Do I Have to be All-State to Play in College?
August 4th, 2009 - byQ: Does an athlete have to one of the best players on the team in order to be recruited and play in college?
This is a tricky question. The easy answer is “no,” you don’t have to be one of the best players on the team in order to play in college. However, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Every team has a different caliber of players, so it’s not always easy to generalize.
- You do need to have athletic talent to play at the collegiate level. Even though many more student-athletes would have the opportunity to play in college if they were realistic and understood how the process works, a certain minimum athletic ability has to be assumed in any answer about the potential to play at the next level.
One of the biggest reasons why student-athletes wind up not playing in college is because they target the wrong schools initially based on an inflated opinion of their ability or a false perception that DI is the only level of play that offers the chance continue their career.
The first step every serious student-athlete needs to take is to receive an objective third party evaluation about the level of play they would be the right fit for. Based on that evaluation, a proactive plan of contacting those colleges is required.
Often times the members of the high school team who go on to play in college are the ones that you would have never guessed. You might even hear parents or teammates snicker, “I cant believe so many coaches are interested in him/her”…Or…”How did he/she get a scholarship, they aren’t that good!” Usually this is a result of a more effective recruiting gameplan, which begins with the evaluation. More than 85% of all opportunities to play in college are NOT at the DI level. Find out what level you can play at, and you will be much better off than the recruit that never does.
Sure, you have to be talented to play in college, but you do not have to be All-State or All-American to continue your career and pursue your dream.
