NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

NCSA caught up with rising basketball athlete Desiree King to talk about her basketball recruiting.

NCSA: What are you doing to stand out in the recruiting process?

King: From the business end, letters and phone calls. Hundreds of letters to colleges, and hundreds of phone calls to coaches. You have to let college coaches know you are interested in playing at the next level. Secondly, club basketball you have to play on a team that plays in the big tournaments, to be notice.

NCSA: Have you taken any unofficial visits yet? Tell us about them.
King: Because of my busy schedule I only had time for one campus visit. I went to Texas Tech and the environment was great. I have had several game visits though, two at Texas Tech and one at Wayland Baptist University.

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Schad TenBroeck is a senior at Tulare Western High School in California. He was a 3 year starter on the varsity team and captain the last 2 years. Schad recently signed his National Letter of Intent (NLI) to play soccer at California State University – Stanislaus. He selected Stanislaus over CSU Monterey Bay, Sonoma State University, CSU San Marcos, and Fresno Pacific University. He has worked very hard on his recruiting and it paid off. NCSA congratulates Schad and wished him the best of luck in the future.

I’ve been on the honor roll, I’ve scored game winning goals, I’ve done many incredible things and visited many incredible places, but knowing that I’ve finally committed to college is one of the best feelings in the world! Yes it is hard work and you must be dedicated. I stayed committed in my soccer workouts and keeping my grades up in the classroom. All that hard work was worth finding my perfect school the University of Great Falls in Montana.

I got the opportunity to make trips to go see a few schools that were interested in me. This was a great experience because I was able to hang out with the kids, go see some of the classes in session, and even practice with the teams. Most importantly, I got my questions answered such as: What are the tuition costs?, Do they offer classes that were apart of my major (Physical Therapy)?, and How many open spots are on the team?
 
 After each college, I took a step back and asked myself, if I honestly saw myself there. Did I feel home? Then I listed all the pluses ad negatives of each college. All of this significantly helped me out.
 
NCSA helped me out so much I can’t thank them enough. They’re dedicated to helping you attend your dream college and also giving you multiple options to choose from. 
 

Debate has raged over the last 18 months regarding new high tech swimsuits that many claim provid a huge competitive advantage and resulted in over 100 world records broken.  In addition to the speed provided, the suits

The Speedo Lazr

also cost  a tremendous amount of money ($250-$350).  Suddenly the collegiate swim world was divided into two categories; those with the suits and those without.

Last week the international swimming federation, FINA,  challenged the validity of 146 suits.  10 suits were banned outright while the remaining 136 need to be altered to fit new specifications.  The NCAA has not yet moved to ban the suits, but most expect an announcement soon.  My question is should they?

Should they take away what is clearly an advancement in technology to allow an athlete to maximize their potential (Don’t new shoes help accomplish this in other sports)?  Should they take away equipment, just because it is expensive (a leather football helmet would certainly be cheaper than anything created today)? What do you think?

I believe one step that we all over look, is leaving a voicemail. We prepare answers to coach’s questions and questions we want to ask the coach, but what if the coach doesn’t answer? Are you prepared to leave a message that will excite the coach to call you back?

First things first, we all have cell phones right? How many times have you re-done your own voicemail? Well, we need to practice and sometimes we need to hear our own voice to hear how we sound-no matter how uncomfortable a task this is. So, I recommend calling yourself and leave a message as if you were going to call a college coach. Then play it back to hear what the coach would hear. Would you call yourself back?

Look in the mirror and leave a message without a smile on your face and then leave one with a smile on your face, do you hear a difference? Be enthusiastic, be happy and demand urgency. It can be as simple as: Hi Coach, this is Susie Smith, I’m extremely interested in your school, I’m a 6’0″ power forward, I’m a junior from Chicago and I need to speak with you today, please call me at 555-555-5555. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Make it your own. Say your phone number slow, so the coach can make out your number. Follow up with an email and if you don’t hear back from the coach in a few weeks, call again.

By the way do you know if the coach can call you back yet? Check out the rules on pages 19 and 20 of the NCAA Guide to the College-Bound Student-Athlete. Good luck!

Imagine this scenario…

As a family, you have done everything expected of you in the recruiting process. 

You have developed a list of realistic colleges that your student-athlete has qualified for.

You have built an athletic and academic website to house your student-athletes qualifications.

You have created a properly edited and enhanced highlight video to display your student-athletes skills.

