NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

Charlie Adams brings 23 years of experience covering the recruiting of high school athletes who reached their dream of playing college sports. Adams was an award winning sportscaster at television stations and is one of NCSA’s Recruiting Experts.

I was driving near Indianapolis this week and heard former Indiana University Basketball Coach Dan Dakich hosting his daily talk show on 1070 the Fan. A caller called in a little ‘bent out of shape’ that IU Basketball Coach Tom Crean had recently received two commitments from players that had yet to play a second of High School basketball. Two highly rated 9th graders had made their decision to attend IU. The caller just could not understand how they could be doing that at such a young age. Dakich, who was an assistant coach at IU for years and knows recruiting inside and out, wasn’t surprised. He said back when he was evaluating talent he could often tell if a 7th grader could play at a major D1 level like Indiana and the Big Ten. In recruiting, basketball is especially accelerated and seasoned evaluators like Tom Crean can project early if a kid can play. Back in the 1980′s, Bob Knight went down to Bedford, IN to watch a legendary 8th grader named Damon Bailey play a game. In the book, “A Season on the Brink” Knight made a comment to the author John Feinstein that “Bailey is better than any guard we have right now. I don’t mean potentially better, I mean better today.” Bailey ended up going to Indiana and was a very good player at that level.

It’s not that way for every basketball player that eventually plays D1, but it is for the special ones. Trey Lyles is one of the two players to commit to IU. He stands 6’9″ as a 9th grader. The other one is James Blackmon, Jr. His Dad was a very good player back in the day at Kentucky. Tom Crean and his staff have no doubt those two project to be winning Big Ten players. As Dakich said on his radio show, the IU coaches know what they are doing because they are seasoned evaluators. They have been watching those kids in the July evaluation events.

Less than 1% of the High School athletes will get this kind of “fawning over.” The rest have to be proactive in recruiting, and understand the process starts early whether you are a 6’9″ ninth grader or not. A 5’9″ 9th grade basketball player that is not even on the varsity team needs to understand how important it is to make his baskets in the classroom so that he can have more options in recruiting when he is a junior or senior. That kid may never get a D1 offer, but if he and his family get educated in recruiting and he works his tail off, by the time he is a junior and senior he will have more options in recruiting.

Charlie Adams

cadams@ncsasports.org

Charlie Adams brings 23 years of experience covering the recruiting of high school athletes who reached their dream of playing college sports. Adams was an award winning sportscaster at television stations and is one of NCSA’s Recruiting Experts.

I had a long conversation with a mother and father whose daughter, a soccer player, had just found the right fit for college.

She was found by the college coach when he was looking at another recruit’s video. The other recruit was not clearly identified on the video, and the college coach noticed their daughter making plays on it. This is why you cannot make college coaches play detective in trying to figure out where you are on video, or some other kid will get a scholarship off your tape. I have found the NCSA guidance in this area critical. An arrow pointing at the recruit at the start of a play is very important. One of the points of College Recruiting Simplified is to make a “winning Highlight/Skills video.” The key word there is ‘winning.’ Families often have no idea how much more successful they will be in recruiting if they had a better understanding of how to work the video process. I continue to be amazed at how many families don’t even have a plan for it, and don’t have video of their kid – even as 12th graders sometimes!

The mother, father and daughter made several unofficial visits during her High School days. The young lady evaluated out to be a NAIA or D3 player, so they met with several coaches. One young head coach got all wound up during their meeting and talked about how they would have a “D1 mentality” at the D3 school. He was a little too gung-ho. They appreciated his fever and enthusiasm, but wanted to find someone a little calmer. They continued the process, made more visits, and found a school with a veteran coach who still had the fire for coaching. It wasn’t the reason they picked the school. Their major reason was the school would allow her to grown in her faith, athletics and academics, but they felt this particular coach had the calm, steady approach and decades of experience to better fit her. Now, the next kid might eat up that other coach’s wound-up approach. It’s all part of getting out there and finding the right fit. I spoke at the Mizuno Mid East Regional Volleyball Qualifiers in Indianapolis earlier this year. I talked with one mother whose daughter had already been on three unofficial visits in the Fall of her junior year, and was close to firming up the right fit. It was because she was “out there.”

For an Evaluation of your College Recruiting potential

Charlie Adams

NCSA Senior Speaker

cadams@ncsasports.org

We’ve always said that choosing where you go to school isn’t a 4 year decision, it’s a 40 year decision. Being such a big decision, high school kids should be able to take their time in making such a hard choice, right? Minooka DE Zach Colvin unfortunately learned the hard way that you don’t have all the time in the world to make your decision.

College athletics is a very serious business, and universities cannot afford to sit around and wait for an offer to be taken. Sometimes, the college coach may offer a scholarship to more than one student athlete, and the one who responds the fastest gets the spot. This is an aspect of college athletics that the high school student athlete might not think about or have trouble understanding the concept.

