Avoid these 10 Deadly Recruiting Mistakes
Even as a freshman, if you expect to be recruited to play college football, avoid these ten mistakes during your high school football career.
1. Dismiss or downplay attention from the coaching staff at any college. You may think that you have the potential to play at a Division I school, however be courteous and respectful of any attention from any level school. You’ve got four years to go and you don’t ever know what’s in the future. Keep your options open.
2. Lie about recruiting attention. The truth will come out eventually. Sure everyone wants to feel important, but just stick to the truth.
3. Develop a negative relationship with you high school football coach. Your high school coach will be the first person after your parents that a college coach will call. If you’ve been difficult to get along with in high school, what college coach would want you?
4. Display bad sportsmanship. Again, the college coaches will hear about this during their recruiting investigation.
5. Skip practices and team meetings. This behavior in high school shows the college coaches that you don’t approach your commitments seriously.
6. Disrespect your parents and teachers. This behavior indicates that you really don’t respect others and will more than likely continue this attitude in college.
7. Act like you are better than your teammates. Why would any college football coach want to recruit an athlete who treats his teammates badly?
8. Get in trouble off the field. Keep your nose clean. Coaches do not want to recruit trouble to their teams.
9. Mouth off to the officials. Just stick to your game and resist the urge to talk back to the officials.
10. Neglect your school work. Keep your grades up from your freshman year through your senior year. Coaches will be looking at your GPA which will include all your grades even these early freshman grades.
NOTE: If you have been fortunate enough to rack up some significant varsity stats this season, wait until your season is completely over and then contact the coaches where you think you would like to play football.
This is done by sending them either a letter of introduction or an initial contact email with a recruiting profile attached. Go to the Membership Resource Section for samples.
In most cases, your Letter of Introduction or initial contact email should be sent to the recruiting coordinator (go to the college websites and look him in the staff directory of the athletic site) unless you already know and have worked with a specific position coach. It should include the following:
Be written by you with your parents guidance and be grammatically correct using correct spelling.
Be short and to the point; long ones will not be read.
Tell a few things about yourself (where and what year you play) and that you have researched schools and his school is where you would like to play.
If you already have one, attach your recruiting profile.
Briefly, these five things should be included in your Recruiting Profile:
Contact Information including home phone, cell phone, email address (both yours and your parents), and home address. Talk to your high school coach about including his email too, but do not include it unless you have his permission.
Grades and Academic Information including grade point average and any ACT or SAT scores that you have.
Athletic Accomplishments including honest stats that you and your team have achieved.
A smiling picture of yourself so the coaches will know you when they see you in camp or in person.
Put it in either .pdf, .doc. or .xls. Most coaches can open these.
Add these tips to your Financial Aid Tips file.
The 9th grade is not too early to start thinking about how your college costs will be met. The typical freshman is not hard wired to think long range, but certainly your parents are.
Beginning this semester, your grades will count toward your eventual GPA (grade point average) which is a major consideration to be admitted to any college or to qualify for most scholarships.
Start a notebook and make a file for all the little known tips and sources for college financial aid that are automatically made a part of your membership program.
There’s plenty of money out there that has to go to someone. Let’s make sure that some of it goes to you.
FINANCIAL AID TIPS:
The Corporation for National and Community Service provides full-time educational awards of $4,725 a year and these funds can be used to pay current educational expenses or repay federal student loans.
If you would like more information on this program, call 1-800-942-2677 or write to:
The Corporation for National and Community Service
1100 Vermont Avenue N.W.Washington, DC 20525
Go where you’re wanted. Somewhere out there is a college or university that’s dying to have you as a student. Find that school, fire off an application and you could be watching the cost of your college education drop.
- “Every student is a star at the right college,” says Ray Loewe, with College Money, a Marlton, N.J., financial planning firm specializing in helping parents pay for college.
- And star students get deep discounts for their education. A college that really wants you will find the aid and scholarships to keep you.
- “Colleges know what they want, and if you fit their criteria, they’re willing to pay,” Loewe says.
- The trick is finding the school that considers you a star.
- Peruse college guides. Do your grades and SAT scores match or exceed the average marks of the current student body? Does the college offer the courses you want? If so, this could be the school that rolls out the red carpet for you.
“Choose a college where you fit in the top 25 to 30% of a class,” Loewe says. “Obviously, the higher you are, the more the school wants you and the better position you’re in.”
Not sure where to start your college search? Begin by checking out smaller, regional colleges in your area. An excellent but less-known college may be searching for a student just like you.
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How are your grades? STAY ON TOP OF THEM!
- Talk to your teachers about your goal of playing college football. Ask for their help and advice. This may seem like a crazy idea but think about it. These high school teachers have taught students heading for college for many years. They know about academic requirements and may know a great deal about specific college programs. After all, they had to go to college. They know all about teacher recommendations for college. You need them on your side.
- On your visit to your counselor’s office this month, check out any college information available. Ask for online sites or anything else they have. They may have college handbooks or guides for colleges you are interested in pursuing. Also, ask for online sites or any other information on the Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT). They will probably have practice tests you can take.
- Ask if they have any after-school or evening sessions available for college planning or taking the SAT.
Things to Do This Month
Check out our test taking strategies in the Membership Resource Section. Begin to use them on tests you have now. You will be surprised at how much you can improve your test taking ability.
How to Get Your Confidence Back
Have you ever said, heard someone say or read about a famous athlete who laments, “I’ve lost my confidence.”?
Unfortunately, it’s a common occurrence in the world of sports performance. What happens when it has been said that you’ve “lost your confidence”?
According to sports psychologists, you don’t lose your confidence you just temporarily suppress it. Confidence is a positive emotion, it’s a feeling; it’s not a character trait. It hasn’t gone anywhere, it has not evaporated or run down the street, it’s still where it always has been and where it will continue to be… within you.
So what happens to make you think you’ve lost it? When something troubling happens to you like a poor performance, an upsetting turn of events at home or in a relationship, or you suffer a huge loss, you naturally suppress your negative feelings of fear, sadness, discouragement and humiliation.
Without meaning to, when you suppress your negative feelings, you also suppress your positive feelings like joy, happiness and confidence. Why? Because in order to suppress any feeling, you have suppress them all; you instinctively numb the whole feeling function.
This “loss of confidence” situation can easily be cured with a simple little exercise.
Try remembering the last time you felt really confident in a football game. Think back to that game. How did you play, what about your playing made you feel unstoppable? Replay in your mind some of the key plays you made in that game.
If you will take the time to actually do this exercise, you will find all your feelings coming back to you and you will “feel” confident and joyful again.
Yes, you will still need to learn to handle your negative emotions, but this little exercise can help put you back on track.
New Landmark and Historical Changes In NCAA rulings.
1. The NCAA board adopted a proposal allows universities to boost their athletic scholarships by as up t o $2,000 to cover the full cost of attendance. Each conference will be free to vote on whether to adopt the proposal.
2. High school athletes to be eligible for college play will now be required to have a GPA of 2.3 or higher in their 16 core courses rather than the previous 2.0. Junior college players will be required to have a GPA of 2.5 or better. These tougher entrance requirements could force some incoming freshmen to spend their first year in college as an “academic redshirt”. They would be allowed to practice but not compete.
3. 3. Multi-Year Athletic Scholarships have been approved though one-year grants are still the minimum.
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