NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

Signing Day is coming fast.  Be sure to join us on the all day for a Live NCSA Blog as Coach Randy Taylor an Coach Bob Chmiel give us thier immediate reactions and evaluations on the top players and top recruiting classes in America.  Later in the day Coach and Coach will reveal their NCSA Top 10 Recruiting Classes. 

Chmiel and Taylor began the season by releasing his Takkle Top 200 players in America Powered by the NCSA.  They will cap the season with the release of a special episode of Takkle Primetime where they review the top recruits and give a final analysis on the 2009 recruiting classes.

Of course, recruiting is now a year round job, so Coach Taylor will immediately turn his focus to the 2010 class and the launch of NCSA Recruiting 360 where he will be working to evaluate the top underclassman in America to help college coaches identify top athletes earlier than ever before!

Coach Randy Taylor’s coaching career began in 1979 at his alma mater Illinois and continued to UNLV and San Jose State. He was UCLA director of football operations from 1996 to 2003 where he was honored in 2001 as the nation’s No. 1 Director of Football Operations for recruiting success.    Coach Chmiel brings more than 25 years of recruiting experience, including seven years as Notre Dame’s Director of Football Operations, Recruiting Coordinator and Assistant Coach under Lou Holtz. In addition, Coach Chmiel also served as University of Michigan’s Football Recruiting Coordinator and Assistant Coach under Bo Schembechler.

  I had the opportunity to go out to Harper College to talk with the softball team on time management.  This proved to be a great experience as we discussed some strategies and tools which we can utilize in managing our time wisely. 

I started off with an ice breaker.  I asked each person to indicate on paper which of the following they felt best described them: circle, square, triangle, rectangle, or squiggle.

Then we talked a bit about what characteristics went with those symbols. It was fun to see what category each person fit into.  This can be a fun introduction to do with a group or to see where you fit in.

We are all given 24 hours in a day.  Why is it that some people seem to manage so much more in their lives and we feel so overwhelmed?

We discussed how each of us spends time in a day.  It is a good practice to list how many hours we spend on activities, such as: watching TV, playing video games, classes, homework/study time, hanging out with friends, your sport, job, family time, personal care, sleep, meals.  After adding those numbers up, many of them found out it was over 24 hours.  Obviously we do combine some activities – watching TV while eating and so forth.  But it was a good exercise in seeing exactly how much time we spend on daily activities. 

I encourage you to do this short test on your own.  This might be a real eye opener to see where you are spending your time.  Some of us might not have too many hours left in a day at the end.  Sleep is usually one that gets cut – or family time and important relationships.  Then we get stressed out and this all adds to our time with worry.

I wanted to make sure this point was clear and did a similar demonstration to the “Rock, pebble, sand – time management” one.  I asked for a volunteer from the group and had her fill her jar with the small things first: water, pebbles, larger rocks and finally 2 large balls.  The size of the rocks symbolized how much meaning the activities are in our life hold.   The bigger rocks were more significant activities.  This proved that if we put in all our lesser activities in our calendars first, we will not have time in the day to fit in our most vital events or activities.

We definitely need to prioritize our activities and see what is most important to us – what goals we want to achieve in life.  We then need to have a plan put in place so we can make sure we get those important things done and meet the deadlines.

We took a few minutes to list the 3 most important objectives or goals that we had right now.  We also tried to gauge how much time we need to set aside for those goals during the week. 

There are 3 things which can stop us from achieving this:

1. Fear (false evidence appearing real)

2. Fatigue (most adults need 7-8 hours – Lack of sleep will affect our performance, focus, mood, health, weight gain.)

3. Boredom (if we set our goals too low we will not be motivated to achieve.  Set a high bar for our lives.  Don’t do just enough to get by.)

People who are high achievers are not bored!  They are always looking to take that next step to take things on a higher level.

There are tools out there to help plan out a day, week, or month and even add the hours up for us.  It is important that we post our calendars and carry them with us so we know what we have to do for the day.

Have a tough time completing those assignments on time?  There is an assignment calculator tool that gives you daily tasks to complete and helful links to go to if you are stuck on any of the tasks!

Wrapping things up,  I had them each share with a partner what things they would take away from the talk as well as what they could do to put one of the points into action.   This was valuable, as some shared they need to get more sleep, start using a daily planner, identify the fears she had, set longer range goals or set higher standards and bars for themselves.

  Couldn’t we all use a bit more time in a day?  Put some of those plans into action and we may find we can get more out of our day within the 24 hours eavh of us is given!  Share ideas that you use for keeping organized and managing your time.

The lack of a National Letter of Intent to sign as a second semester senior can be a source of frustration and worry for student-athletes around the country.

