Last night Northwestern Coach Pat Fitzgerald spoke to the Tom Lemming Underclassmen All-Area Team Banquet powered by NCSA. Check back later today for his full speech. Powerful advice for student-athletes.
Letter from Coach, Sample #5
Dear Lisa:
Thank you for your interest in our college program. Our recruiting is on a national level, and we are looking for talented students who can meet the high-level athletic and academic demands of a challenging program. Please complete the enclosed questionnaire and return it as soon as possible. Include a schedule of events where you will be competing. If you have video available, send it to us at your convenience.
Thank you,
Coach Anderson
What this letter means, and how a student-athlete should respond:
The coach is responding to the student’s letter, but Coach Anderson has not seen her compete. The comment that the program is recruiting on a national level implies that the coach expects to recruit players who are at the very top of their graduating class. While a schedule request and offer to view a video are encouraging, no actual commitment has been made to evaluate the athlete. She should pursue her interest in this school, but keep her options open!
This sample letter and advice were taken from Athletes Wanted – The game plan for maximizing athletic scholarship potential. If you enjoyed this information, I encourage you to check out the complete book here.
If you are a serious recruit who has yet to receive letters from college coaches, you might be falling behind. In order to take the right steps, click here.
Coach Taylor – You have mentioned a number of times that leadership is an important component in the recruiting process. How can athletes demonstrate leadership during games?
Every athlete has experienced a frustrating moment, but not all respond the same way. Your reaction to adverse situations on the field allows spectators to judge your character, personality and temperament. The way you carry yourself can win favor, or frustration, from college scouts.
College coaches evaluate size, talent and physical strength, but they also watch for intangibles. College coaches are responsible for creating the best team, and great teams are made up of more than just talented players. Most college coaches place tremendous value in characteristics beyond speed, size and agility. College coaches seek new players who will be a positive influence on campus and in the locker room, and get along well with the rest of the team. College coaches want to recruit hard workers, not prima donnas.
When a college coach travels to watch you play, he or she hopes you will be the one to hold your head high, even when things do not go your way. College coaches hope you will congratulate your teammate when he or she makes a great play, or more importantly, when they don’t. College coaches want to see you listen to your coach, and interact with your teammates. College coaches do not want to see you hang your head, pout, or argue with the referee.
Send your recruiting questions to askcoachtaylor@ncsasports.org
If you would like to speak with a NCSA Recruiting Coordinator about your personal recruiting situation, call 866-579-6272.
Coach Taylor – I’ve heard you say numerous times that it is not my high school coach’s responsibility to get me a college scholarship. I understand your point, but what CAN I expect him to do during the recruiting process?
We have touched on this subject a great deal in the past and you can check out some of our other articles here and here.
Your family should be in control of the recruiting process…no one else. The high school coach certainly could play a valuable role, but due to limited time and resources cannot be expected to get each of their student athletes recruited. Successfully navigating the recruiting process requires significant effort. I suggest you meet with your coach and ask these questions:
What specific type of assistance will you be providing our family with the recruiting process?
Which college programs do you have relationships with?
Which college programs have expressed interest in me?
Why do you not allow families to have access to the highlight films?
Can we borrow your film to duplicate or film our own video in order to send to colleges?
If you are unhappy with the answers, then you are not out of luck, you will just have more work to do as a family or might want to look into seeking professional guidance. Remember, regardless of who does what, everyone needs to take these five steps to get recruited.
If you would like to speak with a NCSA Recruiting Coordinator about your personal recruiting situation, call 866-579-6272.
Coach Taylor – You talk a lot about receiving recruiting letters. My high school coach has been known to hold players letters. What should I do about it?
Holding college mail is really an old school idea which some high school coaches still practice. The reasons I have heard are:
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!
Send your recruiting questions to askcoachtaylor@ncsasports.org
If you would like to speak with a NCSA Recruiting Coordinator about your personal recruiting situation, call 866-579-6272.
Picture this:
It’s the biggest game of the year against your arch rival high school. The stands are packed. Despite the pressure, you have the best game of your life and everyone watching recognizes you are the best player on the field. This includes dozens of college coaches, who have read your local paper and realize the big game is taking place. Based on your performance, all of them decide to offer you a scholarship to attend their schools.
This is exactly how the recruiting process works…or is it?
Unfortunately, the vision above is far from reality. Each week, NCSA receives dozens of questions similar to this:
“How can I get college coaches / recruiters out to my game?”