Zach Colvin, 6’4” 225lbs, had a rude awakening when he found out in July that a Big Ten BCS school was withdrawing their offer that he received the offer 4 months earlier. Currently, Colvin has offers from Northern Illinois, Air Force, Bowling Green, Ball State, Memphis, Central Michigan and Wyoming but continues to hold out for that Big Ten perfect offer that he feels comfortable with. Minooka Coach Bert Kooi was quoted in the Chicago Sun Times, “We’ve all learned a lot about the recruiting process. He wants to play at the highest level. We believe he can. [Mid-American Conference] schools have recruited him as hard as anyone. But he is looking for a Big Ten offer.”

For players like Zach, who has many full scholarship offers, doesn’t have to worry too much about not getting any money, but he was humbled by realizing that the coaches list of prospects is a lot longer than he might think, and that coaches just can’t afford to wait around on one player for 4+ months. As important as the decision on whether to take the offer or not, it is the coach’s job to put together a winning team, and who knows if they wait for you and you end up saying no, they could be missing out on someone else on the same level. Time is something that needs to be thought about a lot in athletic recruiting and if taken lightly, may cost you a scholarship offer.

A former Indiana Wesleyan University baseball player, Brandon Beachy, made his first start on the mound this past week for the Atlanta Braves. This marks the first baseball player from IWU to play at the Big League level. To learn more about him and Indiana Wesleyan please click here.

Beachy threw four and a third innings and allowed only one earned run. Prior to starting for the Braves, he was named the Atlanta Braves Double – A Pitcher of the Year. Brandon graduated from Indiana Wesleyan in 2008 and he marks just one of many who have gone on to play professionally after playing at the NAIA level.

In this article by Curtis Eichelberger found on Bloomberg News today, you can read about the advantage students who play sports in college receive in employment after college.  You should read the entire article, but here’s the money quote:

“Athletes can bring something extra that’s necessary for success in finance, Werner said.

“In a business where it tends to knock you down a lot, they tend to get back up,” he said. “That drive, that level of discipline, the rigor they have in their own personal lives and their willingness to take on hard challenges; a lot of that gets taught to you on an athletic field.”

NCSA is THE Athletic Recruiting Network.  We empower our student-athletes in their chosen careers through our network of employers who hire student athletes.  You can find out more about that here.

When we sent out our newsletter promoting everyone to share their sports story with us, we had the privilege of getting in contact with a student athlete’s mother, who wanted to share her son Luke’s very inspirational story with us.

His story is an inspirational journey through adversity, set in a football environment. Like many of student athletes in high school who have also shared their stories with us, Luke was a high school football player anxious to finally play on Friday nights with the varsity team his junior year at Edison High School in California.

The week before two-a-days, July 2008, Luke developed a nosebleed that lasted over 2 hours. After going to the hospital, the Gane’s were told that Luke had a rare blood disorder called Severe Aplastic Anemia, which is known to be fatal. The bone marrow in your body, when you have this disorder begins to rapidly malfunction and ceases to produce more new blood cells. The Gane family saw this nosebleed as a very important “blessing-in-disguise” because if it did not occur, one big hit during football practice would have caused internal hemorrhaging, killing him.

A month later, Luke under went chemotherapy, but it became evident that he was in need of a bone marrow transplant. Coming from a family of 5 boys, they tested the family and found that two of his brothers were a match. When Jim, Luke’s father, asked who wanted to volunteer to be Luke’s donor, both brother’s hands shot up, but it was 10 year old Jacob Gane’s hand that went up first. The surgery was a success! The Gane’s community was extremely supportive in anyway they could, setting up multiple fundraisers, when the Gane family had not asked for anything.

Luke fought back extremely well and made a full recovery! He was able to play every game, both ways, his senior year.  He helped lead his team to an undefeated regular season, losing only in the CIF championships to a rival team that supported Luke during his illness.  Luke Gane then found himself accepting an offer as a preferred walk-on at UCLA for football beginning this Fall!

We are very grateful to  for sharing her family’s story with us. If you have your own inspirational sports story that you would like to share with us and countless student athletes and their families across the nation, please submit yours today on our “What’s Your Story” Facebook page! We’d love to hear your story!

If you are interested in reading more about Luke Gane’s incredible journey, here are some places to find out more:

Luke Gane Video

Luke Gane’s Blog

In this article about Ben Garland, it’s easy to see why he’s where he is.  He set goals from a very early age and that was his compass that directed him to where he is.  Here are two quotes from the article: 

As a little boy, Ben Garland clutched a poster of the Air Force Thunderbirds, the planes roaring into the sky, and he knew exactly what he wanted to be. He pinned that poster to his bedroom wall, beside the pictures of John Elway, and he told his mother, Syndee, he was going to the Air Force Academy someday.

