NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

When I began working with NCSA after years in coaching at the NAIA, DII, and DIII levels, I was confident I knew everything I needed about recruiting.  After all, I had spent countless hours trying to attract student-athletes to my campus, what more did I have to learn about recruiting? 

After spending the last few years on the other side of the process, attempting to help student-athletes and their families navigate the recruiting maze and find the right college opportunity, I have learned infinitely more than I expected.

If I could take all the knowledge I have gained working with NCSA, I am confident I would be a much better recruiter as a coach today.

One of the most noticeable trends that I have observed while working with hundreds of recruits a year is the importance they place on personal contact.  I am constantly amazed at how much a phone call or handwritten letter can change a recruit’s opinion of a school.  I suppose in the current age of email and internet, it has become increasingly easier to send mass letters and questionnaires.  Unfortunately, recruits are starting to receive more and more of these form letters and they are beginning to lose their effectiveness.  

Student-athletes often enter the NCSA program caught up in the “name game.”  They generally want to attend the schools they have heard of, the schools whose games are shown on TV, or the schools their parents attended.  While we always provide them a realistic assessment of the appropriate level to target in order to shape expectations, it is an uphill battle that I am sure many of you face as coaches.

As part of our curriculum, we require our student-athletes to maintain an online log of all correspondence between them and college coaches.  In addition to tracking the type of correspondence, we also ask them to indicate their level of interest in that program.  What I have seen is that any sort of personal correspondence (handwritten letter or postcard, phone call, etc) instantly increase that student-athlete’s interest in attending the program even if it’s not a DI “name” program. 

As an example, I recently started working with a young athlete who had strong interest in being matched with DI universities.  Although this particular athlete was talented, I strongly believed she should also consider some DII and DIII opportunities based on her academics.  Despite her initial hesitations, we agreed to introduce her NCSA Scouting Report to several coaches outside of the DI level.  What happened next was very telling…

After receiving numerous form responses from DI coaches, she received two very personal responses from a DII and DIII coach.  What was her interest level in those programs?  The highest possible!  All of the sudden, this young lady was very interested in two programs she had initially ruled out because of the division level they compete in. 

As a coach, one of the reasons I succeeded was because I did everything I could to make all my communications with recruits as personal as possible.  However, even though I realized the importance of personal contact back then, I don’t think I fully grasped how much it could sway potential recruits until now.

The moral of the story is one that you probably already know, but might not realize how much of a difference it can make:  As we continue down the path of email and internet, the value of a personal touch will sky rocket.  I encourage you to do everything you can to make all your correspondence with recruits as individualized as possible.  It just might make all the difference.

College Recruiting is largely based on relationships.  Relationships between coaches and players.  Relationships between high school and college coaches.  Relationships between trusted third parties and college coaches.  Many times scholarship decisions are made based on the strength of these relationships.

The University of Oregon recently welcomed several recruits to campus from the Greensboro, NC area based largely on the relationship between a former player and his advisor/mentor Otis Yvelton.  The Oregonian’s Oregon Live Blog reported on the connection.

College football programs rely on myriad connections to develop relationships with potential recruits, whether through families, former coaching colleagues, old friends or even the word of strangers. But it also is important that coaching staffs know people like the 41-year-old Yelverton, who has, through nearly half a life of playing football and 18 years of youth and high school coaching, built a deep knowledge and connection with talent in Greensboro and the Carolinas at large. This year for the Ducks, it might be more important – and rewarding – than ever before.

Yelverton estimates that since 2000, when he began advocating for Greensboro-area high school football players and editing and distributing their highlight videos to colleges, he has helped 128 athletes continue their football careers. Some have played for high school teams he’s coached. Others, like those in his summer traveling party, learned from him as youngsters but now play for other coaches; Scales, Allen and King are teammates at Northern Guilford High, and defensive end Chris McCain is attending the newly-established Central Carolina Sports Academy.

“I have kids who are in Ivy League schools as well as big time Division I schools,” said Yelverton, who recently became the athletic director and football coach at Oak Ridge (N.C.) Military Academy. “I can pick up the phone and call the head coach at Harvard or Princeton or Yale as easily as I can call the coach at Alabama or N.C. State or Duke.”

