College Admissions for Student-Athletes
Jeffrey “Jay” Durso-Finley, Director of College Advising at International College Counselors and author of the book “Understanding Athletic Recruiting: A Comprehensive Guide for the High School Student-Athlete,” offers essential guidance to help student-athletes and their parents navigate the path to collegiate success.
After this webinar participants will understand:
- Gain perspective on what college admissions committees prioritize when evaluating student-athletes.
- Learn how to position themselves or their student as a well-rounded and competitive applicant in both the classroom and on the field.
- Get expert advice on crafting a compelling application which helps athletes stand out through personal statements, recommendation letters, and showcasing athletic achievements.
- Understand the role of coaches in recruitment and how coaches can advocate for and guide athletes throughout the admissions process.
Take a look at our upcoming free college admissions webinars.
WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00.000 –> 00:00:22.179
Jeffrey “Jay” Durso-Finley: Good evening, everyone. My name is Jeff Durso-Finley, and so happy for you to join us tonight. We have a lot of information to cover. So I want to get cranking right away. I want to welcome you to Understanding Athletic Recruiting which is organized by International College Counselors.
00:00:22.180 –> 00:00:48.529
We’re going to cover a lot of ground tonight. This is part of a presentation that I’ve done many different times, including a three hour version that I do with conferences. So I understand there may be a lot of questions that pop up. We’ll try to answer some if we have time at the end of the evening. But you can see my email on the screen, and I’m very, very happy to follow up with questions as they arise, because this is a particularly complicated aspect of college admission in the 21st century.
00:00:48.620 –> 00:01:08.229
Before I get going. I would love to tell you a little bit about International College Counselors. This is a wonderful group of very experienced folks that help students from all over the world. They work with
00:01:08.420 –> 00:01:32.839
students from all backgrounds who have all kinds of aspirations, all the way from entering into college for the first year through graduate school and medical school. They can help with school list, school selection, extracurricular life, thinking about summer activities, application review. If you engage with the International College Counselors, you’re going to find it an incredibly comprehensive and really supportive environment.
00:01:33.170 –> 00:01:53.440
And since I joined them, I found is that it really is a group of informed, intelligent, experienced, and wonderful educators, and I could not recommend them more if you want to engage with us, going forward beyond just hearing a little bit about athletic recruiting
00:01:54.400 –> 00:02:02.699
To give you a little bit of a sense about myself. I worked 10 years in college admission to Brown University, including being their athletic
00:02:02.850 –> 00:02:25.350
liaison in the admission office. I worked for 20 plus years in college counseling at a very selective and independent boarding school in New Jersey, was lucky enough to work with some fantastic people to publish a book on athletic recruiting. It has a few different editions. So that’s been a great deal of fun for me. But I think, in terms of understanding where I’m coming from, for this particular presentation
00:02:25.460 –> 00:02:47.330
you should know that I played sports in college. I’ve coached student athletes going on to college. I’m a parent of students who played in college. I was an academic advisor to students when I was a college admission officer and as a college counselor. I’ve literally have touched every single aspect of a prospective intercollegiate student athlete’s life.
00:02:47.390 –> 00:03:13.280
And that’s given me a really overarching and interesting perspective on how to enter into the college admission world when it comes to intercollegiate athletic recruiting, because it can be very opaque, very challenging. Moving back and forth between understanding the rhythms and the explicit processes is something that that I’ve worked on for a long time, and I love to have these conversations
00:03:13.280 –> 00:03:40.179
with students and their families as they try to figure this out. All right. So, as I said, it’s a lot of information to review in a short period of time. So hold on to your hats. But we’re going to go ahead and dive right in. And, as I said, if you have questions you can put them in the Q and A. And if we have time at the end, we’ll answer them. If we don’t, I will absolutely follow up with you personally to try to get those answered those questions answered. Alrighty.
00:03:40.500 –> 00:04:01.649
So we’re going to start off with how you enter into this process. So a student says or thinks to themselves, I would like to play sports in college as a counselor. One of the things that we always do is come right back and say, Well, what do you mean by this? Because so many high school student athletes. Just see it as a part of their day.
00:04:02.080 –> 00:04:07.289
So they’re not necessarily thinking about the ramifications of what they do if they enter into the college athletics world.
00:04:07.610 –> 00:04:22.449
So when I work with a prospective student athlete, I always push it right back on them and say, when you say you want to play sports in college? What do you mean? And that question engenders a whole other set of questions.
