#16 Recruiting Corner: Access to Our College Coaches Database
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Joshua: And we’re back. It’s The Recruiting Corner. Joshua Zimmerman. David Frank. Hope you guys are all doing well. How are you doing, sir?
David: Doing really, really good. It’s another week of The Recruiting Corner. Again, a reminder, everybody subscribe to our YouTube channel and get this sent to you every week when we have a new episode. What are we covering this week?
Joshua: So, this week we’re going to start out with an athlete taking a trip over to Asia getting perspective of USA sports.
David: Right. And some really good advice on managing expectations between your high school and your club coach.
Joshua: And then we’re going to jump right into our Facebook question.
David: We’ve got two of them this week. So we’ll be going over two really good Facebook questions and talking about how to get started in the recruiting process.
Joshua: Definitely. So guys, not too much to cover today, but we are going to go into depth on some things. First off, we’re definitely going to jump into the NCAA guest blogger Andrea Dalton. She took a trip over to Asia, and she got some really good perspective on sports in America.
David: Yeah. So she’s over there on behalf of the NCAA as kind of an outreach and teaching kids in other countries what it’s like to be an NCAA athlete, and she said something that I thought was really interesting, “How great of an opportunity it is to be an athlete and a college athlete here in the U.S.” What we have here in the U.S. is unique to anywhere in the world. You talk to kids from other countries, and they can’t believe that you actually can go to school for free for being an athlete, and I think her article is really good. We’ll definitely link to it, and I suggest you read it because she just says we need to look at this as how thankful we are to even have the opportunity to be college athletes. I know we talk a lot about should athletes be paid. Kids are complaining about scholarships not being enough. It’s an opportunity that no other kids in the world get, and it’s got to be appreciated.
Joshua: David, is this where I break into my “and I’m proud to be an American, where at least I . . .”?
David: Yes.
Joshua: And that’s my American Idol audition guys. Randy, look for me.
David: Next up, coming from Monica McNutt. We featured her on here a couple of times. She’s a great writer, and she wrote an article about managing the expectations of multiple coaches.
Joshua: So, Monica, another great article. Thanks for writing it. Guys, listen. We all understand that it gets a bit confusing when you’ve got your club coach telling you one thing. You’ve got your high school coach telling you another, and you’re sort of stuck in between saying, “Well, what do I do?” She wrote a great article talking just about that, and one of the most important things that I found in her article that was interesting was the fact that she basically used her maturity in thought to think out through her recruiting process. She played both high school and club basketball, AAU basketball, and she was trying to figure out, okay, well, my high school coach is telling me this. My club coach is telling me this, and more importantly, my high school is playing in these types of games and my clubs are playing in these types of games and which is going to be the best for recruiting for me.
And the interesting thing for you guys out there is that you might be facing similar circumstances, and what she decided was which is going to give me more exposure and which is going to be having me play at a higher level. Those are the games that she went to. So sometimes she played her high school games, but many times she played her AAU games because they were playing in bigger tournaments and they were playing better caliber of talent. For you guys, we’ve talked about it before, club sports are starting to be the trend of where college coaches are recruiting.
David: The message I took home from that article that I really liked is she said it was really hard. It wasn’t easy to manage these expectations, but that’s just part of the recruiting. I think so much of what kids are looking for is the easy way to do recruiting. How can I easily contact coaches? What’s the easy answer to this? And sometimes, there is just not an easy answer. Sometimes there’s just not an easy answer. Sometimes it’s just hard. You’re going to have to grow up a little bit, try and handle some difficult situations, and her article really explains how to do that.
Joshua: Definitely, yeah. Great article. Guys, so next up is a Facebook question. As you know, you can always write us on Facebook. You are possibly going to be featured on The Recruiting Corner. If you want to be featured on The Recruiting Corner, tell us. So, Trina asked us, “Can a coach take away my scholarship before I start to play my season?”
David: Yes, he can. This is that whole issue about over-signing. So when you sigh an NLI and you sign for a scholarship, it doesn’t guarantee that there’s a scholarship there for you. NLIs are really a one-sided agreements, and that why I think down the road you might not see NLIs any more. But currently, when you sign an NLI, it’s an athlete committing to a school, but it doesn’t guarantee that there’s that scholarship there. It’s a really, really tricky situation. It really only happens in football, where a program signs more kids to NLIs than they have scholarships and they have to tell some of those kids that they won’t be coming in that year. It’s a really, really touchy situation. Trina, if you have a specific example that you want to give us or you want to call us, let us know and we’ll try to help you out as best week can.
