NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

For the 20th consecutive year participation has risen in high school sports.  The National Federation of State High School Associations.  Despite the poor economy the percentage of high-schoolers playing a sport rose to 55.2% from 54.8%. Football remains the top sport with 1,112,303 participants nationwide, while track and field passed basketball as the second most popular sport with 558,007 participants.  Swimming and Lacrosse showed the biggest percentage increases with 11.6% and 6.7%, respectively.

What does this mean for recruits?  Its pretty simple.  There is more competition than ever before for athletic scholarships.  Despite having an incredible amount of tools to aid their recruitment, athletes that aren’t proactive in the recruiting process face the danger of being left behind.

If you are looking for a recruiting edge, I suggest checking out NCSA’s Recruiting Profile and building your own FREE profile now.  It gives every recruit a tool to proactively reach coaches now.

I speak to student-athletes on a daily basis who are serious students and are unclear on what demands are placed on athletes when they arrive on campus.  Even in each division of the NCAA, demands vary greatly from one institution to the next.  So it’s important that the student-athlete is empowered with the skill set to determine what school will be best for them.  After all, a student-athlete’s college decision will impact them for the next 50-60 years!

With that in mind, here’s a blog post from an NCSA student-athlete who found the perfect fit.  How many NCAA D1 athletic teams would allow a student-athlete to study abroad during their senior year?  Read her blog and let me know if her college choice was the best for her:

She writes:  

Hi all! My name is Melissa and I am a senior in London on Colgate’s Economics Study Group. I am not the blogging type, but I am super excited to be able to take you all on my journey with me. I hope I do not bore you and, in advance, please forgive my many typos. I hope you can make it until December because I promise it will be worth it!

I arrived at my flat in central London about 10 days ago. It was an interesting adventure getting here (about 7 hours on a plane, an hour on a train, half an hour on a bus and half an hour walking aimlessly) but I made it and I love it! London is absolutely beautiful! Words cannot explain it.

I am already into my second week of classes. For the Economics Program, we are required to take The British Economy, The EU, International Economics, and a theatre course. I know the course titles are not creative or intriguing, but I assure you the classes have already far exceeded my expectations. To give you an example, yesterday all of the Colgate London groups attended “As You Like It” in Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, which is an exact replica of the original minus, of course, the electrics. I had no idea how I was going to enjoy a play standing for three hours and exposed to the elements (it was supposed to rain, thankfully it didn’t). Turns out I ended up dancing, laughing, and meeting new people. I have been to plays before, but never have I enjoyed myself so much. It was a great experience. If you are ever in London go the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

By the way, this SA was a captain and hit .418 for her softball team last season.   She found the right fit, athletically, academically, the right balance between those 2 and an affordable financial aid package for her parents.  Find out how you can do the same here.

Rick McDole did an excellent job last week explaining the importance of September 1st in the recruiting process. This is the time of year when the contacts with college coaches will begin in earnest. However, knowing that this communication is coming with college coaches is only half the battle. We need a strategy to handle these contacts and put our best foot forward to college coaches.

If you have already had contact (through letters, emails, met the coach at camp) with the college coach and the coach said they would call once they were able to, you should be prepared as a recruit. The most important thing when communicating with a college coach is to do your research on the school. We really want to make the communication as personal and as specific as possible. College coaches are not only calling you because they are interested in you as a student-athlete, but also to gauge your interest in the college they are calling from. The other way to impress is through thorough research on a school and asking questions that can’t be found on the schools website. Be specific! Why do you like the school? Do they have a great program for your major of choice? Have they had a chance to evaluate your video yet? Are their scholarships available for your position? These are all specific questions that will show a school you are truly interested in their program as opposed to asking questions that could be found through simple research on their site.

What we are saying is to make sure you are specific as possible when communicating with a college coach and tell them why you are REALLY interested in their school. Despite what some may think, saying something like “I really respect your strong academic and athletic programs” does NOT communicate interest to a college coach. Sure it is nice, and may even be true, but you could make that statement to any school in the country if you wanted to. This type of communication will not really impress the college coach who hears this from every recruit they talk to. Instead of using general terms, mention how you were impressed with their, for example, 8-3 record last year, how two players at your position were all-conference, or how they graduate 85% of their players. These are all examples, but the important thing to take away from this is to be specific in your reasons why you are interested in a school. Using specific examples like these will show coaches that you have done the work to research their school and you are truly interested in their program. This will make a much bigger impact on the coach than a general letter would. Coaches get thousands of general letters throughout the recruiting season expressing interest in their program, so anything that is specific will make you stand out in a good way to college coaches.

If this concept still seems difficult to grasp, imagine the positions flipped. Say you were a RB prospect who had letters coming in from two different schools. One of them reads…

“Dear recruit, Congratulations on your high school career and being named a top prospect at our school. We have a rich tradition here at School X and would like you to be a part of it. Best of luck.”

