Friday, July 27, 2007

Advice for Recruiting - #2

“The Main Ingredients”
Part 1

I often give talks on the college recruiting process to HS, club and camp groups. I break down the process into 4 categories of consideration:

1. Academics – Find the schools that are the best challenge for you. Be sure they have the areas of study you are interested As many will not know yet what they want to study and some of you will change your mind, make sure you find out how one goes about deciding on a major at each school. Is it easy to change direction after a year or 2? NCAA rules give you 2 years before you need to declare a major – plenty of time to figure things out (and change your mind!)

Category 2 next... Athletics/Soccer

Monday, July 9, 2007

RECRUITING ADVICE FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Georgetown – 22 years – Advice for contacting coaches for recruiting..
Part 1

Above all else – the student-athlete must be the one to contact the coach first. There is always a “yellow flag” that goes up when the parent calls or e-mails first. I am sure you can think of some of things a coach may conclude:

The player is not really interested – just the parent.
The parent does everything for the player.
The player does not have good interpersonal habits, so the parent is covering.

A player making the first contact is much more impressive. We will be coaching and mentoring the player, not the parents (or not supposed to mentoring the parents). You only have one chance to make a good first impression. Almost no matter what, that is best done by the player. Common excuses are that “I am calling for my son because he is in school and can’t call you from there. By the time he is home, you probably wouldn’t be in the office.”

Obviously, if the player tries to call after school, then he may find the coach is in the office. We don’t work 9-5s – much more than that. We all have voice mail – even if you just leave a message that I am trying to contact you and will call back is better than the call from someone other than you. If you leave your number and ask the coach to call you back, then you are also finding out how interested they may be in you and/or how professional they are.

Remember NCAA rules prohibit a coach from calling you until after July 1st prior to your senior year of HS. So if you are calling before that and leave a message, then you will not (or should not) receive a call back.

After the initial call it would not be improper for a parent to touch base. However, if it now becomes just the parent, then the same conclusions as above may apply. Parents are an important part of the process and can affect things. Obviously a parent should do all he/she can to allow the process to work for the student-athlete. Too much or none at all could spell out certain cautions in the mind of the coach.

Remember that we recruit players whom we feel will help our programs on and off the field and, obviously, fit into the academic profile of the school.

To find out more information on NCAA rules for the College Bound student-athlete you can go the following site:
http://www.ncaa.org/library/general/cbsa/2006-07/2006-07_cbsa.pdf