My first piece of advice:  Take a deep breath, relax, and refocus.  There is still time.

Now, let’s talk strategy on how to approach the remainder of the recruiting process.

The increased media coverage regarding NLI signing day has led to the expectation that if a student-athlete is not signing a scholarship offer on the first day of the period then they are not going to receive an athletic scholarship. 

Fortunately, that is far from the truth.

NLI signing is a PERIOD not a DAY!

NLI signing period lasts months in most sports which means at any point during that period, a student-athlete can officially accept an athletic scholarship offer from a DI or DII college.  Make sure to become familiar with the sport specific periods that I outlined last week.  Student-athletes who sign on the first day of the period typically are confident they have found the best fit and would like to finalize their recruiting process and college choice.  Most student-athletes do not fall into this category and when you consider the number of DIII, NAIA, and Junior colleges, a lot of opportunities to play at the next level do not fall into this category either.

In some situations, student-athletes wait because they are unprepared to officially accept an athletic scholarship offer from a particular school in the hopes that they will receive a more attractive offer from a preferred school.

In other instances, a student athlete has not been offered an athletic scholarship as of the first day of the signing period and thus has nothing to officially accept.  If this is the case, then it is time to seriously analyze your recruiting options.

If I have not been offered an athletic scholarship by the beginning of the signing period, do I still have a chance?

Sure!  Every year student athletes receive scholarship offers during the signing period despite not having a verbal offer before that time.  Keep in mind that recruiting is constantly changing, especially when it comes time to making the commitment official between the student-athlete and the college coach.  College coaches are choosing between a large number of student-athletes and vice versa.  Not everyone can have their first choice!

College coaches, like student-athletes, must adapt to the current recruiting situation based on who has accepted their offers and who has decided to go elsewhere.  This changing environment opens up opportunities for other student-athletes who may have not been offered as of yet. 

As a general rule of thumb, lower level DI and DII colleges will finalize their recruiting boards later in the cycle than the top tier DI schools.  These coaches will typically wait to see which student-athletes are still available to pursue and then make a push towards signing them.

What should I do if I haven’t received an offer yet?

The best advice is to become proactive.  Find out where you stack up on the priority list of all the college coaches who have expressed interest in you.  This might require emailing, calling, or even visiting college coaches in an effort to garner that coveted athletic scholarship offer.  The majority of college coaches still have roster spots and scholarships to offer…make sure your name is at the top of their list.

As Brandon Liles, Head Recruiting Coach with NCSA, says, “The best way to receive interest is to show interest.” 

What if I never receive a NLI?

Again, this does not mean you cannot play collegiate athletics!

This most likely means you will need to refocus your expectations.  The NLI only encompasses DI and DII colleges which does not include hundreds of opportunities at some wonderful DIII, NAIA, and Junior Colleges around the country which might still be looking for prospects.  Over 65% of all collegiate programs are at the DIII, NAIA, and Junior College level!

If you are not receiving serious interest from any DI and DII coaches by the beginning of the signing period, then you should accept that as an indication that DIII, NAIA, or Junior College might be the most realistic option.  Serious interest includes regular communication via email, phone calls, or letters.

By the time the signing periods have arrived, the recruiting process for most student-athletes and college coaches has been going on for years.  Evaluations have been made, relationships have been established, and regular admissions deadlines are approaching.  Hopefully by this point in the process, student-athletes have taken the 5 steps needed, beginning with an objective evaluation, and are analyzing their options to find the perfect fit.

However, if you are a senior and feel like you got a late start getting involved in the process and are still open to exploring what opportunities that might still be available, make sure to get an objective athletic and academic evaluation which will focus your search on the right schools.  There is still time!

Reading comprehension is, for most students, the hardest section on the SAT and ACT.  Mastering the essential vocabulary for this section of the exams will raise your score.

So here’s a tip: starting as early as the 9th or 10th grade, learn 10 vocabulary words every week. By the time you’re in 11th or 12th grade, you’ll have memorized hundreds of new words necessary for success not only on the SAT and ACT but also in the classroom and, for that matter, in life. 

For an online course with lessons and exercises on 1,000 of the most frequently tested SAT and ACT vocabulary words, consider Academic Approach’s SAT/ACT Vocabulary Course at http://www.academicapproach.com/.

All NCSA members receive a discount on Academic Approach online programs, contact NCSA to retrieve the code. 

The College Admissions Process: What Is the Right Thing For A Parent To Do?

When they were high school seniors back in the seventies or eighties, most baby boomers walked into the SAT exam without any test preparation and sent off but a handful of applications. Now parents of high school students, those same boomers are discovering that, when it comes to their own children’s pursuit of the perfect-match college, things are not as simple as they were back in the day. Indeed, many parents of current high school students are realizing that the intense competition for coveted slots at the most sought after colleges rules out the casual approach that they took way back when.