You have connected your student-athlete’s information with the list of schools and managed to become part of a recruiting list.

Due to all your hard work, a college coach has placed your student-athlete on their recruiting list.  In an effort to initiate a relationship with your student-athlete, the college coach reaches out to your high school coach…What happens next?

Let’s start with a one-question quiz…A college coach contacts your high school coach through phone, email, or a personal visit to express an interest in your student-athlete.  What does your high school coach do?

Is it…

A. Explains to the college coach that your student-athlete would not be a good fit for their program based on their ability

B. Holds all letters and signs of interest from your student-athlete until they feel the time is appropriate (i.e. senior year or after the season is over)

C. Immediately communicates the signs of interest from the college coach with your student-athlete.

D. I have no idea because I have never asked my high school coach

The answer is….it depends!

As we discussed last week here, your high school coach will play an important role in the recruiting process as an intermediary between the college coach and student-athlete.  The reality is that every high school coach has a different policy regarding how and when they alert a student-athlete that a college coach has expressed interest in them. Unfortunately, this lack of uniformity has always been a source of frustration for thousands of families going through the recruiting process.  Each year, families find themselves uttering sentiments similar to the following:

“My high school coach held 15 letters from college coaches until after my senior year and ruined my chances of playing college sports”

“My high school coach failed to let me know that a college coach had come to the high school to meet me or watch me play”

“My high school coach never told me that 5 college coaches called and requested my game film”

First and foremost, let me be clear: In most situations, the high school coach has admirable intentions.  Unfortunately, they might be severely hurting the student-athlete’s chances of playing at the next level by withholding interest from college coaches.  So why would the high school coach ever fail to communicate interest from a college coach to one of their players?  I asked our resident recruiting expert, Former DI Recruiting Coordinator Randy Taylor why this might happen…

“Holding college mail is really an old school idea which some high school coaches still practice.  The reasons I have heard are:

• The HS Coach is worried the player will get a big head and think they have it made and might not work as hard
• The HS Coach is worried the letters or interest from a college coach will distract the athlete
• The HS Coach may want to be in charge of the process and doesn’t want to be bothered until the end of the season
• The HS Coach doesn’t want the college coach to have direct impact with the player in a way that might undermined the team’s goals
• The HS Coach may believe that until the player has completed their sophomore year there isn’t any guarantee that the young man is truly a prospect

Regardless of the reason, the high school coach is most likely hurting the student-athlete by interfering with the process.”

Imagine this scenario…

One student-athlete discusses recruiting regularly with their high school coach and the coach in turns passes along any interest from college coaches for the athlete to pursue…

One student-athlete never discusses recruiting with their high school coach only to find out months later that multiple college coaches had expressed interest.

Which student-athlete will be more successful?

So what can you do?

The key is to communicate with your high school coach.  For a full outline of how to develop the proper relationship and establish recruiting responsibility with your high school coach, click here.

The first step is to clearly state your desire to play collegiate athletics with your high school coach.  The next step is to simply discuss what your high school coach’s policy is about recruiting.  Does he pass along letters immediately from a college coach?  Does he traditionally hold that type of information? The only way you will know is to talk with your coach and do so in a professional manner.  Remember, even if you do not fully agree with your high school coach’s policy, they will be directly talking to college coaches on your behalf…so don’t give them anything negative to tell the college coaches.

I encourage you to open the lines of communication with your high school coach early in the process and find out how they approach the recruiting…it will impact your success!

NCSA encourages and teaches our student athletes to be extremely aggressive during the college athletic recruiting process. Reaching out to college coaches and pro-actively making them aware of your recruiting potential is often the best way to increase the number of coaches offering a scholarship.

However, when we first start talking to a number of student-athletes and families they are reluctant to be aggressive contacting schools thinking that eventually coaches will find them.  They have taken the pro-active step of building a website and putting together a recruiting video, but are unwillingly to take the final step.  Unfortunately this approach often leaves the athlete a few yards short of the goal line.

Athletes hoping to play college sports need to be just as aggressive as college coaches.  Tennessee Coach Lane Kiffin has made an immediate impact in Knoxville by aggressively going after a number of top recruits.  He justifies his aggressive behavior as completely necessary to compete with the res of the SEC.

“We had to make an immediate impact. We couldn’t have sat back in the weeds and hoped we signed a top 10 class in a couple of years.”