Joshua: Definitely. Next up, next Facebook question is from Omar, and he has been focusing solely on soccer schools. We’re going to use this as a two-fold because it is going to parlay us into how do you get started. But he says he has been focusing in on soccer schools specifically, but he also has a very, very big want to go to a high academic program as well. He’s really caring about his grades and his academics and sort of where his education comes from. He wants to know where he can find maybe a list of top 50 schools or how he can go out and really learn about the school situation.
David: Omar is on our college coaches database. So he’s been using this tool to find schools and contact coaches. Omar, one of the things you need to do is on the filter for our databases, you can select really high academic standards, and that should help you find some of the higher academic schools. If you’re looking for a business specific, maybe Josh you have has some recommendations there.
Joshua: Definitely guys. Number one, David mentioned the database. Great tool. If you have not been on the database yet, check out the link in the notes. You guys can go ahead and get access to that. Now, when getting started as a student-athlete, one of the biggest things you have to figure out first before you try to think about, “Oh I want a scholarship and oh I need to contact coaches,” you have to know what you want out of college. And I’m not telling you that you need to know, “Oh, I want to study business. I want to go to a top-50 school.” But you need to know a couple of things.
Number one, you need to know what’s affordable. You need to know what you can afford with a scholarship. You need to know what you can afford without a scholarship.
You need to understand possibly what you want to study. It’s going to help you out a little bit better. How far away you want to go to school. There are all these questions that you should start answering and put together lists. They don’t have to be necessarily your final list. Start with 100 schools. Try and figure out from those 100 schools which schools you academically qualify for. Are you on track to get into these schools if you applied today?
Once you start to figure out those, talk with your family about them. Try to get their opinions. Don’t let them sway you one way or another, but have solid reasons on why you want this school over another school, and then think about unofficial visits. You don’t have to take them right away, but hopefully you’re starting this as a freshman and a sophomore in high school and not mid-senior year when you’re panicking to do everything at once.
These processes take time. That’s how you get started. It’s not, “Hey, I won a scholarship. I want to contact the coach.” It’s okay, let me think about this process logically. Go through the steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 on what you want out of a school. Then, once you can come up with a logic list and say this is why I want this school, this is what I want do, this is why your school benefits me, then you can go out and try to start contacting coaches.
David: Yeah. And the real big benefit there is like we say all the time, you have to have a personal email to college coaches, and unless you’ve spent some time to think and understand what it is about that school that appeals to you, you’re not going to come through with a really convincing message for that coach. Yeah. That’s exactly what you need to be doing to get started, and for someone Omar, you’re on the right track. Look for those high academic institutions, but make sure if you’re looking at these top 50 schools, you have to understand, you have to have elite academic status. So if you don’t have that status, maybe you need to try and again use our tool and find where you fit in academically.
Joshua: Guys, one thing that’s really important when it comes to recruiting and I cannot drill this home enough is that if it’s easy, it’s not for you. No way ever will a scholarship be earned easily. There’s a lot of work that has to be put into it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a great athlete or not. It still means that you still have work to put into the situation. If something comes too easily to you, it’s too good to be true.
David: Yeah. That’s exactly right. All right. Good. So got you guys started on some recruiting. Now, Josh, what are you doing this weekend?
Joshua: This weekend? I am going to relax. As you guys know, we’re in the midst of packing up. We will be in San Francisco as of Monday, April 8th. So, the next two Recruiting Corners will come from here, and then we will all be in San Francisco. Yourself?
David: Same deal, packing up home, packing up the office, taking care of everything I need to take care of. I’ve been living here in Monterrey for eight years. So I’ve got a lot of good-byes to say, but looking forward to moving to San Francisco.
Joshua: We’re going to say goodbye to California central coast, goodbye to the sea lions and the seals and hello to the big city, at least the big city on the West Coast. Guys, you have a great one. @JZimmy67, @Athnet, @DavidRFrank. You guys know the drill. Thanks.