Recruiting Tips - Part I

March 5, 2009

As an article hosted on BeRecruited.com mentions recently, the art of successfully maneuvering the often-tangled paths of recruitment by a college sports program is rarely, if ever, “an exact science” that can be mastered by the high school student athlete. Instead, it is a road which must be travelled cautiously, though confidently, with an emphasis on minimizing potential mistakes which could cost young recruits the opportunity for a shot to play and/or receive a scholarship in a respective sport of choice at an university which best fits their desires and needs.

Among the countless errors which might be made by student athletes ill-prepared to navigate the tricky waters of the college recruiting process, the five most common are:

• Don’t take the recruiting process for granted; schools are not oftentimes going to aggressively seek out one student athlete over another, a scenario which leaves the average recruit solely responsible for making initial contact and marketing him / herself toward the particular needs of a program of interest, rather than vice versa.
• Many student athletes believe they are not talented enough given their particular sport of choice to be provided a scholarship offer, and, subsequently, don’t bother to pursue opportunities which might otherwise be made available to them. The article suggests that a student athlete always make sure to speak with each and every coach he / she comes into contact with directly about the possibilities which could be provided upon a commitment being made to each respective program.
• Student athletes must always remember that their conduct off-the-field almost always directly reflects their ability to be put on-the-field as an athlete at the collegiate level. As such, interactions with members of the individual’s surrounding community, as well as his / her performance academically in the classroom, both remain crucial at all stages of the recruiting process and must be an area of constant focus for a student serious about playing sports for a university.
• As with anything else, seeking out advice in a time of confusion is often the first thing an individual does in order to organize and give consideration to available plans of action. There is nothing wrong with doing so; yet, in the case of recruiting, as in many other facets in life, a student athlete must make sure he / she gives special consideration to the source of the advice provided and whether or not recommendations provided come from a point of surface-level familiarity or deep-rooted expertise.
• Student athletes oftentimes have a natural tendency to rely too heavily on the ability of a high school coach to “pull some strings” with contacts at the university level in order to make the recruiting process an open-and-shut deal. Keep in mind, says the article, that coaches “have a lot going on in their lives beside you,” and, valuable as they are, should not remain a solitary resource by which to successfully market oneself as a student athlete to potential schools of interest.