You play high school sports, you join travel teams, you attend showcases and camps, you have a personal trainer, and you love sports. But what’s your goal? College sports? ”Decide upon your goal and launch it”- UCLA Legendary Coach John Wooden.

So you’ve decided, your goal is to play college sports. Beginning your push towards securing a college roster spot, and perhaps a scholarship, is like the kick-off to a football game, the first pitch to a baseball game, the tip-off to a basketball game, the face-off to a hockey game. Every game has to have a beginning. The recruiting game is no exception.

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Last week was a very big week for college football recruits. It was the National Signing Week. Signing week is an intense week, for both the recruits and the coaches. It is a short one-week window of opportunity for a college to commit athletic-based scholarship money to their recruits and for the recruits to “sign” representing their commitment to the college. And a commitment it is. The National Letter of Intent is a very legal and binding contract between the college and the athlete.

A couple of notes pertaining to the National Letter of Intent. It comes with a one-year term, not four years. It represents only the athletic portion of a scholarship award. Once signed, an athlete would need to be “released” by the school if they were to change their mind. Getting a release is anything but automatic, so be sure to understand the obligation and commitment to the college as you “sign” for your athletic scholarship.

Parents have a specific role to carry out during a campus visit and coaches meeting. For starters, they are to make sure their arrival is early. Yes, get to campus early. Identify the location of the Athletic department. Travel around the campus and find the sports facilities and fields. Then head back to meet the coach.

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The secret to a successful coaches meeting is to ask questions. Furthermore, to know which questions to ask, which questions not to ask, and how to ask the important ones. If you plan to meet a college coach without several relevant questions to ask, then your meeting will be short and uproductive. But if you go into the meeting totally prepared, having done your homework assignment, and having identified 15-20 important questions to ask, then you will have seized on the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the college coach and their team situation.

Imagine how effective this line of questioning is-

“Coach, I see that you won 15 games last season, how did you feel about that?”

After the coaches response- “What is your goal for this years team?”

After the coaches response- “What is your 5-year plan?”

After the coaches response- “Good, I can help you with that.”

This reflects in your preparation. It allows the coach to discuss their feelings and plans for which may apply to you. And it allows the recruit to express a bit of confidence. Taken all together, it’s quite powerful.

Coaching student-athletes to meet college coaches is a specialty of The College Sports Track. Call or email us today to see how this can be of great value to you.

What is exposure as it relates to your college sports recruiting? Most people think exposure is playing on a field where college coaches have come to watch. People intuitively believe that playing well in front of a collection of college coaches qualifies for exposure. So, I ask, is this how it really works?

Let’s look at this from the coaches perspective. First of all, what interest do you think coaches have in traveling around from field to field watching high school players? And in any situation, how many of the players actually qualify to play at the college level, whichever level it is? If the coach does not know you in advance, how would the coach know your admissions qualifications? In short, coaches would rather be home than out recruiting; most players in attendance don’t qualify athletically for their team; and of the ones that do, many won’t qualify for admissions. So, do you think coaches attend these events just to waste time? Of course not.

Rather, the coaches come to watch student-athletes they know of prior to the event. They will travel a long ways to evaluate a known, qualifying, student-athlete. They attend events to validate their thinking one way or another regarding the player’s ability. The student-athletes typically evaluated are the ones that have already met certain prequalifying criteria. When a coach comes to watch a specific player, then that player gets a real evaluation, equating to real exposure. For the vast majority of the players that just sign up and show up, their opportunity for real exposure is very limited and generally yields to disappointing results.

Next week, we will discuss how to maximize the benefit from real exposure. But in the meantime, contact us today for more information relating to your opportunity to gain exposure.

Attending a college camp qualifies as a form of college visit. This event can be the means to secure a quality evaluation, both of you from the coach and of the coach from you. It also gives you a chance to be on a college campus for a day, giving you the opportunity to get a better feel for the college environment. And we know it’s not hard to get an invitation to attend a college camp. So, what do you do when a college coach invites you to their ”College Prospect Camp” while informing you (insinuating) that many of their players are recruited out of their camp?

We do believe there is a strategic recruiting advantage to be gained in attending selective college camps. However, we don’t believe in chasing college camps. Are you a legitimate prospect or just another camp registration? How do you really know? Wouldn’t you like to know before you spend the time and money on the camp?

It’s this simple. First of all, consider why you are interested in the camp. Most people hope and wish for a recruiting benefit from the camp. Most people attend college camps to get “exposure”, a most often misunderstood term. We can assure you of this- if you just sign up and show up, then you may have fun for the day but your interest in a recruiting benefit will be lost.

College camps are best attended when they fit in the college recruiting plan as an instrumental piece to the puzzle. But it requires advance planning and plenty of communications between you and the coach before the camp date. It requires the coach to fully understand your intent for attending the camp. And it requires you to ask for a private talk with the coach immediately following the camp to discuss their evaluation of your sports opportunity. Anything other than that is “chasing” and contributing towards team fundraising.

Call us to discuss how college camps can strategically fit into your recruiting puzzle.

Surface Recruiting- what is this? It happens to be one of the primary reasons why families fail in this effort, and they do so by the thousands, year after year, for many of the same reasons, over and over again. You think the learning curve would set in, but it doesn’t, as new people come in the process thinking they know differently. And it takes them down the same beaten path.

Here is the scenario- you, the student-athlete that excels in high school sports and with good grades; you play on Club/ AAU travel teams; you attend showcases, camps, and combines; you play in regional tournaments. All of a sudden, you get some letters in the mail, some signed by head coaches, some are preprinted with your name written in, whatever it is, it’s all good. Next you exchange emails with a coach, go on a few campus visits, meet some coaches. You’re thinking the recruiting game is on? But is it? Not yet. When left to do on your own, the necessary follow-up steps are rarely done. Rather, people tend to wait, hope, and wish for good things to happen, for the college coach to come calling with offers of grandeur.

But year after year, for college prospects by the thousands, this initial exchange between coach and family does not materialize into any substantive, live, in-depth, recruiting activity… it only exists on the “surface”. The problem is that families can’t get away from it as they become enamored by the receipt of college letterhead, and as such, they think that they are being actively recruited. Their pending outcome becomes inevitable. I call it Surface Recruiting, and it’s the # 1 trap.

To learn our CST secrets on how to recognize Surface Recruiting and manage it successfully, contact us. Call or email The College Sports Track today.

Who wants to call college coaches? I have worked with hundreds of student-athletes that all wanted to play college sports. Did any of them really want to call college coaches? Not many. But the ones who willingly learned how to do this effectively are playing college sports now. Calling college coaches and scheduling recruiting trips is a vital element to building relationships and gaining trust. It is your first BIG step towards landing a college roster spot and earning your sports opportunity.

While there is no specific date that shows up on your calendar indicating the day for you to call your first college coach, every day you wait to get on track here delays your opportunity to gain trust. In other words, how much time do you want to completely understand and trust the coaches intentions with your son or daughter? Are you willing to drop off your child at college for four years and pass their interests into the hands of a college coach without having trust for the situation? I was not and I don’t know many parents who consciously are. But I do know that most parents wind up doing just that. Why? Because they don’t take the necessary steps here to gain trust in the coach. And when you don’t, you leave your son or daughter’s success and satistaction to chance. We at CST do not subscribe to that practice. Rather, we work very hard with our student-athletes to engage them in building trust with college coaches. Contact us to learn how we do it.