As I write this post, the United States’ women’s national soccer team is preparing for a Semi-final match against England. America is the heavy favorite. The reason? Title IX. Title IX forever changed athletics in the United States and, consequently, the world. For the first time, women had to have equal access to athletics as men, at any educational institution benefiting from federal funding. Writing as a man, I know that this has damaged a few men’s sports, but on the whole, the benefit has been huge, as can be seen from American women’s dominance in international competitions from soccer to basketball to ice hockey. Ignoring the politics of Title IX, I think it’s fair to say that it has done a tremendous amount to foster athleticism at the collegiate level.
The NCAA is really the only game in town when it comes to college recruiting, and we all have to follow their rules and guidelines.
Although you wouldn’t know it if you saw me now, I was a recruited collegiate athlete. I had “official visits,” calls from coaches, and had to figure out a ton of rules about how and when I could be contacted. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has, I believe, an egregious amount of power, and there are legitimate arguments about paying college athletes, particularly when a college or the NCAA as a whole profits from his or her image or name. But, like it or not, the NCAA is really the only game in town when it comes to college recruiting, and we all have to follow their rules and guidelines.
I’ve worked with a sizable number of student-athletes, both female and male, trying to be recruited to colleges. I know students who’ve gone professional, and students who quit after their first college practice. Athletics can be a major factor in college admissions, and a great athlete being pursued by colleges doesn’t face the same obstacles a regular applicant does. At the same time, a student-athlete has to get noticed by a college coach and fit the minimum academic requirements of the NCAA (which can be found here). Here are some important factors that come into play when trying to get recruited for college sports:
Contact is limited before your junior year.
Contact rules with Division I coaches just got more complicated this year. So, while in the past, a student-athlete could always contact a coach, now, such contact is generally limited until after June 15 of your sophomore year, or basically when you’re about to be a junior.
However, there are ways you can get noticed.
Does this limited contact mean you can’t contact a coach before then? Not exactly. As I noted in my last post, the best way to get noticed by a college coach is by going to a camp or clinic run by college coaches. If a college coach is running such a camp or clinic, they’re clearly able to talk to you — just not to recruit you officially. So, going to a camp with college coaches is key (and alliterative).
The other thing that college coaches are allowed to do before your junior year is watch you play. They can’t contact you, but they can still watch. If you’re a sophomore, or even a very talented freshman, and a college coach has come to watch a junior or senior on your team or the other team, don’t think they won’t notice you too, if you play well. They won’t be able to say anything to you, and you might not even realize they’re there, but it should give you extra reason to play your hardest every game since someone might be watching.
Junior year is the most important year.
The most important year for most student-athletes, however, is their junior year, particularly for athletes in the winter and spring seasons. A field hockey or football player might still get noticed their senior year, but if you play ice hockey or baseball, your season is too late for the admissions season. If you’re in a sport where you can be videoed, junior year is the year to do so. If you are a runner, or a swimmer, or in anything that involves times, junior year is when you want to set the PRs. If you have a relatively young high school coach, they’ll almost certainly realize this, but some older coaches still forget that the admissions season starts much earlier than it used to. Don’t be afraid to advocate for yourself, at least a bit, if you’re hoping to be recruited. At the same time, be realistic.
Go beyond the standard set by your high school.
You might be the best basketball player on your team, but if your high school has only 200 students, that standard isn’t that high. I’m not saying this to discourage you, but to remind you and your parents that there are approximately 8,000,000 high school athletes, and only about 420,000 collegiate ones. Of these, less than 2% go pro. My seven-year-old son just had to decide between hockey camp and an all-star baseball team. He chose baseball because “even at the league minimum, MLB players make more than NHL players.” It’s a perfectly reasonable dream for a kid, but, by the time he’s sixteen, I hope that he (and I) have a realistic idea of his actual prospects.
In other words, if you want to be a college athlete, you have to be a great high school one, you have to be noticed, and you have to be far more dedicated to your sport than the average high school player is. For most students, athletics is important and fun, as it should be. For the athlete looking to be recruited, it can be almost an obsession. And yet, as important as your sport seems to your future, try to make sure that it remains fun for you, too. A college coach doesn’t want an athlete who looks like he or she is about to burn out!
I don’t generally like to make a huge plug for myself in these posts. But, for parents and students trying to navigate both college admissions and athletic recruitment, having someone like me can be very useful. There are so many factors that go into admissions in general, and so many NCAA regulations, that having the guidance of a professional is much better than trying to figure everything out on your own. I often write this, but I’d like to stress it particularly in this post:
If you have questions about this process, feel free to reach out to me for a free session, and I’ll try to steer you in the right direction.
Mr. K
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