00:04:22.450 –> 00:04:47.700
When you enter into the athletic recruiting process there’s an awful lot of self-reflection that goes in to figure out what’s the best way to have a fantastic experience. Most students, when they say, oh, I want to understand athletic recruiting , they want to know NCAA eligibility rules, or the sliding scale, or things that are necessary to know. They are critical to a good student athlete’s experience. So that’s where I start.
00:04:48.220 –> 00:04:58.629
That question creates more questions. When you say I want to play sports in college, are you just thinking I only want to play at the highest level? I want to play D1, and that’s it.
00:04:58.930 –> 00:05:13.169
If you just want to find any college to play your sport, those are the students that are easiest to work with. If you just grew up playing soccer, and you want to keep playing soccer and get a good education, you could do it. There’s no question about it.
00:05:13.170 –> 00:05:37.410
If you want to try to receive scholarship aid then this gets a little bit more complicated. We can talk about those complications. Honestly, I work with a lot of students who just want to improve their college options. They’ve got a good academic record, and they’re strong athletes, and they want to say, Hey, I put these two things together. I might be able to gain access at an institution that one on its own might not allow me. So you know more questions, more questions.
00:05:38.158 –> 00:05:50.129
So let’s get to the Division 1 piece. If the prospective student athletes who are on this on this Zoom webinar said I want to be Division 1, there are still more questions to be asked.
00:05:50.310 –> 00:06:16.130
When you say Division 1 are you thinking highly selective? I work with a lot of students who say, I want to play at Stanford. I want to play at Duke. I want to play at Vanderbilt. I want to play at Georgetown. I don’t necessarily want to play at the University of Utah. Okay, well, that’s Division 1right? And that’s a choice that you may have to make, depending on the feedback that you get from coaches. Do you need to be actively recruited and have a guaranteed spot on the team. Are you willing to work for that spot?
00:06:16.590 –> 00:06:32.140
Are you willing to walk on? Are you willing to risk being cut in order to have that Division 1 spot and a lot of that depends on the sport and the level. We need to think about what your thresholds are for entering into a Division 1 program.
00:06:32.460 –> 00:06:59.280
So that’s something to just sort of keep in mind when you’re thinking, yeah, yeah, it’s D1 only. And it’s a very interesting kind of geographic and academic difference. If you’re in Texas or Arizona, or oftentimes in Florida and Georgia, you know it’s Division 1 only. They don’t necessarily think about D2 or D3, when you can have an incredible academic and athletic experience at those at those places.
00:06:59.930 –> 00:07:26.320
This leads into the next piece of this notion. Do you just want to find a place to play your sport? Are you open to different divisions? I don’t work with a ton of kids who go to the NAIA, but it’s an incredible organization that stretches from British Columbia to South Florida, and students who want to participate in their sport can find a fantastic experience. Are you open to different kinds of colleges when you talk about regional preferences, selectivity preferences?
00:07:26.450 –> 00:07:29.709
I often say, Well, do you want your parents to see you play?
00:07:30.270 –> 00:07:44.270
Are you willing to travel, to have that, to have that that athletic opportunity? Or do you need to be in a place where you know your parents are going to be able to jump in the car most of the time and see you and see you participate?
00:07:44.670 –> 00:08:01.820
So you have to think about things like geography and places, opportunity to play ,size division. That’s part of the internal questioning and calculus that you have to go through before we even get to the process of working with coaches.
00:08:04.360 –> 00:08:24.799
if you’re somebody who’s looking into receive scholarship aid, for example. Then this is one of the reasons why I started doing the programs along these lines, because we were so tired of our student athletes getting these emails and letters, saying, Here’s how you win a scholarship.
00:08:24.950 –> 00:08:35.390
Realistically, only—depending on whose numbers you use—only between one and 2% of all student athletes across the entire NCAA receive scholarship aid to participate.
00:08:35.830 –> 00:08:56.230
And with some of the new changes out there with the name, image and likeness, and the and the new lawsuit that came down, people are going to be thinking that they’re seeing all these zeros out there when in fact, it really is only going to affect a very small number of student athletes who participate.
00:08:56.230 –> 00:09:18.299
So are you willing to think about Division 2. Because there’s an awful lot of scholarship aid that exists there. Are you willing to walk on to a place at first to get your scholarship later on? You can do it, but it’s a tremendous amount of work. So it’s a conversation to have with me, your ICC counselor, or with your counselor back home about what your priority is, as I mentioned, when we first started getting rolling.
00:09:24.110 –> 00:09:50.890
If you are looking to improve your college options, consider: I have these two skills, athletic and academic, and I know one on its own is not going to necessarily give me the opportunity that I want. Do I want to pursue that right now again, more questions. If you’re the sixth person on a five person D1 list, ae you willing to drop to Division 3 or play at a high level club team?