Pretty good right? Now compare that to this letter from a school who has done their research; School Y

“Dear John, I just saw your highlight video available on your scouting report on NCSA’s website. I thought you did an awesome job breaking tackles as a RB and fighting for the extra yard. That run you has against (opponent) was great, you must have dragged 5 guys into the endzone! I saw you had a big game last week running for over 150 yards with 3 TD’s. You are exactly the type of player we think can make an impact on our college program. We have a starting senior runningback right now who is graduating with a junior behind him. We want you to come in and make an impact immediately on our program. We really think your strength and versatility that you have shown us on the field will be able to help you excel at the college level. I am really looking forward to your game against (next opponent) to see what kind of numbers you can put up this week. I would love the opportunity to get a chance to tell you more about our program over the phone. Let me know when you are available and I would be more than happy to set up a time. Good luck against (next opponent) and have a great week.”

Now, which one was more impressive? X or Y? See how specific information makes the letter much more personal?

The college coach sees these details the same way. Keep these examples in mind the next time you are writing a letter/email to a college coach or preparing for a phone call. Take the opportunity with each contact that you have with a coach to make a positive impression on them. Be specific and do your research. College coaches will notice if you have put the research and it will make you stand out from the thousands (that’s right, thousands) of other recruits out there every year.

We are proud to announce our August Student-Athlete of the Month in Baseball, Matt Felvey. He is from the Chicago area, is a left-handed shortstop, has a big frame (6’4” 170 lbs), and will graduate in 2010. This summer he hit around .310 and in the spring he hit .331.

Felvey is a great student with a 3.6 GPA and a 3.92 weighted GPA. He also scored a 27 on his ACT and is looking to study business management, physical therapy, or sports management. Again, we are happy to name Matt Felvey as our August Student-Athlete of the Month.

Congratulations to our latest commitments for baseball in the 2010 class:

Cody Smith to San Diego State University

Christopher Divarco to Northern Illinois University

Ryan Mas to University of North Carolina – Charlotte

We wish you the best of luck and we look forward to hearing about your success in the future!

If you are looking for an opportunity to play in college and feel like time is not on your side it may be worthwhile to check the wanted ads. If a coach is just being hired to a new program like Chad Tracz, former Army pitching coach and new Head Coach for Marist, he may be a little behind in bringing in players to the new program.

Many times a coach has a bit of a disadvantage going to a new program because of competitive recruiting, but that may also mean you have a new opportunity. Remember, the players that were being recruited to the program before that coaching change may still end up committing to that program still, but many will re-think that opportunity. It doesn’t hurt to keep a close eye on those coaching changes to follow up with any new possibilities.

The College Recruiting process can be a long and winding road.  One thing is certain, it helps to have options.  That is why it is so important that recruits consider schools that some might think unconventional.  By bringing more schools into the mix a student-athlete increases his leverage and increases the odds that he will find the perfect fit.  That usually means expanding the search past your state borders and looking for contacts beyond what is offered by your high school coach.

New Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was discussing his team’s Heisman trophy candidate C.J. Spiller and the path he took choosing the Tigers over much closer rivals.

“The young man beats to his own drum, does things in his own fashion,” Swinney said this summer. “He’s not afraid to go against the grain. He knew what he was looking for and stayed true to that. I’m so proud of him.”

“He was hem-hawing around, and I said, ‘You said you’d visit, all I want you to do is come visit,’” Swinney said. “You like Clemson and you haven’t even been there. I said, ‘Let me tell you something. It’s better to go six hours to the right place than 30 minutes or 90 minutes to the wrong place.’”

We couldn’t have said it better coach.

Michigan football is in either a really opportune spot, or a really tough one depending on who you are. Coach Rich Rodriguez is blessed with the availability of three potential starting quarterbacks according to Rivals.com. However, for these quarterbacks, the presence of the others will ultimately result in them all losing playing time.

Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez says he plans to use [Denard] Robinson and two other quarterbacks in the season opener Sept. 5 against Western Michigan.

Rodriguez spent about the first 10 minutes of his news conference Sunday answering questions about freshmen Tate Forcier and Robinson, who are competing for snaps along with junior Nick Sheridan, who started four games last year.
Rodriguez has seen his quarterbacks compete for a couple weeks and yet he isn’t ready to say who is even the front-runner in the race.

Rodriguez insisted the player who takes the first snaps will not necessarily be the No. 1 QB for the rest of the season.

“Maybe we’ll have three starting quarterbacks,” Rodriguez said. “That would be neat.”

