NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

 Most high school recruits struggle with knowing when to cross schools of their list. It can be a hard thing to do, I know from experience, but at some point you have to know when to move on. As a senior recruit, this fall is an important time to start working towards preparing yourself to make a decision on which school is going to be the right fit for you. Crossing schools off your list can help keep your contacts to a manageable level and allow you to really focus in on which school has exactly what you are looking for out of your college experience.

Like most senior prospects by this point in the year you should have a few varsity games under your belt. Whether you know it or not, you have something very valuable in your possession, senior game film. If you’re like most recruits, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “I want to wait until we see senior year film before we make a decision.” more times than you probably would like. Now that your able to provide coaches with what their looking for you need to do it. Don’t waste time; put these coaches in a position where they can make a decision on you. Give them the opportunity to evaluate you as thoroughly as they need to. Don’t keep dancing around in circles with these coaches. You want a decision, they need to be educated enough on you as a student and an athlete to make that decision, it’s as simple as that.

Once the coaches have had the opportunity to evaluate you as thoroughly as they would like, you need to take the gloves off. No more Mr. Nice Recruit, ask the tough questions. Ask what their evaluation of the film was, ask where you stand on their recruiting board, ask if they plan on offering you, ask when this is going to happen. There will be no better time to ask these questions than right after the coaches have evaluated your senior film. If a school is not going to offer you, it’s better to find that out in September vs. January. This way you can plan accordingly and get serious about the options that truly are on your table.

Now, I’ve been in the same position you’re in right now. I know exactly what’s going to happen. You’re going to start asking these questions, and it still might not be clear as to where you stand with these coaches. The old saying goes, “Coaches are used car salesmen in disguise.”  My first piece of advice to you is to trust yourself. If you feel like you’re getting the run around from a school and they don’t seem as interested as some of the other schools you are talking to, odds are you’re right. When coaches want you, you know it. Make sure you understand the recruiting timelines. You don’t want to cross a school off your list simply because they haven’t really gotten to the point where they normally offer players. A simple rule of thumb is, the higher the division level, the earlier they are going to finish recruiting. Typically coaches are going to reach out to players they are interested in on a fairly frequent basis. If you haven’t heard from a coach in awhile you need to reestablish contact and run your list of “feeler” questions by them to gauge their interest.

I can understand exactly how hard this is, I’ve been there myself, but I can promise you, this will make your recruiting process easier to manage. I hear way too often that recruits are overwhelmed with this process. If you take these simple steps to organize your contacts into two separate piles, schools you are serious about, and schools that are on the back burner, you will free up more time to get to know the schools you are serious about. Don’t be afraid to determine a school isn’t right for you, at some point your going to have to cross every school off your list but one. If you start working toward that now, it will benefit you in the long run.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Athletic Scholarships. 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.