00:09:51.180 –> 00:09:55.400
Are you willing to totally let go?
00:09:55.510 –> 00:10:11.119
Do you have a very restricted list of potential colleges like, I want to play soccer at Santa Clara. I want to play soccer at Gonzaga. I want to play soccer at Portland, but I’m not going to go play at Claremont, Mckenna. It’s like, okay, you get to make that choice
00:10:11.470 –> 00:10:22.290
depending on the feedback that you get from your coaches. But it’s something you have to think about as you enter into the recruiting stream. Where does your threshold lie for the things that you want to get out of the process.
00:10:22.430 –> 00:10:46.699
I work with a good number of Division 3 kids. In fact, I work with kids all the way from the ones that are signing NLIS and national letters of attempt. Excuse me for the jargon, and receiving scholarships to students who are just walking on Division 3 schools, the entire range, but some of them will say, No, I only want to be in the northeast, or Oh, I only want to be in. I want to stay in Virginia. I want to stay 150 miles from home.
00:10:47.210 –> 00:10:54.254
That’s great. You are figuring out what you want, what you want out of your intercollegiate athletic experience.
00:10:54.890 –> 00:11:02.569
But it sort of lends into a point that I’m going to hit in just a second.
00:11:03.160 –> 00:11:31.909
I mentioned that when we start having conversations about understanding athletic recruiting, that students often very quickly move to. Well, how do I do it? What are the requirements? And working with the NCAA. With Clearinghouse? What’s now called the Eligibility center is very, very straightforward. They’re going to give you a sliding scale. And for all the complaints that people have about the NCAA. The literature that they have actually on the website is fantastic.
00:11:32.040 –> 00:11:40.039
You can understand exactly the contact periods. You can understand exactly the sliding scale. What makes you eligible within Division 1, Division 2, and Division 3.
00:11:40.260 –> 00:12:04.769
So this Venn diagram here shows you how much space there is where, if your academic standing meets the NCAA requirements in the sliding scale, and you have official offer of support from a coach. Division 1 and Division 2, that hoop you’re trying to jump through is actually quite broad. And that’s especially true at schools that nowadays don’t have standardized testing requirements.
00:12:05.160 –> 00:12:46.859
It’s very, very easy to qualify right now. I mentioned so many things about distance from home, selectivity, financial aid, and then the other instances are like things like squad size. So if you’re walking, if you’re if you’re sitting there as part of this as part of this webinar thinking, okay, I want to go to a highly selective Division 1 Northeast or mid-Atlantic. I want to play lacrosse at Duke or Georgetown, or I want to play football, things like that, especially if there’s a low number sport. And you’re adding all of these pieces
00:12:47.330 –> 00:12:54.060
We’ll use lacrosse, because that’s an easy one. I want to play lacrosse at the University of Pennsylvania.
00:12:54.200 –> 00:13:02.880
Okay, you are essentially putting all of these Venn diagrams together and trying to hit that little tiny diamond in the center.
00:13:03.430 –> 00:13:19.740
So again, think about the different sort of the range between Division 1 scholarship, recruited, guaranteed spot at one end of the continuum, and I just want to find my place to play my sport and get a great education on the other end of the continuum.
00:13:19.890 –> 00:13:34.559
Those are the things that you should just put in your mind as you start to consider that kind of aspect. So this leads to some maxims that I always talk about with my prospective student athletes which is just off that last Venn diagram.
00:13:34.979 –> 00:13:49.910
The more restrictions you place on your goals, the harder they are to achieve. I want to play soccer somewhere. I want a Division 1 scholarship at a highly selective school. That’s the continuum.
00:13:50.800 –> 00:14:20.039
The other thing that I think students don’t necessarily realize as they move into this is that their goals will need to be constantly reevaluated. Your transcripts going to be evaluated, your tape and your performance is going to be evaluated. You will have coaches that will say, Oh, my gosh! You can totally play for me, and coaches that will say you cannot play for me, and you have to handle that right or admission officers will say we can’t support this transcript. They will say we can totally support this transcript. Let us know if this is something that you want.
00:14:20.540 –> 00:14:43.079
But one of the things that I always say with my prospective student athletes is that there are lots of aspects about this that are outside your control and aspects that are within your control. But the responsibility for controlling that part of it is the student athletes. It’s not the parents, not the club coach. It’s not the high school coach. It’s not the college counselor. They all have different roles.
