If you have been members of this site for a while, then you know that as a Junior, you should have already started recruiting the schools where you think you would like to play. If you just joined our membership program and haven’t started the are marketing yourself to colleges, now is a great time to get the process going.
Do not sit back and wait for the college coaches to start banging your door down. While there are a very few lucky athletes across the country that will be recruited almost without doing anything themselves, most high school football players will have to be be active in doing the things necessary to get themselves noticed by the college coaches.
Recruiting Steps To Take Right Now
We’ve already gone over this in the past few months in great detail, but if you are new to the site and haven’t gotten your recruiting ball rolling yet, then go to the Members Resource Section and find the examples for the following and get these steps in the works:
Send a letter or email of introduction to the recruiting coach at the various schools where you think would be a good fit athletically, academically, and socially for you.
Get with your parents or another responsible adult that can help you and together develop your athletic profile. Send this out as a .pdf or .doc attachment to your introductory email. This will get you on the radar so the coaches will be able to receive new info from you.
Have generic versions of your letter or email of introduction and your athletic profile available so you can edit them as you find new schools to recruit.
Now that your season is over, put together a highlight video to be sent to the coaches that express interest in you. Also have a couple of full games tapes ready too. Most of you will not be handy at doing this, either get a techy friend do it or hire one of the professional services.
While many high school coaches can do this, remember they have families and many other responsibilities, do not solely depend on your coach to do it for you. Even if they have said they will do it, still have a back up plan.
Once the highlight video is ready, post it on your website and all the free websites like Rivals Scouts, and You Tube. This will make it easily accessible to the coaches should they want to see your talent.
Put up a personal athletic website. Again, if you don’t know how to do one, get a friend to do it for you. Put all your athletic information up including your stats and any football honors or accomplishments. Also put up stats if you play multiple sports. College football coaches like multiple sport players.
Keep regularly updating your website with any new information. When you have something new to say, also send an email to all the coaches where you have sent your athletic profile.
Instructions and examples for all of the above can be found in the Members Resource Section.
Six Key Ways College Coaches Find Football Players
As we said above, your name, face, and talents must be brought to the attention of the coaches. You’ve got to get you name in the coaches’ computer database of prospective athletes. It is a known fact that some coaches start out with a database of 5000 student/athletes and then begin narrowing the list down as they get more information about and from prospects and see them play.
So, let’s look at the six primary ways that college coaches find athletes for their football teams:
After you are established in the coaches database, you will be on his radar and when he needs to fill a particular position, he will look at people in his database first.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but you need to establish and maintain a good relationship with your high school coach. This person could be an important asset to you in your recruiting process. Prove to him that you are of excellent character in addition to being a terrific athlete.
Being named All State either your Sophomore or Junior year is a great advantage. College coaches have their assistants surf the net checking these lists for promising recruits. Even if you have not sent your information to these coaches, this is enough to put you on their radar.
Attending various football camps and combines can get you on their radars too. Coaches obtain the published results of the combines and the Nike camps are free. These are also excellent ways to meet college coaches and for them to see you play.
Sites like Rivals.com and others like it are today great tools for the college football coaches. They regularly check these sites for talent to play for their programs.
Paid recruiting and scouting services. Some of these services send out hundreds of names to the coaches, which tends to reduce their value; however, there are some legitimate paid services that do work hard to get you recruited.
Keep in mind though, before you and your parents break the bank to hire one of these expensive services, your own proactive self-promotion can accomplish pretty much the same thing.
Other Things To Do This Month
A. Visit some campuses where you are interested in attending. Make the most of these visits by talking with athletes, students that are not athletes, and professors in your major field if you already have one. Eat in the campus cafeteria at each school and ask the other students about dorm life. Visit both large and small campuses and ask yourself where you feel more at home.
B. Keep up with your studies. Realize that a good GPA makes you more attractive to many more coaches and allows you a broader range of choice when the actual time for making the college decision rolls around next year.
C. If you plan to participate in Division I or II football, you should obtain a Student Release Form from your high school, complete it and send it to the NCAA Clearinghouse.
Add this tip to your Financial Aid Tips file. There’s plenty of money out there that has to go to someone. It may as well be you.
Financial Aid Tips:
Bookmark the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) at www.ed.gov/. This is an excellent means to help with your education on financial aid. One publication in particular, “The Student Guide”, can be ordered from this site or possible obtained from your high school guidance department.