Yelverton is quick to distinguish himself from the middle men or financially motivated “handlers” who have become increasingly prevalent figures in college recruiting. His time and effort working the phone and organizing the piles of recruiting packets in his home office is strictly voluntary; he says he enjoys the exact part of the sport that many high school coaches was just as soon avoid.

“I’m a coach who feels it is his duty to make sure every kid has an opportunity to go to college,” Yelverton said. “As an African-American male, I want to be a positive role model in these kids’ lives.

“I don’t determine (their college choice). We evaluate a school’s depth chart, looking at how many players are redshirt freshmen, and how many are seniors. When they come to make a decision, I’m not part of it.”

Alston had scholarship offers from across the Southeast, but he liked Oregon as a youngster and also was intrigued by Cal. Yelverton reached out to each school’s running backs coach – Gary Campbell at Oregon and Ron Gould at Cal – and they ended up as Alston’s finalists. His father, Remene Alston Sr., said the attention from programs near and far was a boon for players in their area, and credits Yelverton for it happening.

“If he’s got a kid that believes in himself and wants to go somewhere and be somebody, he’s the type who will bend over backwards to help that child,” Alston Sr. said.

“We have a lot of talent here, and a lot of talent ends up working in the grocery store or driving school buses or doing something they don’t want to do because they didn’t have anybody going to bat for them. You’ve got to sell your son or daughter to these colleges. You gotta help them out.”

The help that Yelverton describes is exactly what NCSA specializes in.  We have connections with every college program in the country to make initial introductions and also have the experience to guide student-athletes through the process.  Some student-athletes use “one man shops,” like Yelverton, but my question would be:  Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable trusting a professional?

One common complaint I hear from Student Athletes that are unwilling to explore options at school outside of Division I, are concerns that the smaller programs lack a number of the characteristics of larger athletic programs.  Well, the statement is truthful in some regards, many recruits would probably be shocked if they took the time to really investigate how many similarities actually do exist.

This season Marist University moved to the Pioneer Football League and with the move has come a number of changes that most would associate with larger football programs.  The New York Times Quad Blog took a look at the move.

But beneath the calm earlier this week, there was a sense of anticipation for a new era of football for the Marist Red Foxes. Their game against Drake on Saturday is not only the home opener but also a graduation of sorts. It represents Marist’s entry into the Pioneer Football League and its latest step on a journey from a regional program into a national one in the N.C.A.A. Division I Football Championship Subdivision.

“Any chance we get to play teams we’ve never seen before is exciting,” said Nick Andre, a fifth-year senior middle linebacker and captain. “We get to go places. Most of the guys from our team are from the Northeast. We haven’t been to Iowa. We haven’t been to Indiana. We haven’t been to the Midwest.”

The 10-team nonscholarship league is starting its 17th season. It stretches from coast to coast, from Marist to the University of San Diego. It hits the Southeast as well as the Midwest. And it has opened a new recruiting world for Marist, which played as an independent last season after the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Football League dissolved after the 2007 season with just Marist and Iona left.

“Once we knew we were going into this new league, we sent a coach out to Florida, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Georgia and North Carolina,” said Jim Parady, who took over the program in 1992 and has the most wins in team history at 90-84-1. “We now could go out and say to a kid: ‘Come to Marist. Now you’re going to be able to get out and see all these different parts of the country and not just be a regional school.’ It’s put us on a whole different level of student-athlete.”

The league’s roster includes institutions more often associated with basketball: Butler, Dayton, Valparaiso and Davidson. Teams play four league road games per season, and the regular-season champion plays the Northeast Conference winner in the Gridiron Classic. But the league’s 10 college presidents voted unanimously last week to apply for an automatic bid to the N.C.A.A. playoffs. So the Red Foxes have embraced the Pioneer spirit.

“Last year, we just played to win,” said Chris Debowski, a senior quarterback from California. “But this year, we’re playing to win, and we’re playing for a conference title and a chance to play in a postseason game.”

Amid lots of doom and gloom economic news of shrinking sports budgets is an under-reported news story:  Rather than cutting sports most schools are actually adding programs.  Some schools are adding sports to boost revenue, others hope to enhance their marketing zeal thus boosting enrollments, and others are simply adding sports as a requirement.