While this is obviously a great situation for Coach Rodriguez, having three talented quarterbacks only increases his chances of success, imagine being in the shoes of the players, especially Forcier and Robinson. There are two situations; two or all of them will split time, or one will become the full time starter. Obviously the first situation will result in all of them losing playing time. The second situation will ultimately end in either Sheridan spending his remaining years in Ann Arbor on the bench, or one of the Freshmen spending their entire career behind someone within their class (barring a red shirt or injury). The question rises, did Robinson and Forcier understand the quarterback situation when they signed on at Michigan? If not, would they have signed if they did? Although Robinson was recruited as an athlete this still may have impacted his decision. Recruits need to know not only what a school offers academically, athletically, and socially, they also have the understand their chances for playing time there.

In case you need more proof of how difficult the college recruiting process can be, the Charlotte Observer has outlined a story of a recruit’s poor luck in the process.

Want a cautionary tale on the perils of college recruiting? Meet David Chadwick Jr. He is a 6-foot-9, 215-pound basketball player from Charlotte with smooth offensive moves, superb grades – and no scholarship.

It’s not like there has been no interest in Chadwick, who starred at Charlotte Latin and is the son of David Chadwick Sr., the well-known Charlotte pastor and former North Carolina basketball player. Two plastic tubs bulge with recruiting mail in the Chadwick family home.

But Chadwick Jr. saw his original college plan crumble in April. Signed to go to Washington State and play in the Pac-10 under family friend and rising-star coach Tony Bennett, Chadwick’s basketball life unraveled when Bennett suddenly bolted for the head-coaching job at Virginia.

Chadwick still had a scholarship offer from Washington State, but no longer wanted to travel 2,600 miles from Charlotte to play if Bennett wasn’t coaching him. Instead, he drove this week to Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Va., where he will attend prep school for a year.

Chadwick ultimately had about 30 scholarship offers to Division I schools, he and his father said. But other than Washington State, most were from mid-major schools that didn’t really appeal to him. And, as Chadwick Sr. said: “You shouldn’t marry somebody you don’t love.”

It would have been easier, of course, if Bennett had stayed at Washington State. I sat on the Chadwicks’ couch recently and asked Chadwick Jr. what happened.

“He was sitting right where you are sitting right now [in September 2008],” Chadwick Jr. said of Bennett. “He was saying, ‘I’ve just signed a long contract extension at Washington State.’ But that’s the nature of college basketball. When he called me to tell me about Virginia, I said, ‘Tony, I completely understand what you’re doing.’ Virginia is a better area to recruit from, has more potential, has better academics and he got a big pay increase. You couldn’t blame him.”

Bennett apologized to the Chadwicks, the family said, and has been in touch a couple of times since. But he never offered to take Chadwick with him.

Bennett had signed four players to his 2009 recruiting class at Washington State. The other three stayed. Chadwick left. He had believed in Bennett so thoroughly that he had committed to Washington State sight unseen after Bennett’s home visit and subsequent scholarship offer.

Then came another recruiting whirlwind. Chadwick got his official release from Washington State on a Thursday in April. St. Louis coach Rick Majerus came to his home Friday and stayed 4 1/2 hours. Creighton coach Dana Altman came on Saturday.

But the messages were sometimes mixed in the spring, the Chadwick family said. Butler coach Brad Stevens called one day to gauge Chadwick’s interest in his program, Chadwick Jr. said, then called back a few days later saying he didn’t have a scholarship available.

Sometimes, the pitches were ridiculous.

Chadwick said he was told by one coach he wouldn’t name: “You’ll play 30 minutes a game as a freshman. Then, three weeks later, the same coach called us and said they had a logjam at my position and no scholarship at all.”

Another coach told Chadwick he would be the face of the program for four years, he said, and do for that team what Stephen Curry did for Davidson. That statement was nutty enough, Chadwick said, that he never believed it to begin with.

“Each school had its own little story,” Chadwick Jr. said.

This is an example of how quickly the recruiting process can turn. One moment you can have a sure thing, and the next it can be pulled out from under you. Chadwick is fortunate to have the ability to go to prep school in order to maintain his eligibility; however, not everyone has this chance. This is why you need to take full advantage of your opportunity to play college sports right away. Chadwick’s story also shows how many pitches college coaches can give in hopes of landing a recruit. A student-athlete has to be able to sift through the rubble in order to find legitimate interest and promises.

There have been three well documented cases this year of athletes skipping parts of high school in order to seek higher challenges. Basketball player Jeremy Tyler is bypassing his senior year to play basketball in Israel, football star Stephen Alli has graduated early and is attending Florida, and baseball’s “Chosen One” Bryce Harper is skipping his final two years of high school to enroll in Junior College, perhaps allowing him to enter the MLB draft a year early. While it may seem as though these athletes are being pushed too fast, a closer look into their plans shows otherwise.

Jeremy Tyler completed his jump from high school underclassman to pro basketball player on Wednesday when he signed a one-year, $140,000 contract with Maccabi Haifa of the Israeli Premier League.