00:14:43.430 –> 00:15:44.790
But communication, responsibility, question asking, understanding the process that falls within the prospective student athletes realm. So if you think about it in the grand scheme of things, coaches are going to work with you, to maximize your abilities, to be recruited from an athletic perspective. What are the skills, dispositions, and talents that you need in order to be successful in this particular sport. That’s their goal. As an ICC counselor, the way I describe it to my student athletes is: what I can do is help you find the right fit and be the most recruitable student athlete you can possibly be, whether it’s by fit, whether it’s by program, whether it’s by admission practice, and that’s the role that a counselor can add to help you ask good questions and figure out your way through the process. So long as you’re willing to take on that responsibility to ask those questions.
00:15:45.000 –> 00:16:12.250
So this leads into what I what I was just saying in terms of the roles and responsibilities of a prospective student athlete. So from the very first contact, from the very first time you talk to a coach, from the very first time you fill out a recruiting questionnaire the individual, responsible action has to come from that student-athlete And it’s important to know, because, as I mentioned when we just got going, when you’re in high school, it’s not just what you do from 3:15 to 5:30 in the afternoons.
00:16:13.610 –> 00:16:44.059
It’s also how you organize your summers when you’re in college. It’s a very, very different experience, and that’s not to dissuade anybody from entering into it. It’s just you need that foreknowledge. Some of it is your academic preparation. Some of it is the goal setting, as I was just describing. And some of it is that student driven action. Some of it is the question asking about programs and levels and expectations.
00:16:44.110 –> 00:17:11.660
And again, most of the student athletes who are here were probably, like the alphas on their team. They’ve never had to fight for playing time. They’ve never had to worry about people thinking that they’re not the best kids on the field or on the court. Now, being able to handle a little bit of uncertainty, adversity for many student-athletes, as they move on to the process is new to them.
00:17:11.950 –> 00:17:29.150
And then I would further add, and this gets amplified sort of in the post COVID world, the communication from prospective student athletes and from high schoolers has been challenging because everybody got separated
00:17:29.270 –> 00:17:45.740
But coaches demand really good communication. So these are some of the roles and responsibilities of a prospective student-athlete that you need to incorporate. So I’m going to sort of divert before I get into the practical aspects of how to do this.
00:17:45.800 –> 00:18:10.700
I’m going to divert a little bit into helping you understand some of the big picture concepts of what’s the academic impact on your experience. If you’re an intercollegiate student athlete, the personal a little bit about the distinctions between leagues, but not a ton. But do talk a little bit about successful habits and behaviors, because, as I mentioned, that’s very different in a secondary school versus intercollegiate school.
00:18:10.960 –> 00:18:17.369
So what does it mean to be an intercollegiate student athlete, academically?
00:18:17.840 –> 00:18:35.739
There’s a tremendous amount of upsides because you have a very disciplined life. Everybody else who’s not playing a sport right is going bonkers because they went from being at school from 8 until 3 15, you know, whatever their academic schedule was to having 11 h of class a week.
00:18:36.240 –> 00:18:44.499
You have a much more disciplined life because you have to take care of your classes. You have to get treatment. You have to be in on the field at a certain time.
00:18:45.060 –> 00:19:29.429
You get far better advising than most students. Academic advising in college is terrible. I will throw that out there right. You may have study halls. You may have tutors that go on the bus with you. It’s very structured, they want you to succeed. The academic progress rate is a real thing whereas generally you’re kind of left on your own. If you don’t have that to ground you, there are potential downsides in terms of your academic life in terms of the little bit of time you may have. You may be on a bus, and you may be gone for 72 hours. There may be coaches that say, Oh, you want to do pre-med? No, if you’re going to do pre-med, you have to take all your lab classes in the summer because we can’t have you in a lab that runs from one o’clock to 5 o’clock.
00:19:29.440 –> 00:19:47.820
And these are things you have to find out when you’re when you’re assessing a team and assessing a program. I work with a lot of students that would say, Yeah, you can do that, coach said. You can do a study abroad program, but it has to happen in our off season. You can’t do it in the fall when we’re in season, and we would prefer that you do it in the summer.
00:19:48.250 –> 00:20:00.499
And probably the one that’s the most frustrating, and the most nuanced and difficult. This notion of professors and peers who devalue your intellect, and that’s incredibly frustrating no matter where you go.
00:20:00.900 –> 00:20:50.720
I’ve sent kids to Harvard or Princeton as athletes. I’ve sent kids to, as I mentioned University of Utah and University of Tennessee, Chattanooga as athletes, they all say the same thing. So when they put on their sweater, they put on their jacket, they have friends in the dorm who instantly assume that they’re only there to play their sport, and they’re not smart, and they don’t care about their academics. And that’s something that you have to take on if you’re going to enter into the intercollegiate athletic stream. It’s just part of what you need to do. So just again, it’s not a reason. It’s not something that should dissuade you. It’s something you need to know that you’re going to have to move forward from the personal extracurricular side. The upsides of being part of a team are fantastic.