SOURCE: NCAA

The LA Times reported on why schools are adding sports.

Overall, the AP found those colleges plan to add a total of 174 new teams and drop 59 over the next two years.

The reasons aren’t always economic — complying with rules that demand gender equality in sports and that require Division III schools to carry a minimum of 12 sports starting in 2010 also play a role. However, the economy keeps popping up as an important and often critical reason for the expansion, particularly in Divisions II and III, where athletes often don’t receive scholarships.

Adams State in Alamosa, Colo., will add men’s golf, men’s soccer, women’s lacrosse and swimming teams for both sexes. It’s one of 11 Division II schools adding sports for economic reasons, the AP found.

Lake Erie College, east of Cleveland, is bringing on men’s and women’s lacrosse and men’s and women’s tennis this year, its first in Division II.

Georgia’s Columbus State is adding coed rifle, women’s golf, and men’s and women’s track in 2009-10, the largest single-year expansion in the Division II school’s history.

“There is a perception out there from Division I that adding sports just consumes all the money,” said Adams State athletic director Larry Mortensen. “But at our level it’s just the opposite — generating sports adds revenue. It generates enrollment.”

Lake Erie’s student-athlete population is expected to triple, boosting overall enrollment at the 1,200-student college and forcing the school to bolster its curriculum, athletic director Griz Zimmerman said.

For sport-loving students and their parents, the trend means more opportunities and college choices.

Freshman Meredith Howe had never heard of Lake Erie before she was contacted by the women’s lacrosse coach prior to her senior year at Jamesville-Dewitt High School near Syracuse, N.Y. Howe had looked at several colleges and none stuck out. She knew she didn’t want to attend a Division I school.

It turns out Lake Erie was the right fit.

“It was my favorite. It’s tiny but it’s quaint. It was a sweet deal,” Howe said. “I was kind of hoping to pick a school for the sport. I picked Lake Erie because since the program’s new, I would still have a life. Lacrosse wouldn’t be 24-7 for me.”

West Virginia Wesleyan will field a Division II women’s lacrosse team in spring 2011 that athletic director Ken Tyler estimates could generate up to $159,000 in its inaugural year for the 1,200-student college.

“That’s significant for a small private liberal arts school like us,” Tyler said.

Wesleyan plans to bring in 20 new athletes for the first season. Tuition and room and board for one year at the school is about $30,000.

The school says it will wind up in the black even after it divides scholarships worth a total of $150,000 among the athletes. The costs also include the team’s $27,000 budget and the $30,000 coach’s salary.

The key take away for athletes hoping to continue their sport in college is that your options are growing.  The harder part will be to find out exactly where all these opportunities exist.  NCSA already works with all of these schools  in other sports, which makes us a natural recruiting stop for any first year program.  Coaches are hungry to search our Recruit-Match database for athletes to fill out their new rosters.

Legendary former Midwest High Football Coach Chris Geesman and longtime asst. Wes Doi have an outstanding new book out entitled “The Geesman Game.” It opens with Geesman sharing “60 Things I Learned in 30 Years at Penn High School.” Geesman won 339 games and five 5A state titles during his time at the helm of Penn High School in northern Indiana. There is a wealth of insights in the book that would help any Coach, A.D., Parent, Administrator or Athlete. One high school football coach immediately ordered copies for all the coaches on his staff.

At NCSA, we guide families and provide the expertise to put together a short, compelling highlight tape to capture the attention of College Coaches. In all his years of coaching, Geesman did what he could to help his football players in the recruiting process. In his book, Geesman shares his insights regarding video when he helped his players with recruiting:

We try to present the kids in the best possible light. We put a brief highlight film together, even though a lot of college coaches say they don’t want a highlight tape. They only want a game film, but we put a very short highlight clip of the players best plays on the tape before the game film. That’s only the best plays, not decent plays, but only the best. I know a young man who got a scholarship, because we put that short clip with his game tape. The scholarship was between him and another player. The head coach watched the game film of the other player, and started to watch our player’s tape, but he only watched that “good play” introduction and never watched the game film. Our player was offered the scholarship. – Chris Geesman, in the new book “The Geesman Game” (Corby Publishing)

So many families do not know how to successfully put together video, or even have a plan for video. A video that is wisely put together can possibly mean thousands of dollars of scholarship money.