As selective college admissions have become increasingly competitive due to the swelling number of students who hope to enroll at top-tier American colleges and universities, applicants have sought ways of boosting their odds of acceptance by seeking help in both standardized test preparation and the college application process. To be sure, many parents are discovering that out-of-school test prep tutoring and college counseling have become the norm in their children’s school communities.  Of course, these same parents are also discovering that an often-befuddling spectrum of test prep and college counseling services has emerged in recent decades.

A pair of recent articles in the Wall Street Journal draws attention to the dramatically altered landscape of college admissions and the challenges of wandering across it for the first time. One article, entitled “SAT Prep: Issac says no to outside help,” presents one family’s attempt to make sense out the new rules of the game. The article presents a father’s proud consternation that his son has said “no” to outside help of any kind despite his father’s assumption that precisely such help would be best for his college-bound child. The other, entitled “Families seek help with college,” discusses the brisk business that test prep companies and independent college consultants are currently enjoying, despite-or perhaps because of the troubled economy. What is the right thing for a parent to do?

Although the article about the student named Issac who refused any help implies that he chose the high road of  “personal responsibility and a touch of DIY ethics,” the other article makes the case that some families invest in such outside help in order to increase their children’s chances of gaining admission to one of  “the top-tier schools, many of which offer the most generous aid packages.” Reductive arguments about the ethics and socio-economics of seeking help in the college admissions process do not necessarily illuminate-and certainly do not exhaust-the issue. 

Of course, when Issac said no to test prep help, Issac was making a decision that may well have been the best decision for him. Clearly, some students may be motivated enough to prepare on their own. Certainly, some might need the structure of a test prep class and others might be best served by a one-on-one tutoring program. A colleague who is a college counselor at a nearby prep school offers the analogy of how gym memberships are used by different people: some people are motivated enough to just go to the gym and workout on their own, some might need to enroll in a cardio-training class, and others would be best served by one-on-one sessions with a personal trainer. The question lingers: What is the right thing for a parent to do?

Pragmatically speaking, we recommend that parents approach the college admissions process by further informing themselves.  As concerns the specific issues raised in the two articles from the Wall Street Journal that we cited above, we advise:

1) that parents begin a conversation with their child’s college counselor at school no later than February of the junior year in order to develop as realistic a sense as possible of how their child’s broader profile (transcripts, test scores, co-curriculars, etc.) compares to the profiles of students admitted in recent years to the schools that their child wants to attend.

2) that parents use their child’s December PSAT results to assess if test prep might be wise and, if so, what type of prep would be best suited to their child’s individual needs: Is their child motivated like Issac? might an online course be effective? Would a classroom experience be more productive? Are there certain areas of weakness that need more work than others? Etc.

3) that parents be certain to carefully vet any test prep program that they are considering for their child in order to assure that it offers an approach to the tests that meets their child’s specific needs while also meeting best practices guidelines established by the National Association of College Admissions Counselors:

* Familiarity with test question format

* Familiarity with test administration procedures

* Alignment with skills necessary to master college preparatory coursework

* Instruction in basic study habits and skills

Courtney Federle, PhD from The University of California, Berkeley, has taught at The University of Chicago and is currently working as a teacher and curriculum developer at Academic Approach.

Last week I wrote a post about the number of women’s hockey programs offered at NCAA institutions. It got me to thinking about my own recruiting process and how drastically the process has changed. Today, girls have so many more options than we did only 10 years ago. At that time there were only a handful of Division I programs and all of them were on the east coast. USA Hockey Magazine published a great article about the rise of the girl’s/women’s game.

I recently returned from the National Soccer Coaches Association (NSCAA) convention in St. Louis, Missouri. This was the 6th time the NCSA scouting center set up camp at this event to mingle with men’s and women’s soccer coaches from all divisions. We showed off our Recruit-Match database and passed out prospect DVDs. There are still a lot of college coaches looking for 2009 grads! If you have not committed to a college yet it is not too late as long as you take action now!

I just got back from the NSCAA coaching convention in St. Louis, where I spoke with a number of college coaches.  The question I kept asking these coaches was “From a recruiting standpoint, what recommendations can you give players?” The number one answer from a majority of the coaches was VIDEO!  Coaches want to see your video whether it’s a highlight video or game footage, this is a great way for coaches to evaluate you.  One coach told me that “he will not look at a player unless he has video.”  With recruiting budgets getting smaller, these coaches cannot make each and every tournament you play at.  If you don’t have any footage or aren’t taping your games, I suggest you start.