”Can you imagine you had two dreams as a little kid?” he asks one day at Broncos training camp, where he is trying to make the team as a defensive end. ”One to be a pilot in the Air Force and one to play for the Broncos? Not just any team. The Broncos. And now you have both opportunities before you?”

If you’re a student-athlete reading this, you must set specific, measureable, attainable goals that are time-bound.  This will eliminate procrastination and put you in a position to be recruited to play the sport you love.  If you’re a parent reading this, teaching your children goal setting skills will empower them to achieve great things.  If either of you need help in setting S.M.A.R.T goals, NCSA teaches goal setting skills.  If you wish to play in college and don’t know how to begin, call 866-579-6272 or go here.

High school students nationwide can all agree with this statement: High school is hard. Maybe it’s because this is the age when awareness of self development kicks into place, bodies change, abilities change, people change, and everything is in flux. In high school, young adults are taught the value of balancing a schedule of school work, studies and are expected to do so while balancing a diverse portfolio of extracurricular activities, especially if they want to go to a good college, or even go to college. I talk to a good deal of high school athletes on a daily basis who aspire to become college students and college athletes. Sure, some are more qualified than others to take their talents to the college level, but one thing that should be highlighted and praised over talents and abilities is the will to overcome obstacles in a path to accomplishing a dream. That is more important than any naturally given skill, because will is what enhances abilities and teaches values.

I recently got off the phone who demonstrates that will. Wait…no, he does more than just demonstrate that will, he should be one of the poster-children for a desire to succeed for oneself. His name was Cristion. Born as the only boy in the family in California to love baseball, it was obvious from the start that he had one love, baseball. On the phone he told me he was about 5’11”, 145 pounds. He started last year for his high school’s varsity team last year as a junior. Throwing the ball in the high 70′s as a top speed fastball, with a curveball and a change-up in his arsenal, I thought Cristion had a shot; sure he was undersized and did not have the best stuff than what is preferred of pitchers at the better college level. But as he kept telling me more about himself I could sense his passion for the game and his desire to play at the next level.

And then came this exchange: “Sir, have you ever heard of Jim Abbott?”

It took me a second to think about it, “Yeah, Jim Abbott, he was a famous pitcher a while back for the Yankees, that Jim Abbott right?” I asked him.

“Yes, do you remember what he was known for?” he asked.

At that moment I could not get a sense at where he was going with this, so I politely responded “no, remind me Cristion”.

“Remember how Jim Abbott was the pitcher with only one hand who switched his glove over to his good hand after the release of his pitches? I have to do that from the mound with my pitches because of the condition I was born with” he explained.

In shock, I instantly wrote down that Cristion is a winner and he deserves to have as many chances as he can create for himself. He was chasing the same dream that one man historically made famous by his will to overcome challenges and follow the one thing that he loved. Cristion clearly knew at this point he had all of my undivided attention at this point and he kept explaining about how much this dream meant to him, to have the opportunity to pitch for a college baseball team. He was living the demonstration of having the will to overcome the seemingly impossible obstacles that stood in his way. No he wasn’t facing the traditional difficulties that an average high school student may face with a class, a peer, or a position battle. He was trying to overcome a physical disability to try and compete with kids who have the luxury of pitching and throwing with one hand, and fielding with the other. A remarkable feat this will be once he gets to that level, but even the attempt is worthy of a standing “O”. Cristion is such a positive example of young athletes advocating for their dreams at an early age. High schools everywhere have these young adults roaming their halls everyday looking to make their dreams come true. But the one thing that needs to be taken away from this story is that the difference between good and remarkable is the will to overcome and persevere on the path to your dream. Now what is your goal? How can you be more like Cristion in your own situation? What are you willing to do and learn to do in order to get your dreams?

The Major League All Star game is tonight. One of the stars for the American League will be Evan Longoria of the Tampa Bay Rays. He ranks 8th in Major League history with 60 home runs in his first two seasons. Yet, as a High School baseball player growing up in southern California, he wasn’t heavily recruited. I was in Bradenton to speak to athletes and their families at the IMG Sports Academies this past week, and saw this article by Marc Tompkins of the St. Petersburg Times. Here is part of it:

“Longoria wasn’t very big and wasn’t very good coming out of St. John Bosco High (California), ignored by the pro scouts and – to the not-always-concealed dismay of his parents – barely noticed by major college coaches.

“Nobody wanted him,” Mike, his father, said.

The Longorias couldn’t compensate by making him what former Long Beach State coach Mike Weathers calls “a show pony,” the kid whose parents trot him out to every showcase event and travel league to get him noticed and hire private coaches by the hour.

Longoria had some other junior colleges interested but took the promise of playing time at Rio Hondo Junior College and made the most of it, getting bigger and stronger and better.”