Penn High football players have been very fortunate to have head coaches who have been involved in the recruiting process. It is not always that way. At NCSA, we help guide you in the process. As it was for the player above, video can make all the difference in the world. If you would like an evaluation of where you stand with video and what level of College you would best fit be sure to contact our scouting center.

Recruiting these days has become a year-round process.  College coaches can’t afford to take any time off, or they might find themselves out of a job.  It has become the exact same for recruits.  If you sit around waiting for coaches to find you, its likely that you will find yourself without a scholarship.

As a part of ESPN’s Recruiting 101 series JC Shurbert broke down each month and examined what many of the top recruits should be doing.  Take a look at February, the traditional beginning of the recruiting calendar year.

NCAA recruiting calendar

The first week of February through the day after national signing day is a dead period. During this period, coaches can’t make in-person recruiting contacts on or off campus; they can’t allow unofficial visits or hold official visits, conduct in-person evaluations or offer complimentary tickets to sporting events on campus. After that, coaches are limited to phone calls, which the NCAA limits to one per week. A prospect can call a coach an unlimited amount of times.

Signing Day

The first Wednesday in the month is the traditional national signing day for college football. It’s the day when 98 percent of all college prospects sign binding National Letters of Intent with the programs of choice.

Junior Days

February also is a month in which many colleges hold “junior days” on campus. This is when many of the top underclassmen are invited in for an unofficial visit to learn about a specific program. Players and their families meet with coaches, tour campuses and facilities, talk to academic advisers and get a feel for the university and its football program. It’s usually during basketball season, so some players get the chance to take in a college hoops game.

Combines

February also is the month that combines, like the Under Armour combines and the Nike combines, kick into full gear. During the weekend of Feb. 14-15 this year, four-star Alabama safety commit Jarrick Williams (Mobile, Ala. /Blount) attended the Mobile Nike combine while Under Armour All-American and five-star Florida safety commit Jonathan Dowling (Bradenton, Fla. /Southeast) and five-star cornerback Lamarcus Joyner (Fort Lauderdale, Fla./Saint Thomas Aquinas) were among the slew of talented players at the Under Armour combine in Davie, Fla.

National Underclassmen combines

Combines aren’t only for the rising seniors. Rising juniors, sophomores and freshmen start to get their names out there to college programs by competing in the National Underclassmen combines, which run from February through July.

And that is only looking at one month!  Each event within the month has numerous options, making the process even more complicated.  Many questions arise such as:

What if I don’t receive a phone call?  I’m only get call from assistants, is that a sign?  What if I haven’t been invited for a Junior Day?  What should I do at a Junior Day?  What does being invited to a Junior Day mean? Which combine should I attend?  How many combines should I attend?  Should I attend combines as a Freshman?

The truth is the matter is that there aren’t any steadfast answers for any of these questions, nor is that the complete list of questions recruits should be asking.  That is why recruits need guidance when they are going through the complicated process.  NCSA specializes in offer just that sort of guidance to make sure recruits know the answers to every recruiting question that comes up.

If you haven’t heard of Bears rookie Jarron Gilbert you may have seen his amazing YouTube video.

As popular as the video has been, Gilbert’s one regret is that he didn’t think of doing the same thing in high school.

Although he made all-league as a senior, San Jose State was the only school to show interest in him, and it only offered a chance to try out as a walk-on. Neither his mom, Alayna (McGee) Gilbert, a former college basketball player, nor his dad, Daren Gilbert, a former New Orleans Saints offensive lineman, could believe it.

”I was shocked he didn’t get recruited out of high school with his size,” Gilbert’s dad said. ”I guess even at 6-5, 260 pounds he was undersized for those big boys coming out of high school. I thought he could put on weight and someone would want him.”

His dad may have been shocked, but the reality is that he shouldn’t have been.  College prospects need to worker harder than ever to make sure that they are pro-active in the recruiting process.  There are no guarantees that if you are good enough they will find you.  Don’t make the same mistake that Jarron and thousands of other athletes have made, get started recruiting now.