sports scholarships

If you want your young athlete to to get an athletic scholarship for college, it is very important to get him/her started early. At this time, his/her high school coach’s role might be significant in the recruitment process to play for college. Should You Rely On Your High School Coach To Get Recruited?

Find out if you should just rely on your high school coach to get recruited by watching this video.

Please share your thoughts at the comments box below, we’d love to hear what you have to say!

Good question and this is going to range between there are some high school coaches that do a fabulous job and club coaches that do a fabulous job and others that will do next to nothing and then others will sometimes even hurt the chances of an athlete going out and playing college.

My advice on that would be to go and sit down with your coaches as early as possible. As soon as you decide that you want to play college sports, have a sit down with your coach and say, “Hey! I want to play in college, I don’t want it to interfere with me as a high school player. I want to be the best high school player I can be. I want to help your team and so on, but I also want to play in college.

Ask them for whatever help they are willing to give. Be thankful and appreciative to them for any help they are willing to do. You have to remember that these high school coaches are usually also teachers.

They are usually also husbands or wives and fathers or mothers and they are getting paid next to nothing to coach you. They have 25 or 10 or 30 or 50 of you and your parents that are looking to them to help them out.

A lot of coaches get so overwhelmed with recruiting that they just shut it out. They just say I am not dealing with it and they do nothing.

Or they only help the kid that is the elite Division 1 athlete and the other kids get left behind. Or sometimes they do things to sabotage the recruitment. Sometimes it is not intentional because they just do not know any better.

Sometimes they just get overwhelmed with the process or they don’t want 100 kids coming to them looking for full rides to college. They don’t have the time and effort to help.

Use them for whatever help they will give you, but realize it is up to you if you want to play in college. It is up to you to be proactive to reach out to coaches. You control this. If your coach says don’t worry about it you are good, I am going to pay for your college, no matter what it is.

Then I would say just listen to him and just cruise. If they are not willing to pay for your college, then it is probably in your best interest to take a proactive approach to the recruitment process.

A lot of coaches will, a lot of times because they don’t know any better will, just say don’t worry about it, coaches will find you, recruiting will happen during your senior year, don’t worry about it.

What they are really meaning is, “I don’t want distractions to get away from my team right now. I don’t want you thinking about college. You need to be thinking about being a better high school player.”

There’s truth to that. You don’t just want to be thinking about college when you are not even good enough to be a productive high school player.

There is some truth to that.If you really do want to play in college, you do need to get started early. You do need to be proactive in the process.

Take whatever help they are going to give you, but you have to do something on your end to not just rely on them to get yourself recruited.

Another thing I would add to that too is that, not to harp on high school coaches, but as a college coach, I don’t really care, unless this high school coach is like my twin brother, I don’t really care about what they think about the kid. I want to make that evaluation myself.

I am not saying I don’t respect them. I do respect them and I do respect their opinion and so on, but I want to watch the kid with my own eyes.

I want to make that evaluation myself. What can your coach do? If I call up a high school coach and the coach says that this kid is a jerk and he doesn’t work hard in practice, I am not going to recruit him because I trust that.

He seems him every day. If he says he is the greatest player since sliced bread or whatever, I am still going to watch him myself until I say I want to recruit him. Not to devalue the high school coach’s role in the process, but it is just one small part of the process.

sports scholarshipsTim Ryerson is the President and Founder of STUDENTathleteWorld.com, a college athletic recruiting company that has helped hundreds of high school athletes with the college athletic recruiting process since 2009. Tim spent eight years as a College Coach in Men’s Basketball and Men’s and Women’s Cross Country.

During his college coaching career, Tim worked at five NCAA Universities in four States, including Texas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and North Carolina. He also spent time as a high school coach in Softball, Baseball, Basketball, and Football. Tim has a M.Ed in Sports Management and lives in Raleigh, NC.