Having these five attributes can mean the difference between college football recruits receiving college football scholarships or not. If you are just starting out in your high school athletic career, knowing about these attributes can really give you a sizable advantage over athletes that aren’t aware of them.
Amazingly, all except one of these attributes are under your direct control and can be greatly improved upon between now and your final year of high school. Typically, high school athletes feel that landing college sports scholarships is really more or less out of their out of their hands, but actually nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, having this kind of advantageous information now, will give you the distinct benefit of being able to evaluate yourself and work to improve any weak areas before they have a chance to ruin your scholarship chances later on.
Five Attributes Coaches Look For In Recruits
1. Ability To Play Football. As you would expect, this is the number one thing that coaches look for in their prospects. If you are a top notch player, and if you can consistently complete winning plays, the coaches will give you a long hard look.
Yes, your football playing ability does depend to large extent on God-given talent, but it also depends on how well you’ve trained your mind and body to play the game. This is definitely an attribute that you can work on.
2. Your Character Can Make or Break Your Chances. Put yourself in the coach’s position. Would you rather coach an athlete that keeps his nose clean or one that has a reputation as a trouble maker? Recent headlines concerning the negative off-field behavior of some of the leading high school players in the country should be enough to convince you that being a bad boy off the field can cost you that coveted and hard-worked-for scholarship.
Part of a coach’s investigative job when evaluating prospects for his college football team is to talk to your high school coach, school administrators, teachers, booster club members, pastors, members of your high school team, or anyone else that might be able to give them an idea about what kind of person you really are.
Character is under your direct control. If you tend to regularly break the rules and your reputation isn’t all that great, clean up your act. This means watching what you text and what you put on Facebook and other social media sites. Then, there are the other more obvious bad behaviors like drugs and alcohol and getting mixed up with the local police.
3. A Good Work Ethic Can Tip The Scales In Your Favor. How hard you are willing to work to make sure that you’re in the running for an athletic scholarship slot? Word gets around to the college coaches about any extra work that you give to your training.
Are you the kind of guy who gets up an hour early to practice and train? College coaches look for ability and character, but they also look for the player who will give his all and then some. Be that athlete that is the first on the practice field and the last to leave.
4. Decent Grades Will Greatly Help Your Chances. College coaches have good reason to consider your grades. First of all, if your grades are not high enough, you won’t gain admission into college. The NCAA has recently raised the minimum GPA, so it is even more important for you to keep your grades up. The movie “The Program” is no longer the norm among the football programs in the country.
Secondly, if a coaches graduation rates slips below a certain percentage, they can lose scholarships; and also; in some schools, their rate of pay is tied to their graduation rate.
Again, put yourself in the coach’s position. If the scholarship selection comes down to two athletes of equal playing ability etc… he will choose the one with the good grades.
As a general rule, you will have more and better scholarship opportunities if you keep your grades up. Here is another area that you can improve. If you’re having academic problems, make the effort to get help now. It’s not to late to turn things around, but you must realize the importance of maintaining an acceptable GPA. This is not an area you can afford to fluff off.
5. Your Size Can Be A Tremendous Asset Or It Can Hurt Your Chances. Admittedly, this attribute can be a real bummer. For the most part, you can’t control your size, and you certainly can’t control your height.
If you are somewhat small for your position when it comes scholarship time, you will certainly have to possess the other four attributes and you may even have to consider playing for a smaller school than you originally planned, but there are exceptions to this as is noted by smaller players starting for some of the top programs across the country.
College coaches do look for ability, character, decent grades, and a good work ethic, however, there is no getting around it, they are also scouting for athletes that are the “right size” to plug into their programs. When they look at sometimes thousands of athletic profiles, they do often used size as one of the eliminators.
Check yourself out and see how you measure up on these five attributes. Remember, you can improve most areas.
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