 Last week, we featured an article that discussed how admissions offices are taking a page from the athletic departments in their recruiting methods.  Well, this week, an article in The Gazette out of Iowa, discusses a tool that admissions officers at Cornell College are using that might be beneficial for college coaches as they recruit prospects nationwide. 

“Cornell is one of few colleges or universities in Iowa using the webcam technology for admission interviews. The technology allows the college and prospective students to tighten travel budgets while maintaining the process of initial interviews.”

This creative use of technology seems to have streamlined the admissions process for Cornell.

“It also means Cornell, which gets about 3,500 applications each year for 370 new-student slots, can conduct more interviews with interested students, who more often in this economy wait to make campus visits until after they get accepted to schools, Stroud said.”

Basically, the webcam has made recruiting students to Cornell cheaper and easier.  Is there any other sort of process that would be able to utilize this efficient use of resources?  How about the athletic recruiting process?

I am confident that some college coaches have explored the option of incorporating webcams into their recruiting efforts, but to what extent, I have no idea.  However, I can guarantee that if other admissions offices find this tool as advantageous as Cornell already has, it will not be long before plenty of athletic departments are following the trend. 

How do you think the webcam technology could help recruits and college coaches develop relationships?  Darrell Aaron, the Cornell Assistant Director of Admissions of Cornell seems to think it really helps him connect with the potential student he is interviewing and vice versa, “Students can really tell if you’re being fake,” he said. “I’m goofy, I like to make jokes. This way they can see your expression.”

Given the various returns that both sides might see from the use of a webcam, I think it has the potential to be a new recruiting tool with staying power.  What do you think?

In what seems to be a trend, SI.com ran another amazing story about recruiting.  This week, Andy Staples took a hard look at a number of different issues including how geography plays a significant role in recruiting and also how DI recruits pick their schools.  This article is truly a must read for anyone who watches college football, but I would like to point out two of the more interesting aspects that I took away from Staples’ piece:

How recruits pick their school

There are so many potential factors that weigh on a student athlete’s decision about which school they will ultimately attend and a model published in the February 2008 issue of The Journal of Sports Economics examined these and attempted to rank them.

From the article:

“A  trio of economists, in 2005, designed a model to predict the college choices of sought-after recruits. The model created by Mike DuMond, Allen Lynch and Jennifer Platania– rabid college football fans who met while Ph D. candidates at Florida State — found that among heavily recruited players choosing from among only BCS-conference schools, distance from home is the most important factor in a recruit’s choice. The model was published in the February 2008 issue of The Journal of Sports Economics.

The model found that a school’s academic standing — whether it’s in the top 50 of the US News and World Report rankings — provides a miniscule bump. So does the final poll ranking of the school the previous season. What didn’t matter to players shocked the economists more. According to the data, the players weren’t, on the whole, worried about the depth chart, how many national titles schools had won or how many players the school put in the NFL.

“Recruits tend to have short memories,” said DuMond, who works for a private economics firm in Tallahassee, Fla. In general, DuMond says, the top recruits are looking for “a place that is in a BCS conference with a big stadium that is close enough that they can be seen by family and friends.”

It is surprising to see how little impact the academic standing of the school had on recruit’s choices and even more shocking to learn about their indifference towards the depth chart.  Essentially, these recruits have minor concer for the degree they will receive and even less concern about the amount of playing time they will receive immediately.  From a personal standpoint, its almost the exact opposite of how I would pick a school. 

Where colleges recruit

The next intriguing part of the article was how geographically concentrated the recruiting efforts of the most successful colleges are.  Generally speaking, they would prefer to recruit close to home.  This “backyard” mentality is especially true with schools that are located in or around football talent rich states such as California, Texas, and Florida and more generally, southern, warm weathered schools.  It seems as though schools located in colder climates or less talent rich states such as Nebraska, Notre Dame, and Michigan face an uphill battle when recruiting players. 

From the article:

“So the coaches at schools in less talent-dense states must cast a wider net. They also must use their recruiting resources wisely, since they’ll have to spend more money than a staff that can drive to see half the players it recruits. Rutgers, for example, takes most of its players from its home state of New Jersey, but since other schools (Syracuse, Boston College and Penn State) also raid the Garden State, the Scarlet Knights must fill out their roster from somewhere else. Coach Greg Schiano, a former Miami assistant, grabs a huge supplement from Florida. From 2004-08, Rutgers drew 42.7 percent of its players from New Jersey and 25.4 percent from Florida. The program even rented a billboard on I-95 in Florida to advertise to potential recruits. “

This article makes me wonder if traditional powerhouses from the past like Nebraska and Notre Dame will ever return to their glory days given their inherent disadvantages.  What do you think?