00:20:51.550 –> 00:21:36.610
You have an established peer group, especially if it’s a fall sport. You feel immense pride representing your school. You’ve got more structure, you learn leadership. You have challenges. You have connections to alumni and professional opportunities beyond. It’s an amazing opportunity to be part of that. And so I often encourage students who are not, who don’t end up being recruited, but who are at high participation sports like football, crew track and field, and wrestling, where they don’t have squad size limits or squad limits are so high that they don’t necessarily have to worry about it, to be part of that experience because it gives you that upside of that extracurricular life.
00:21:36.770 –> 00:21:41.298
Obviously, the downsides are that limitations on time, a little bit of freedom.
00:21:42.210 –> 00:22:07.840
I’ve worked with coaches who play with students, who played football and part of what their experience was is that on at 10 o’clock on a Friday night on, on a game weekend. Their position coach would call them at 10 o’clock at make sure that they were in bed, and they’d ask them some questions about the game plan to make sure they weren’t out on the town. You need to be in bed, you need to get your sleep.
00:22:08.470 –> 00:22:42.560
If you play a winter sport, for example, you don’t necessarily assume you’re going to go home for vacations. I had a son who wrestled and where he wrestled in college the school ended on December 10th for the for the fall term and they returned on January 19th. He was in school until December 23rd and came back on December 27th and they all lived in the same dorm, and they got meal cards for Subway, and wrestled twice a day.
00:22:42.560 –> 00:23:06.189
And that’s just the way it was. If you do a winter sport like swimming or squash, or basketball. Again, this is not a reason not to do it, because it was incredible. It was an incredible bonding experience. But you just need to know when you go in that that could be part of it, and that even kind of filters down to the Division 3 level, even though it’s not quite as restrictive.
00:23:07.860 –> 00:24:08.110
Now, if we’re talking about divisional differences, it depends on where you’re being evaluated by coaches, and although you know, from that perspective. If you end up in a Division 1 world and even there’s some gradations with the Division 1 world. Certainly, in the football championship subdivision in the old one Double A environment. It’s a little bit different. But you should expect a year round commitment. I played in the old one Double A and there were coaches that would look at you funny, and they would say, you’re staying on campus in the summer and working out. I’m like, no, I’vr got to go home. I have to work with my family responsibilities, and you could just see them kind of shake their head because there’s some heavy, heavy control about it being a full time job. You’re going to travel more. And that’s especially true as things have changed with the conferences.
00:24:09.850 –> 00:24:13.629
Obviously, there’s some differences in whether it’s scholarship or non-scholarship.
00:24:14.060 –> 00:24:51.269
At the other end of the spectrum. You’ve got a Division 3 environment where there’s a much more balanced affirmation. The requirements are much more season specific and there’s a little bit less reach and so you might be able to do more extracurricular clubs and things like that. You have a few more opportunities to do two sports if you’re a multi-sport athlete. But even that’s starting to really disappear. But it’s just something when you start to think about what you want your intercollegiate athletic experience to be like, and what you want your overall collegiate experience to be like.
00:24:51.600 –> 00:25:22.669
This is where you have to start to think about what you want from your day-to-day life experience. You know how it’s going to evolve, how it’s going to move from day to day. What are the things that you want to do to get to have the best experience that you can as you move through college. So you go back to those original questions and add this to the mix of other things that you might want to consider when you’re starting to think about which coaches you’re going to reach out to.
00:25:23.880 –> 00:25:31.259
So if there’s a slide in this deck, that’s the most important from my perspective. This is the one.
00:25:31.850 –> 00:25:41.799
These are the successful habits and behaviors of intercollegiate scholar athletes and these are the things that you need to be able to do to be successful in college.
00:25:41.880 –> 00:26:23.369
And it’s about self-regulation, your study habits, your eating habits. You’re going to have a big, long list of team rules that you have to adhere to. You need to self-advocate with your professors. So if you’re going away for 72 hours on the bus, and you have a team and you have a group project, you need to be the person who reaches out to that group and says, Hey, I’m going to be away. I want to meet on Wednesday to make sure I’m getting my part of the responsibility done. Not, I’m going to be away. I can’t do it. Okay, and then the two other things you know, that I would throw out there is this notion of if you want to be a college athlete, you better love to work out. Love it, love it, love it, love it
00:26:23.540 –> 00:26:38.870
because your summer expectations are going to be logged and followed, and even in the season you may, at some, depending on your sport. You may have 6 AM. 7 AM lifts when you’re in season. So just know that that’s going to be part of it.
