Be a Recruited Athlete—The Secret to College Recruiting

The Recruiting Myth As two-and-a-half million aspiring athletes enter 10th grade annually, most families follow their natural intuition—college coaches are looking for top athletes and will eventually come calling on them. You might think playing college sports is a natural progression, from junior varsity to varsity and on to college. You might think your son’s or daughter’s on-field accomplishments or classroom accolades will automatically lure coaches. But who are these coaches, and where are they? Are you going to wait for them to find you or are you going to go look for them? For the coaches who do come calling, what makes them a good fit for your son or daughter? In light of the recent Texas Tech debacle, was Coach Mike Leach a good fit for Adam James? Could Adam’s mother or father ever imagine that their son would go away to a respectable university and get locked up in a dark room by order of the football coach? And just what happens if the coaches’ calls don’t come in? What would that mean to you and your family situation? So what is the response from most families? Well, they throw money at the problem, it happens everyday. After all, it might make perfect sense to you to believe that if you spend enough money on travel ball and showcases, camps and clinics, then coaches will see your son or daughter and eventually come calling. This puts us at the heart of the recruiting myth, that states — If your sports playing son or daughter is a top athlete, then college coaches are looking for them and will come calling in due time as coaches always search out and find the deserving student athletes. Let’s ask Jared B. “Jared, you were a 4.0 student, a top lefty pitcher in New York State, you played quality club ball and attended various showcase events. How many offers did you have as of March 1st of your senior year?” Jared: “None Mr Hanson.” Just because you hear that you have to play travel ball, participate in out-of-state tournaments, attend showcase events and sign up for college camps, should you buy into it? Is that the answer? It all sounds good, like the right things to be doing and to some extent they are. And if you listen to the participating parents, then you will further believe it all to be true as that is their hope: “Join our travel team; we go to North Carolina, Colorado and New Jersey for the USSSA regional championships. If we win one, then we get to go to Orlando.” “Sign up with us for the PerfectGame Showcases in New York and Florida. Lot’s of coaches will be there. You will get the exposure that you need.” “I got invitations to five college camps. This way, the coaches will get to see my son play.” “Our AAU team plays tournaments in Boston, Philadelphia and Albany. If we qualify in one of these, then we go to Las Vegas for the nationals.” You see, the people that spend the money want to believe that it will yield the desired results. This expensive approach plays into a family’s instinctive belief that high grades and a winning athletic performance must grab a coach’s eye. For families, it is too easy to follow the natural intuition of throwing money at the problem and to gobble up every morsel of possible praise. But do not misunderstand. As you stand today, a college coach out there might seemingly want your child to come to their school, perhaps even willing to offer big money to play on the team, but the coach does not know it yet. Think about that again — they want your child but they just do not know it yet. This is the basic foundation for your belief going in to this adventure. And the question is — what will you do to get them to know it? As the parent, you must separate the hard nuggets of real information from the sea of noise. Nothing takes the place of a proactive, strategic plan. Life surely would be easier if on-field success and good grades guaranteed grabbing a college coach’s attention and a credible offer, but this works only for a rare few. Parents, though, still struggle to escape the feel-good idea that coaches are looking for their son or daughter, and they most often do not understand the reality of recruiting until it is too late. The Flawed Assumption “I’ve received a lot of letters. Just look here at the stack.” The reward for attending a major showcase event, while taking into account overnight travel expenses and time away from home, is often a letter from a college coach. This seems to be a logical part of the system, a natural result and recruiting benefit of spending money on playing travel ball, attending showcases, tournaments and college camps. Result- yes; recruiting benefit- not yet. Here is how it really works. Assistant college coaches collect long lists of attending players and send out recruiting letters by the hundreds—literally hundreds. Some programs mail 10,000 recruiting letters annually. Now that is getting a lot of kids excited, but is it going to get them recruited? So, avoid the flawed assumption that most people make — If you are receiving recruiting letters, then you are being recruited. Why is it flawed? Because, it simply is not true, and it will trap you. It is an assumption that is hard to avoid. After all, you have a desk full of letters as proof. My son, Jeff, received a letter from the Notre Dame Baseball coach, with the school’s bright, brash gold “ND” letterhead. That was awesome to receive, awesome to have and awesome to show friends and family. But was there any real recruiting intention behind the letter? You might like to think so, but in reality it only costs 40 cents to mail the letter. I called to see what their interest level might be and their response was “We’d like for you and Jeff to fly out and meet with us.” Fair enough, but at whose expense? Mine of course, so it ended there, with a letter for the archives. It was a really nice letter, though. Why do coaches send so many letters? They are making a small investment to see which athletes might be proactive enough to follow up, a key indicator of a recruitable athlete. Otherwise, there is no direct correlation between receiving recruiting letters and getting credible scholarship offers. A lot of work must occur to bridge the gap between a letter of interest and an offer, and you have tremendous influence on the outcome. The Predictable Outcome Sometimes that one coach or two comes calling and it works out anyway, but most often the reactive, non-strategic approach fails. When it fails, confusion sets in and it might come on in this way: You wake up one morning early, and you cannot get back to sleep. It is dark out. The house is quiet. The others will not be up for awhile. Your mind begins to wonder: “The calls have not come. Nothing is happening. Others are getting offers. This does not feel right. It is getting late. Are we missing out?” Suddenly, you are overcome by a sense that this might not turn out like you want. Weeks later, exhausted and desperate, you go on to make a pot-luck stab at colleges for your child, applying a random process for selecting your list of college possibilities. A college is eventually picked. You send your child off to school in the fall. Surely, they will make the team — you hope. What makes this outcome so predictable? For a stretch of time, each day you go out to the mailbox looking for a college letter. Every time that one comes in, you enjoy a quiet celebration in firm belief that a coach wants your son or daughter: “We saw your son at the recent showcase and were impressed.” That is an exhilarating feeling — wow, the coach was impressed — now what? The vast majority of families allow valuable time to pass as they lie in wait for the call to come in. And that is the trap. The one that you just cannot get a grip on and avoid unless you know otherwise. Therefore, the outcome is quite predictable as it repeats itself over and over again, year after year.