“I don’t think if we took a conservative approach there’s no way we would have signed that class and the No. 1 player (running back Bryce Brown) in the country. Kids we’re recruiting have responded to the confidence our staff has shown.”

If a coaching staff shows the willingness to play the recruiting game as hard as possible, can a recruit afford to play with any less intensity?  Unless you are content to leave your future in someone else’s hands, the answer is absolutely not.

Someone asked what it would take to play DI or at least get some looks. At this point in the recruiting process if you are an underclassmen it might be too early to tell where you are at because recruiting is a process and the more you put into it, the more you will get in return. As a rising senior, you should have already received emails, letters, and possibly a phone call or have taken an unofficial visit already. You also have to remember a majority of coaches, especially at the DIII and NAIA levels are not even done with the 2009 class, yet alone looking at 2010. Over the past few weeks I have also received a good amount of DI and DII schools still looking at seniors as well.

I recommend looking over the NCAA Guide to the College-Bound Student-Athlete which on pages 19 and 20, it will explain what coaches can and can’t do, in regards to reaching out to you as a recruit based on your sport and grad year. As the student-athlete you are not limited, however, the college coaches are! Know the rules.

The things most coaches look at, especially DI, is height, weight, season averages, size of your high school, where you are from, awards you have received, accomplishments of your high school team, AAU experience, and of course–grades. The bigger, the stronger, the faster– the better.

Here are some tangibles coaches will look for in an athlete: ball handling skills, court vision, leadership, lateral movements, overall quickness, defensive aggressiveness, versatility with shooting, rebounding, hustle and don’t forget about attitude-this can and will make or break you.

I think it is important to know that only .08% of student-athletes play DI sports. Everyone has the opportunity, it just means there is a lot of work you need to put into the process to turn an opportunity into an offer from a coach.

There is always an exception to the rule, yet this means you need to be an exceptional athlete.

