While college recruiting for many student-athletes is a rewarding and educational experience, the process can also be extremely frustrating and overwhelming. Unfortunately, this frustration often times results in too many student-athletes wondering “what could have been” and leaves everyone involved pointing the finger at someone else at the end of the process. Typically, there is no “one person” to blame and the common excuses are entirely understandable given the lack of experience most families have with recruiting.
The good news is that due to changes in recruiting in the last decade, many of the common excuses for recruiting failure can be easily avoided…
Do any of the following statements sound familiar?
“I play for a small high school and college coaches will never find me…”
“I am stuck behind a talented, older student-athlete and will never get the playing time I need to be recruited…”
“My high school team is 0-15 and they are killing my chances at getting noticed…”
“My high school coach has done nothing to help me with the recruiting process…”
For those of you who have gone through the recruiting process as a parent or student-athlete, you have undoubtedly heard one of the above reasons for recruiting disappointment. While these factors certainly have an impact on a prospect’s recruiting process, they do not make or break success the way they once did.
As a minor disclaimer…I thoroughly appreciate why these sentiments would frustrate a student-athlete and like I said, they will have an affect on the process, but….
Think about all the advances in technology and how they have made the exchange of information between recruits and college coaches much easier than in the past. The internet has opened new lines of communication, created efficient distribution channels, and quite simply, changed the way college coaches recruit. The recruiting playing field is more level than ever…you just need to know how to take advantage of it!
Let’s address the traditional recruiting frustrations one at a time…
“My high school coach has done nothing to help me with the recruiting process…”
Although we have discussed why your high school coach cannot get you a scholarship in the past, it’s certainly worth reviewing again because every year it seems to be a common source of contention. 20-30 years ago, the high school coach played a much different role in college recruiting. Much of this role centered on the access to game footage.
Back in those days, high school coaches were almost always the only ones who had film, which forced college coaches to partner with them. College coaches would plan recruiting trips that included stops at high schools that allowed them to review film. This forged relationships that did in fact have a strong influence on recruiting.
Today, college coaches have a variety of ways to review film. Families can now film their own games with affordable video equipment and distribute it directly to college coaches. While the high school coach can still be very helpful in this part of the process, they are no longer required. As a result, any authority they might have had over a college coach has been 
greatly diminished.
Make sure to develop a strong relationship with your high school coach, because they can serve as a great mentor and a reliable reference, but keep in mind the average coach has fewer than 5 contacts with the college coaching community. Recruiting responsibility ultimately lies with the student-athlete and no one else!
“I play for a small high school and college coaches will never find me…”
This seems to be the recruiting frustration most affected by the developments in technology. Simply put, geographic location used to have a huge impact on college recruiting based on the difficulty coaches had in receiving information about prospects from rural areas.
However, with the internet and subsequent recruiting resources that have emerged, geographic location can be overcome to a certain degree with even the slowest of internet connections. There are countless websites and online avenues that a student-athlete can utilize to gain exposure to college coaches.
Think about this scenario…
The year is 1980 and a student-athlete is interested in sending their information to 50 college coaches. Here is the process they would have to go through: First they would have to create a physical, paper athletic and academic resume. The next step would most likely include a trip to the local library to search through a college guide to find the addresses of each college program on the list. Once the list of addresses had been gathered, the student-athlete would have to put together a mailing list and send it out through the traditional mail…Seems rather tedious, doesn’t it? To top it off, since the college coaches had most likely never heard of that student-athlete before, who knows if the information would have been reviewed at all?
Today, a student-athlete can create an athletic and academic resume on line in a matter of minutes. They can then find the email addresses of most the college coaches in the country online and then put together an email campaign and send the information out. Now that sounds a little better, doesn’t it?
“My high school team is 0-15 and they are killing my chances at getting noticed…”
While there are unquestionably some exposure advantages that can be had from playing for a state powerhouse with a tradition for winning, even student-athletes at a weaker quality high school program can gain exposure. Using the internet as we have talked about and having a properly edited highlight and skills video can go a long way towards overcoming this obstacle.
In the past, playing for an awful team might have truly hindered a student-athlete’s potential to play at the next level. However, a student-athlete can now generate the initial exposure using the internet, and a college coach is ultimately looking for a qualified prospect regardless of the team’s success. If a college coach were to watch film on a baseball player who is throwing 90 mph or a quarterback who can throw the ball 65 yards, they are going to recruit that student-athlete regardless of how many wins the high school team has.
“I am stuck behind a talented, older student-athlete and will never get the playing time I need to be recruited…”
This one is tough. Yes, playing behind a quality athlete who might have the advantage of seniority can have an impact on a student-athlete’s recruiting. However, if the student-athlete who is on the receiving end of this lack of playing time is truly a qualified student-athlete, there is no reason they cannot distribute their information to college coaches. It will be important to capture any varsity game footage possible, even if its limited, and combine that with the athletic and academic information that college coaches would be interested in to get your name on their recruiting list. This way, come senior year, the college coaches will already know your name, you will have started a recruiting relationship, and they can make sure to monitor your progress. Waiting to get involved with college coaches until you begin playing every second of the game will significantly hamper the recruiting process.
Just as example of how you can use the resources available to overcome the playing time issue, here is a wonderful recruiting story that recently happened at NCSA.
We began working with a senior football player out of Texas. Due to quality competition, this student-athlete was not even starting at the varsity level as a senior. Although he received playing time, mostly late in the game when the outcome was not in question, based on his size and his willingness to pursue opportunities at all levels, our football department felt like he was someone we could help. Using the limited game footage, we introduced him to a number of DII and DIII colleges. 
Within weeks, this student-athlete, who hardly played at the high school level, had received two DII scholarship offers.
Does this happen to every backup varsity athlete? No. Is recruiting tougher if you are not playing full time as a Junior or Senior? Yes. However, if you are realistic in the level of competition you can play and you take advantages of all the resources that are available online and through technology, you can overcome many of the difficulties recruits once faced.
Finally, your high school athletic experience no longer defines your recruiting success. Club experience is now more accessible and more necessary than ever in many sports. College coaches love club experience. They view this experience as a higher level of competition and in some sports might not even recruit a student-athlete who lacks it. Sports such as soccer, volleyball, softball, basketball, and baseball all have strong club and travel team presences. Involvement with these types of teams in many cases will trump the high school experience all together, if not at least make up for a poor quality high school team.
The recruiting process will indubitably cause some sort of frustration for even blue-chip recruits. That reality is an unfortunate product of the current system. However, families should be optimistic that there are resources readily available, if they are willing to be proactive, to help get past a few of the traditional roadblocks that have plagued recruits in the past.