Most of the recruits with this question believe that having a college coach come to your high school game is the first and most important step in the recruiting process. Again, this is far from reality.
I asked NCSA VP of Recruiting Operations, Lisa Strasman to share her advice with recruits who are waiting for college coaches to attend their games. Here are her five doses of reality and advice:
Reality Check:
- College coaches on average have less than $500 to recruit. To expect them to maximize their budget by traveling all over the country to games is unrealistic.
- Coaches rarely discover athletes by watching games live. When coaches attend games, they have a list of athletes they are going to evaluate. While it’s possible a great performance might catch their eye, I would not rely on that.
- Coaches do not just attend games randomly – they watch games according to specific prospects they are recruiting and teams they know are traditionally successful
- Coaches of some sports (softball, soccer, hockey, etc) rarely, if ever, will attend a high school game. They go to specific club games and tournaments to utilize their time effectively.
- At the end of the day, a college coach might NEVER see you play in person. With technology and the internet, some coaches are willing to offer spots based on a recruiting profile or video. While this might be more common at the DIII level, it does happen.
My advice? Stop waiting for college coaches to come to you. Go to them!
First, you need to make sure you are on their recruiting lists or else they might never watch you play in person. You can do this by contacting the right programs with your online recruiting profile. Once you have done that, follow up with the coach to make sure they received your profile and start a relationship with the coach. Next, make sure you are sending film to the coaches, which might catch their attention and motivate them to watch you play in person. Finally, be prepared to communicate with the coach and find out where you stand on their recruiting list. Most importantly, remember that your future coach might NEVER see you play in person during high school.
Quit looking in the stands for college coaches and focus on working hard in the classroom and on the field…and when you think about recruiting, make sure you aren’t waiting for college coaches to discover you at your next big game.
If you want to quit waiting for coaches to come to your game click here.
The National Bureau of Economic Research declared that the current economic downturn (recession) began in December 2007. In the intervening 2 years, I’ve spoken with about 3,000 families about their child going to college. Naturally, part of that discussion involves how families will pay for college. As seen here, the average cost of a college education is above $30,000 per year. The rate of increase is around 7% per year. If you have a freshman in high school, your college expense will exceed $35,000 per year, on average. These facts have led to some serious discussions between parents and their children on how they’ll pay for college. In some cases, parents of good students are considering the local junior college route to get the core courses out of the way and save a lot of money during the first 2 years. In other cases, the parents have encouraged their children to search for scholarships on the internet. These kids are spending a lot of time doing this. In some cases, parents are giving their children a budget to work with and any expense exceeding that budget will be the responsibility of the child. In short, 99% of the families that I speak with do not have enough money stashed away to pay all college expenses. So they’re at great risk of having their children graduate with a large financial burden called student loans.
Financial Aid has two main categories: grants/scholarships, i.e. money that doesn’t have to be repaid and loans. To see the impact of student loans, read this NY Times article. Because every college and university has different funding sources, financial aid policies, and pools of money available to offset the cost of college, it’s impossible to navigate this process efficiently by yourself. You can’t gather all of the information from all potential schools with less than thousands of hours of grinding research on the internet. Most families don’t have that kind of time. Most don’t know enough about how financial aid is granted to increase any grant or scholarship awards. NCSA has data from thousands of colleges and experts that will help families navigate the financial aid process. One important aspect of this is completing forms correctly and on time. Many families lose need-based aid because of inconsistencies on their FAFSA. Others lose because they’re uncertain on timelines. NCSA’s financial aid experts aid families in navigating financial aid. The most important thing a family can do to increase financial aid if their student is also a talented athlete, is to make sure that there are a number of college coaches recruiting their child.
In my case, my child received recruiting letters from 145 college coaches. About 20 had real genuine interest. My child narrowed those schools down to 3 great academic choices. She’ll graduate from her selected college in May, 2010. She would have never had this opportunity if it wasn’t for the hard work she did and the help we received from NCSA. My return on that investment is she’ll graduate with no student loans. My out-of-pocket expense for all 4 years was less than one semester at her private high school she attended. My return on NCSA’s investment was 6,677%. But the real return is priceless: Four years of playing a sport that she loves, a college degree from one of the top academic universities in the country, developing friendships that last a lifetime, and job interest in a career field that she chose. What parent doesn’t want that for their child? If you need help to get that for your child, go here.