A Division One program, Long Beach State, heard about his swing, and signed him as a transfer. More physically mature, he just kept getting better and better as a player and became the 3rd pick in the Major League Draft.

Junior College can often be an option for players who need to physically mature or perhaps shore themselves up academically. I was speaking with former Washington High Athletic Director Marilyn Coddens one time before I spoke at the school and she couldn’t understand why more kids didn’t consider Junior College.

For Evan Longoria, it was the starting point..

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While in Bradenton, Florida this past week, I also spoke at the Bollettieri Jr. Tennis Tournament at the IMG Academies. I am constantly interviewing college coaches to get their insights on the impact of being a college athlete because I strongly believe that is one reason young people should strongly consider playing their sport in college. Before speaking down there, I was talking on the phone with the head coach of a men’s Top 25 ranked Tennis program. He shared two powerful examples of how being a college athlete is a 40 year decision, not just a 4 year one.

First, he told me of a player they signed around 1999 that started out as “the worst player on the team.” He was pretty good. He had to be to be on a D1 Tennis team that was in the Top 25 about every year, but compared to the rest of the roster, he was the worst. He worked his tail off on skills, weights and everything to become a better tennis player. From his freshman year on he also took the toughest Finance and Business classes. He didn’t just get by in the classroom. Why? Because his college coach had told him a common denominator of the most successful people in life is that they work hard at EVERYTHING. Where some college athletes will work hard on their sport and not so hard on academics, this young man worked hard at both!

By the time he was a senior he was Captain of the team and educated to the max from taking tough classes at one of the nation’s top Universities. He also had a boatload of networks that come from being a true college student-athlete at a highly regarded academic institution. The coach told me the young man graduated and took all his skills to Manhattan where he has become a multi, multi millionaire. He has had two years where he has made over twenty million dollars, and he is just in his 30′s.

Not that life is all about making huge money, and there’s probably not that many examples of former college athletes (that didn’t play pro) having two years of twenty million dollar incomes by age 30 (!), but this young man is an example of how the true college student athlete is equipped for the next 40 years of his or her life. He had learned to manage his time on the tennis court and the classroom. He was very competitive, confident, and results oriented. He had set big goals and was determined to reach them.

When Kevin Garnett left the Minnesota Timberwolves to sign with the Celtics, the young man bought his home to have a home closer to his family in the midwest.

The other example the coach shared about how special it is to be a college athlete is about the “bond” that athletes form as college teammates. He told me of one of his former players that was working way up in one of the World Trade Towers on 9/11. After one of the planes crashed into the building, he was able to make it down 60 floors. No doubt, being an athlete helped him quickly get down all those floors and help others along the way.

“Cell service was spotty,” the coach told me. “He called his parents first to assure them he was safe, and then he called me. He said, ‘Coach, they are all going to be calling you! Tell them I made it out!’ He knew that all his former teammates knew where he was working, and that they would call me to see if he was okay. Sure enough, I started getting all these calls.”

It was a unique example of the special bond college athletes form for life. They all knew where each other worked, and even though they head their separate ways after college, they will always be connected, and the coach will be the hub.

I always say if you have the chance to play the sport you love at the appropriate level in college, why in the world would you not take advantage of it?

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I always encourage young athletes to read anything they can on what has made other athletes successful. Former Ohio State linebacker Chris Spielman will be enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown South Bend this weekend. I read a story on him in the South Bend Tribune this week. Check out what he told writer Al Lesar that he did to reach his potential:

“I would put a piece of bologna in my pocket and let my dog chase me around,” he said. “It helped me work on movement. Growing up, everything was about becoming a better player. I recognized as a young kid what I had to do to get where I wanted to go.”

Okay! First reader to try the bologna in the pocket routine has to tell me how it turned out!

I once knew a young lady who wanted to be a great rebounder in basketball. She lived on a farm with grain bins. Every evening she would get her father to throw the basketball up on the uneven grain bins, forcing her to quickly figure out the angle of the ball as it came bouncing off the roof. She went on and became her High School’s all time leading rebounder and earned a college basketball scholarship.

Having success in recruiting involves a lot of things, including separating yourself with effort.

Interested in bringing Charlie to your high school?  Click Here!

Have you seen the new NCSA video site?  In an effort to further promote our student-athletes we have launched the NCSA College Recruiting Videos Site.  http://www.ncsasports.org/college-recruiting-videos
To celebrate its launch we are giving away an iPad to the video with the most Facebook “Likes.”  How can you win?  It’s simple, just search for and send out your video to your family and friends.  Ask them to hit the “Like” button.

• You can email it
• You can Post it on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace
• You can tell your friends to look you up

You can spread your video in any way you think up!  The contest will run through July 26th at 12 p.m.