Use this month to start putting the groundwork in place so you won’t be so rushed as the responsibilities pile up next year. Do the financial aid research and learn the ropes, so to speak. Apply yourself so you will know the extent of the time and effort needed, then during the summer, let the games really begin!
When the time comes to fill out your scholarship application forms, be creative, complete and concise. Judges reading the applications want to know the real you, not just your name. Scholarship applications should clearly emphasize your ambitions, motivations and the idiosyncrasies that make you different from everyone else. Be original!
If you are not eligible for financial aid except by applying for a scholarships, then it’s a no-brainer…apply, apply, apply. The more you win the less out-of-pocket expenses and debt you will incur.
Recognize what you can expect from a scholarship when you apply for it. Some will pay all your expenses while others only pay room and board.
Important Tips About College Financial Aid Offices:
1. “Your error, your problem.” If you fail to fill in some key parts of your FAFSA, the central processor will reject your form, sending it back to you and not to the perspective schools, resulting in a potentially costly delay.
2. As a safeguard, Ohio State aid director Tally Hart recommends looking at the online form at fafsa.ed.gov; it will alert you if there are problems ahead.
3. While you cannot actually submit the FAFSA until January 1, of your Senior year, you and your parents can get a good idea of what information is required, and start gathering information for that lengthy application.
4. You need to do more to apply for scholarships than just fill out the FAFSA though. You need to search the web and apply to every scholarship you can, and you can start that process based on each specific scholarship’s deadline.
Welcome back from the holidays!
Time to hit the books again. Dig in with both feet the rest of this year and concentrate on keeping your GRADES up.
But , while hitting the books is important, there are some additional things you can do to greatly enhance your ability to land both athletic and other types of scholarships and to get into the the schools top most on your wish list:
Stay involved in extracurricular activities. Join a club, do some sort of community service project, or sign up for a committee at your church. Why? Admissions officers and scholarship providers will want to see evidence of your leadership and commitment to service when they review your application next year.
Additionally, lending a helping hand makes you feel good. The satisfaction and pride that come from volunteering to help others can give you a feeling of fulfillment that is hard to duplicate. It strengthens your community and when your community is doing well as a whole, its individuals are usually better off too. And, it gives you a sense of responsibility and the knowledge that one person can make a difference.
Community service can even help prepare you for a future career. Are you interested in the medical field or politics? Learning to work as a team member, assuming leadership roles and setting and meeting project goals will do nothing but serve you well in the years to come.
Staying involved in extracurricular and community service activities requires that you develop excellent time management skills so that you can effectively balance school work, other activities, family time and have some sort of social life.
Things to Do This Month:
A. Plan your spring testing schedule. You can take either the SAT Reasoning Test or up to three SAT Subject Tests on one test day. Carefully plan your testing schedule if you want to take both types of SAT. Go online and input “SAT schedule of test dates” to find out when the tests are given. You can also register online for the SAT.
B. Mark these important dates down in your calendar and begin preparing now. Use the access code on your PSAT/NMSQT score report to sign in online to “My College QuickStart”. With this personalized planning kit, you can prepare for the SAT using a study plan based on your PSAT results and explore lists of suggested colleges, majors and careers.
Are Your Performance Expectations Too High?
I know it is a strange statement to make at any time, and it is especially odd coming from us, since we’ve all heard countless times that we are to expect to succeed and to win.
Avoid the needless pressure of strict expectations by playing with flexibility and self-confidence. Champions are able to put their total focus on the play at hand and they rebound from their mistakes
The minimum GPA required by the NCAA for college football players is now 2.3 up from 2.0. While this allows you to scrape by with the NCAA, will it be enough to qualify you for admittance to your dream schools? Just one or two bad academic semesters can damage your GPA beyond repair.
Golpashin (Oregon Ducks offensive lineman) started against LSU in the Cowboys Classic, the season opener, but tore his ACL a couple of weeks later in practice. This scenario is common in college football, and this is one important reason why you should plan to accept an athletic scholarship only at a school where you can get a solid education that will prepare you for a career.
The NCAA’s newly passed plans to allow schools to give athletes a $2,000 stipend for living costs that are not covered by their athletic scholarships has been suspended with at least 125 of its member schools objecting to the new change.
Additionally, the new plans to allow schools to offer multi-year athletic scholarships has also been challenged by 75 member schools.
Both of these new changes will be addressed this month at the NCAA’s annual convention in Indianapolis.
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