Tyler, 18, is the first American-born player to leave high school early to play basketball professionally overseas. The 6-foot-11, 260-pound Tyler announced in the spring that he was skipping his senior season at San Diego High because prep basketball had become boring.

Sonny Vaccaro, the former shoe company executive who’s been advising Tyler and his family, said Maccabi Haifa is a good fit for several reasons.

“I think it’s a very good deal for Jeremy because it’s a good team, he’ll play, they speak English and he’ll learn there,” Vaccaro said. “The reason we did one year was because it will give Jeremy time to understand how hard it is to be a professional, then he’ll do whatever he wants to do next year.”

Vaccaro said Tyler had five other offers, including one from a team for more money, “but Jeremy, his family and I decided it was more important to have a chance of playing than making a couple extra dollars. If Jeremy is who he’s supposed to be, he’ll earn a lot of money in his lifetime.”

In early May, Tyler told The AP that he was tired of facing triple-teams, being hacked and being limited to playing the middle when he felt he had much more to his game.

Tyler is expected to return to the United States when he becomes eligible for the 2011 NBA draft.

Tyler choosing the team that fits his needs the best instead of the one offering the most money shows that he understands what he needs to do to achieve his goals and is not simply leaving high school for a paycheck.

Stephen Alli is skipping his senior year of high school to move to the next level in his sport.

Alli, a 6-foot-6, 210-pound receiver from Toronto who attended Proctor Academy in Andover, N.H., was supposed to be the sleeper in Florida’s class of 2010. Now, he’s the sleeper of the class of 2009. Alli was scheduled to travel to Gainesville from Canada on Wednesday. If all goes well, he’ll practice Thursday with Urban Meyer’s squad.

Alli, 18, is an excellent student who considered Harvard, Boston College, Rutgers and Stanford before choosing Florida in June. “After I committed, I stayed in contact with the coaches,” Alli said. “We decided that if I graduated early and enrolled in January, that would be the best thing for me.” There was only one problem. Alli said Proctor officials told him they’d never had a midterm graduate, and they had no plans to start with him.

After discussing his options with Florida coaches, Alli checked with the NCAA’s Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse to find out what courses he would need to take to enroll early. An examination of Alli’s transcript revealed he had already passed the 16 core courses required for initial eligibility. He also had earned enough credits to graduate. After that, Alli needed only to be admitted to Florida for the fall 2009 semester. Two weeks ago, he got the good news.

Alli’s plan is phenomenal. He is obviously an incredible student who was eligible to enter college early anyway. He is now going to be able to test his academic merits a year early. Athletically, he is going to play for the best team in the nation, under one of the most successful coaches in Urban Meyer, and with arguably the best leader in the country, Tim Tebow.

Bryce will acquire his GED and enroll in the College of Southern Nevada, a junior college, a move that likely will allow Bryce to be eligible for the 2010 draft, in which he’s expected to be the No. 1 pick.

“But that’s not the priority,” Ron said, referring to Bryce’s draft status. “We’re preparing him for college. That’s the priority. He’s very bored in school. Maybe it’s because he’s always been around older kids. But he’s ready move on. He was very forceful. He said, ‘I don’t want to be bored any more. I want to do it, Mom. I want to do it, Dad.’ He definitely wants to do this. We spoke with his counselor, his principal and his coach, and they agreed he’s ready for this.”

Ron isn’t even entirely sure that Bryce will be eligible for the 2010 draft. “We haven’t got anything in writing yet,” he said. But the Harpers have been in contact with officials from Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association to make sure they follow whatever protocols are necessary to be draft eligible next year, including making sure he completed all high school courses and exams at least 365 days prior to the draft.

“Even if he’s not [draft eligible in 2010],” Ron said, “he will play 55 games a year with a wood bat and receive an associate art degree. It’s a good situation for him.”

It might be easy for someone not familiar with Bryce, his talent and his family to think the kid is being pushed too fast, but the move to the College of Southern Nevada makes perfect sense. Bryce will live at home, take online and night classes, attend classes three days a week, carrying 12 credits, and be allowed to attend high school events with his former classmates and buddies, such as proms and homecomings. His older brother, Bryan, a pitcher, will transfer from Cal State Northridge and also attend College of Southern Nevada. Bryan will live in an off-campus apartment and will be Bryce’s roommate when the team plays on the road.

Harper has been given every opportunity to succeed. He is obviously a phenomenal talent, but, unlike the other two examples, he will be able to ease his way into his new lifestyle. The fact that he is living at home, will still get to participate in high school functions, and has his brother to help guide him throughout the season will make his transition smoother.

What do all of these athletes having in common? Talent, determination, and a plan. They all understand their long term goals and are making choices accordingly. While it isn’t smart for most recruits to leave high school early, they should follow the commitment that these players have. Student-athletes need to start working hard at improving themselves athletically and improving their chances of being recruited.