00:26:39.160 –> 00:26:56.770
And the second piece is this humility in the face of setbacks. As I mentioned, most of the prospective student-athletes on this webinar, I would assume, are students who are the real impact players on their team. So what happens when you get there? And you’re fourth on the death chart?
00:26:56.930 –> 00:27:01.420
What happens if you get hurt? How are you going to handle that?
00:27:01.550 –> 00:27:04.290
And some students handle it really, really well.
00:27:04.702 –> 00:27:11.530
Some students, it’s incredibly frustrating because they didn’t think that was going to be part of their experience. They were used to just being the alphas!
00:27:11.710 –> 00:27:35.149
When I can give this presentation to a group of students in a school, I’ll get somebody who raises their hand and says, Okay, this is great. But honestly, what’s the most important thing being recruited. Is it your 40 time? Is it your bench press? And I’ll say absolutely not. The biggest indicators of being successful as a college athlete are nutrition and sleep.
00:27:36.160 –> 00:27:41.949
Those are the things that are going to make a difference into your ability to be successful.
00:27:44.570 –> 00:28:06.495
Now, that’s the philosophy. That’s sort of floating out there. Now we’re going to move on to a little bit more of the practicality. Oftentimes when I do presentation in person a student will kind of lean forward with their pad. So these are the previous stages of athletic recruiting. This is before things kind of exploded
00:28:06.890 –> 00:28:24.600
But I also like to leave this here because everybody’s heard about the students who committed in ninth grade and the quarterback at LSU, who committed in eighth grade, and all those sorts of things. Things have waxed and waned in terms of those rhythms.
00:28:30.940 –> 00:29:11.689
It’s really helpful for students and parents to understand this is the process that you go through. You’re identified, you’re evaluated, you’re recruited, and then you go through the commitment stage for highest level. That could happen early, and it could happen fast for the students who are just trying to find a place to play. This may happen to start in the Junior spring and go through the summer and Senior fall and make commitment, and that happens then. But whether it happens super quick or whether it’s something that goes through a period of time, this is the process that students go through. This framework helps people understand where they’re coming from.
00:29:12.550 –> 00:29:33.160
Okay, identification. So the identification stream is very easy to get involved in, and I can help you draft your athletic resume, your letter of instruction, things that you want to put on the online web-based questionnaires. Anybody who was on this webinar who was a student, I invite you to find eight schools that you’re interested in potentially to participate.
00:29:33.230 –> 00:30:09.699
When the webinar closes down, get on your laptop, go fill out the recruiting questionnaire that’s going to exist at every single athletic department website and I bet you’re going to get three or four emails within the next 24 hours that say, Thank you so much for reaching out. We’re so excited to hear about your interest in our program, and most often, they’re going to invite you to take part in one of their summer camps, because that’s a that’s a great way for identification for them. But know you’re not being recruited at that stage, only that you have been identified. You’re in the database.
00:30:09.910 –> 00:30:20.030
Every single program, whether it’s Division 3 or Division 1, has a graduate student, an assistant coach, a recruiting coordinator, somebody who maintains the database.
00:30:20.140 –> 00:30:22.650
You want to get in that database.
00:30:24.250 –> 00:30:41.679
One of the biggest mistakes that student athletes that I’ve worked with have made you can contact coaches and recruiting coordinators directly. And it’s part of the process.
00:30:41.990 –> 00:31:08.829
There’s other parts to this in terms of the identification, the camps. But you need to get into the identification stage. And the easiest thing to do, as I said, is to use those online questionnaires. However, you need to consider what’s relevant to your specific sport. Are you in a time sport? Are you in a distance sport? Are you in a rank sport? Are you in golf and squash and tennis or fencing?
00:31:08.830 –> 00:31:31.250
You need to adhere to those statistical comparisons. The subjective sports are a little bit harder, but you want to be identified and placed within the context of that particular program. And it’s really straightforward if you take the time to get that information out in people’s hands.
00:31:31.280 –> 00:31:56.370
As you move out of the identification stage, you are going to start to be evaluated, based on your communication. You’re going to be based on the those summer camps, as I mentioned, the video that you submit, the conversations that you have with coaches. You’re always being evaluated.