Jesse Cummings, Baseball, Clarke College
Gage Upthegrove, Baseball, Seminole Community College
Adrian Perez, Baseball, Olivet Nazarene University
Jamar Miller, Baseball, Lambuth University
Matthew Cohen, Baseball, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Peter Lasecki, Baseball, Clarkson University
Eric Merling, Baseball, Eastern University
Dexter Jordan, Baseball, Lewis & Clark Community College
Billy Hulme, Baseball, University of Tampa
Mark Jarrett, Baseball, Mesa Community College
Zac Daniels, Baseball, Wittenberg University
Nicholas Montoya, Baseball, West Hills College
Gustavo Marquez, Football, William Penn University
Jake Corcoran, Football, University of Central Missouri
Kyle Patterson, Football, Mount San Jacinto College
Khalid Pitts, Football, Assumption College
Kyle Cooper, Football, Robert Morris University
Steven Foltz, Football, Baldwin-Wallace College
Geoffrey Sissom, Football, University of Colorado — Boulder
Marcos Salinas, Football, Carson-Newman College
Joseph Zequeira, Football, University of Dubuque
Josh Miranda, Football, South Dakota State University
Dylan Hammonds, Football, Jacksonville State University
Michael Basham, Football, Santa Barbara City College
Michael Fioramonti, Football, Case Western Reserve University
Sergio Lopez, Football, Lamar University
George West, Football, Castleton State College
Robert Morrison, Football, Georgia Southern University
Keenan Costello, Football, Webber International University
Brandon Naperstek, Football, William Paterson University of New Jersey
Garett Nekolny, Football, Concordia (WI) University
Dustin Haines, Football, Washington State University
De Andre Cain, Football, Mount San Antonio College
Josh Lohn, Football, Evangel University
Cody Condon, Football, Southwest Minnesota State University
Michael Leonard, Football, Chaffey College
Alex Wilhelmi, Football, St. Ambrose University
Kurt Roskelly, Football, Colgate University
Scott Miller, Football, Willamette University
Reggie Stewart, Football, Mississippi College
Joseph Henderson, Football, University of Arkansas–Monticello
Stephon Mayo, Football, Charleston Southern University
Nick Neari, Football, University of Iowa
Immanuel Garraway, Football, Central Washington University
James Caldwell, Football, Henderson State University
Tommy Edwards, Football, The Citadel
Tony Trahan, Football, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey — Piscataway
Christopher Tozer, Football, Foothill College
Brian Yang, Football, Harvard University
Derrick (Deuce) Johnson, II, Football, Johnson C. Smith University
Jason Samuels, Men’s Basketball, Polytechnic University
Chase Turner, Men’s Basketball, Wayland Baptist University
Benjamin Simms, Men’s Basketball, Elizabethtown College
Russ Burns, Men’s Basketball, Rockhurst University
John Mitts, Men’s Ice Hockey, University at Albany
Colin Bono, Men’s Lacrosse, University of New England
Justin Mills, Men’s Lacrosse, Florida State University
Riley O’Neil, Men’s Lacrosse, Fontbonne University
Troy Kerney, Men’s Lacrosse, Stevens Institute of Technology
Daniel Anthony Montano, Men’s Soccer, California State University — Chico
Saman Fakhriyazdi, Men’s Soccer, Christopher Newport University
Carlos Mendoza, Men’s Soccer, Louisiana State University–Shreveport
Zane Satterfield, Men’s Soccer, Muskingum College
Eric Furukawa, Men’s Soccer, Holy Names University
Jeffery Werts, Men’s Soccer, Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania
Austin Lewis, Men’s Soccer, Austin College
Gus Fowler, Men’s Soccer, Chandler-Gilbert Community College
Michael Tuholski, Men’s Soccer, Palomar College
Hank Robson, Men’s Soccer, Hastings College
Collin Watts, Men’s Swimming, United States Coast Guard Academy
Cameron Pfahler, Men’s Swimming, University of Florida
DJ Taylor, Men’s Swimming, Williams College
Alexander Raouf, Men’s Tennis, SUNY — University at Buffalo
Devon Belcher, Men’s Tennis, University of Redlands
Jonathan Laguer, Men’s Track, Rider University
Jaclyn Enos, Softball, Babson College
Caitlyn Russ, Softball, SUNY–Plattsburgh
Robyn Garing, Softball, Simpson College
Kirstie McDonald, Softball, Bridgewater College
Erin Graham, Softball, College of Dupage
Claire Blake, Softball, Edgewood College
Nicole Eisenmann, Softball, Stonehill College
Noemi Rodriguez, Softball, Miami-Dade Community College
Antionette Carradine, Women’s Basketball, Eastern Nazarene College
Susanna Sousa, Women’s Cross Country, Gordon College
Emily Wyse, Women’s Ice Hockey, Adrian College
Elizabeth Sener, Women’s Lacrosse, Lynchburg College
Dana Drake, Women’s Soccer, Cabrini College
Jessica ‘Jess’ Robinson, Women’s Soccer, Salisbury University
Kayla Cashman, Women’s Soccer, Mesa Community College
Karly Weeks, Women’s Soccer, Santiago Canyon College
Alyssa Esber, Women’s Soccer, NCSA
Jessica Leina’ala Song, Women’s Soccer, Occidental College
Kelly Combest, Women’s Soccer, Concordia (CA) University
Lauren Hannan, Women’s Track, East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania
Ashley Dotson, Women’s Track, Georgia Southern University
Priscilla Magee, Women’s Volleyball, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Kaitlin Loos, Women’s Volleyball, Olivet Nazarene University
Sarah Jundt, Women’s Volleyball, NCSA
Martha Arntson, Women’s Volleyball, Olivet Nazarene University
Elke Teichmann, Women’s Volleyball, Occidental College

I am constantly preaching to potential athletes that they need to focus on promoting their skills to college coaches and don’t need to worry about rankings on internet sites.  This is for the simple reason that these sites do a great job of reporting recruiting news, but their rankings systems are based on which schools have already offered prospects a scholarship.  South Carolina is known as a school that nabs an increasing number of highly regarded recruits, but these same players aren’t ranked nearly as high when they first start receiving offers.

USC Defensive Line coach Brad Lawing has recruited hundreds of players over his more than 20 years as a college coach. He has signed players rated highly by the recruiting analysts and players whom the analysts ignored.

In Lawing’s opinion, the rating of players and the ranking of signing classes is a scam.

“I can take a three-star and make him a four-star, and I can take a four-star and make him a three- or two-star with the contacts I have,” Lawing said. “That’s how ridiculous recruiting on the Internet is. I took Chris Culliver (USC safety) from a three- to a five-star in three weeks. All you’ve got to do is talk to the right people.”

My advice is simple: Don’t worry about websites and worry about developing relationships with college coaches.