive and getting in touch with a coach at the college level.  If you can overcome these things, you’ll really stand-out in the mind of a coach that you call.  And, you’ll really jump-start the recruiting process.
  
• Get highlight info, academic info, and a letter/e-mail of interest out to coaches immediately.  If you don’t want to register with NCSA as a verified student-athlete prospect, you will need to do some of this important work yourself.  Coaches need to see what you can do competitively, what kind of grades and test scores you have, and they’ll want to hear from you with some kind of personal statement so they get a sense for who you are and why you would be valuable to their program. Make sure you gather that information and distribute it to as many potential college coaches as possible.

September 1st has come and gone for 2008, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t take action to enhance your opportunities to hear from a college coach.  

The date does, however, give you a good indicator of where you sit on a college coach’s recruiting priority list.  Use that information to make sure you are where you want to be when it comes to getting the chance to play at the next level.  
 

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Athletic Scholarships, Communication, Contact Periods, Contacting Coaches, Restrictions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.