00:31:56.830 –> 00:32:09.900
So what will happen is that if you’re identified and evaluated, and the coach thinks you can play for them, and they’ve seen your transcript. Then they start moving into the recruitment stage
00:32:09.990 –> 00:32:48.939
And it used to be very straightforward back in the old days where you would have the written contact email, contact text, contact and then starting in July, they get a phone contact weekly. Then it opened up. After that they would do school visits. But one of the things that’s really complicated and interesting about the recruitment stage is that you have to be vetted or translated by a counselor. I can do that because you have to analyze the frequency, style and direction of that contact.
00:32:49.630 –> 00:33:03.400
I’ve definitely worked with students who have come in to talk to me in the fall, they say, oh, I’m being recruited by X school, I said, that’s awesome. When was the last time you talked to the coach like, Oh, March.
00:33:04.020 –> 00:33:19.490
Hate to tell you, but if you haven’t talked to the coach since March, and it’s now October, you’re not being recruited, no matter what happened on those initial contacts. So I help student athletes understand the frequency and the style of the direction of what’s happening from the recruitment.
00:33:19.950 –> 00:33:43.340
Look at the emails, find out about the phone calls, talk about the invitations to visit campus, to help students understand where they are. But again, it’s identification. It’s recruitment. It’s evaluation. And then recruitment, and then they move on to the commitment stage, which for some students happens very quickly while for others it’s a little bit more nuanced.
00:33:43.360 –> 00:33:58.279
You’re signing a national letter of intent. If you’re applying to Ivy League Schools, they may give you a likely letter. If you’re applying to Division 3 schools, or even Subdivision 1 schools, they’re going to turn around and say, Okay, if I’m going to support you, you have to apply early decision
00:33:58.280 –> 00:34:35.729
And this is a great, and this is again the mutual commitment exchange for support. This is a great time to bring me, or to bring your college counselor at your school, or even your coach, into the into the conversation, to make sure that what’s being said, what’s being heard, and what’s being understood are all the same things. I’m sure that absolutely everybody on this call, or on this webinar has a friend who has a story about somebody that they know who was sure they were going to be admitted to a particular school for a particular sport, and it didn’t work out.
00:34:36.000 –> 00:34:43.500
And I can say with great confidence that 95% of those circumstances were because of miscommunication and misunderstanding
00:34:44.219 –> 00:34:55.029
So when you get to the commitment stage, it’s time to marshal the forces and make sure that everybody is on the same page and understands where they’re going.
00:34:56.409 –> 00:35:21.280
We talked a lot about how you get to this stage. Obviously, you have to optimize your academic and athletic foundations and play at the highest levels within your sport. Follow the step-by-step athletic recruiting process that we’re describing, understanding those skills and dispositions and how you fit within the larger models. Coach speak is very, very elusive, which is why you need some filters and some translators.
00:35:21.660 –> 00:35:39.159
Have some intent to apply thoughtfully to find good academic fits if you’re working with your academic credentials. Obviously, you have to choose courses very carefully, balance your NCAA eligibility, which you can do with the information that’s available at the school.
00:35:39.600 –> 00:36:06.710
Find your faculty mentors and develop a testing plan where you are. I’m not a big proponent of SATs, But if you’re a student athlete you absolutely have to push that hard because the goal is to arrive at the admission office right with everything in check, eligibility done, strong academic record done, support from the coach done. That admission officer looks at that and goes flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, good!
00:36:07.010 –> 00:36:57.579
Off we go! Not anything that they have to worry about. That’s your goal. So if you want to be successful in this process, these are the steps. You have to understand the recruiting process. And I know this is a speed version in 45 min, so we’re just getting started, and you deserve great props for being here, because this will help you get your mind going as to where you might want to enter into this process, and we can help you get over the finish line. There’s no question about it but this process needs your thoughtful research into programs, into colleges, your self-advocacy with coaches and with the professors, and with your peer group developing really good communication and listening skills, figuring out where you fit, within a conference or a division, or a school and your sport.
00:36:57.580 –> 00:37:48.989
These are all things that are incredibly important to navigate the athletic recruiting process and those are some of the things that I think you need to file away as you enter into it versus these very specific, who do I talk to, or how do I do this? Or how do I get recruited? This is how you have an incredibly successful intercollegiate, athletic recruiting experience. Take these topics in and move through them in all of their depth.
So athletic credentials. Obviously, you’re seeking the highest levels of competition. You’re attending to your rankings. As I mentioned earlier, one of the best questions that you can figure out is, what is the timeline for my sport and my level.
00:37:49.870 –> 00:38:00.520
You want to be able to ask questions of coaches, to be able to say, what does it take to become a recruitable athlete for you?