Every so often a recruiting controversy involving potential NCAA violations surfaces and a large amount of attention is paid to immoral recruiting practices. The latest is at the University of Tennessee where Coach Lane Kiffin has again landed in hot water. This time the controversy is swirling over the misuse of University Hostesses and their potential illegal contact with recruits.
Interviews with multiple recruits and their family members revealed that the N.C.A.A. has strong interest in Tennessee’s use of recruiting hostesses, students who are part of a formal group at the university that hosts all manner of prospective students at campus visits, including athletes. It is not clear whether the university sent the hostesses to visit the football players.
In one case, hostesses traveled nearly 200 miles to attend a high school game in South Carolina in which at least three Tennessee recruits were playing.
Marcus Lattimore, a running back who made an unofficial visit to Tennessee but said he would not enroll there, said multiple Tennessee hostesses attended a game at James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C., in September. He said they brought signs, including one that read, “Come to Tennessee.”
“I haven’t seen no other schools do that,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
The hostesses are considered representatives of the university, which would mean they could not recruit players off campus. Therefore, the visits may be considered violations of N.C.A.A. recruiting rules.
Two of Lattimore’s teammates, Brandon Willis and Corey Miller, have orally committed to Tennessee. Lattimore described the hostesses as “real pretty, real nice and just real cool.” He said he thought they had “a lot” of influence in Miller’s and Willis’s commitments to Tennessee.
Because of their influence on recruits, the recruiting hostesses have become popular with Tennessee fans. Bryce Brown, the country’s top running back recruit last year, who is a freshman at Tennessee, was pictured on a social networking site last year with a hostess. Other Tennessee hostesses have publicly conversed with prospects through Facebook and MySpace.
Making a decision on the validity of the allegations is the NCAA’s problem, but I wanted to focus on the idea of an athlete choosing a school based on a hostess. Choosing a college is one of the biggest decisions of a young person’s life. Basing that decision on something as superficial as a hostess attending a high school game could be a major regret later in life. Earning the right college degree from the right university that allows you to succeed in life should always be the number one concern of any student. Here is to hoping that this story reminds athletes how important this decision will be.
Its Jimmy V Foundation Week at ESPN, and we wanted to post his classic speech from the 1993 ESPY’s to honor his legacy.
Few coaches in the history of collegiate athletics have been able to accomplish what Anson Dorrance has done with the University of North Carolina women’s soccer program. This past weekend the lady Tar Heels capped off their 20th National Championship in 28 years of the NCAA women’s soccer tournament. UNC has worked toward an impressive 673-33-21 all-time record since the program’s inception in 1979. Dorrance has been at the helm for the lady Tar Heels for 31 years. His impressive tenure calls to mind the famous line from Field of Dreams, “if you build it, they will come”. Through his skillful recruiting efforts and impressive work ethic, Dorrance has put himself in a position that any college coach would envy. He has set himself apart in his method, his astounding statistics year after year, and his overall character. He has had his pick of the nation’s top prospects for more than two decades and has coached numerous players who have gone on to compete on the world’s biggest stage, at both the World Cup and the Olympics. But the majority of college coaches are not living in such a fairy tale and recruiting does not come so easily – especially in this day and age.
There are very few programs that are in the comfortable position of being able to pick from the nation’s cream of the crop to fill out their roster each year. It is a highly competitive world out there for the college coach, as well as the prospective student-athlete. Finding the student that meets your program’s needs, meshes well with team chemistry, and helps to bring your team to the next level is an extremely difficult task when there are thousands of athletes to choose from. College coaches are always trying to find a way to market their program so that they can draw in highly talented student-athletes from all over the country. Their jobs are dependent on results and this makes for a tricky game when they are operating within a tight budget.
For prospects who are hoping to play in college, the game is just as tricky. There are over 3 million high school student-athletes nationwide who are looking to play at the next level. In an increasingly competitive market, what sets YOU apart? This is a question that we help student-athletes to answer every single day at NCSA. Each and every athlete has their own strengths, and it is important to recognize and promote these. Our team is here to help you distinguish yourself in a vast sea of talent and empower you with the knowledge you need to skillfully navigate through the recruiting process. Not every coach is in a position like Dorrance, and therefore recruiting efforts require a good amount of time, energy, and money. NCSA is matching qualified student-athletes with college coaches on a daily basis. There are more opportunities out there than most people realize. We are here to educate you about these opportunities and help give you exposure to programs that will be the right fit for you.
For more information, call (866) 579-6272 to speak with one of NCSA’s Collegiate Scouts and take your career to the next level.