00:38:01.220 –> 00:38:17.230
I was actually working with a student earlier today and said, okay, when we get to this stage at the end of your summer season, you are going to start to reach out to coaches and say, what is the threshold for their particular sport, at which I start to become interesting for you.
00:38:17.720 –>00:39:15.530
Knowing that threshold will enable you to have a better recruiting experience because you’re not sending out applications at places where they’re not going to be supported. One of the stories that I sometimes tell is that when I was in high school I got a letter from Boston College to play football, and I went nuts like Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh! And then, like the next day I woke up and thought to myself, there is no way I can play at Boston College, just knowing my own athletic ability, and where I fit within their program, and that really helped me to reorient where I was going to apply, who I was going to approach. In terms of all of the stuff that they sent out, I didn’t bite because I knew I didn’t fit within that program. And that’s part of the sophistic understanding of what it takes to be successful at where you want to play.
00:39:15.600 –> 00:39:36.229
So we’re coming to the very end here. At ICC, we can be coach speakers, we can be a translator, we can help you understand those emails and those communications and what they say in those phone calls, and the coded language that they use. I will say that these communication basics are incredibly important.
00:39:36.230 –> 00:39:52.339
You have to be organized, respond to and keep track of all those emails. Don’t think you can remember them because you can’t. They’re all going to roll into one. You have to ask awesome questions, listen carefully to what’s being said by the coaches, save all those emails.
00:39:52.550 –> 00:40:12.959
Because that communication and listening aspect as you go through, especially the evaluation and the recruiting stage, is really imperative because as coaches go through that process before they get to the commitment stage, they have one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake simultaneously.
00:40:13.130 –> 00:40:35.270
They don’t want to lose you, even though they might not recruit you. So you have to figure out where you fit within their paradigm, and you can ask those questions. You can say, Coach, how many Goalies do you have on your recruiting list who are ahead of me, and when do you think you’re going to know? They don’t mind those questions, but you have to be able to ask those questions.
00:40:36.570 –> 00:40:58.830
I’m going to wrap up here, just to reiterate with a lot of philosophies and some practicality. The most important thing, as I mentioned, is that if you’re sitting there and you’re thinking, I just want to play, I haven’t played field hockey or played volleyball, and I want to have a great college experience and a great academic experience. There is absolutely no question you can do it. No question in my mind.
00:40:59.180 –> 00:41:22.540
But you, as the students, you need to drive the process, ask the good questions, communicate with the coaches. Your responsibility only begins when you get accepted at a particular college, as you’ve heard me say multiple times. Seek good answers, listen to what you hear, and accept honest feedback. Having to reorient is perhaps the most important step.
00:41:22.540 –> 00:41:48.110
You have to seek out good resources. And good resources are peers that have gone through the process, who are on your club team ahead of you. You can talk to your club coach and just hear a little bit about the feedback on where you might be able to play. You can talk to, depending on your high school and the depth of experience, with the counseling staff. You can work with us. Because again, I work with literally hundreds of student-athletes.
00:41:57.200 –> 00:42:08.119
Part of the goal of this program is not necessarily to seed the field with answers, but to give you the information of what questions to ask.
00:42:08.310 –> 00:42:22.439
And I think that most students and educators and parents know that what questions to ask is oftentimes more important than knowing the answers, because the questions to ask are going to give you more nuanced answers.
00:42:22.500 –> 00:42:47.149
If you have, follow up questions, you’re completely welcome to reach out to me. If you just send me a direct email. I saw a couple of questions came in really quickly, early on, and I promised I would close off at 7:45. As a good student and former student-athlete, I’ve hit my mark.
00:42:47.429 –> 00:42:58.039
You can use the QR code that’s on there to connect with us. There’s my email. You can reach out directly to me if there are other aspects of the process you have questions about.
00:42:58.345 –> 00:43:16.690
ICC has a really broad range of products and experiences for student. If you’re from Florida, do you want to stay in Florida? And you want to see how that works out? We can do that. There’s essay work. There’s packages for seniors only, if that’s where you are in your experience. There’s a lot of breadth
00:43:16.984 –> 00:43:44.050
If you reach out to me, I will put you in touch with the right people, answer your questions, and I’m happy to go from there. So it looks like my clock just turned over to 7:45, so the questions that came in I will go ahead and respond to personally. But I really appreciate your attention tonight. And, as I said, please feel free to reach out to me and just know that you can do this.
00:43:44.050 –> 00:43:48.080
You absolutely 100% can do it, and if you need some help, let me know.
00:43:48.390 –> 00:43:50.950
Alright. Thanks. Have a great night.