sports scholarships

In planning for college athletic scholarships, parents are going through a lot of research in discovering what is the best school for their young athletes to become equipped on what they do best. Basically, there are a lot of concerns coming to your mind in securing that the needs of child will meet to your capability of supporting them.

Discover the best tip you can have on how to get an athletic scholarship by watching this video.

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

One of the most important things that you want to do early in the process is get properly evaluated. This doesn’t mean that your Dad’s buddy at work that he works with that use to play college sports back in the day or the guy at your church that really likes sports and can tell you that you are Division 1. It doesn’t mean that. It means getting evaluated by a college coach that coaches and evaluates kids every day at that level.

Figure out what type of school you want to target. Then I think what you need to do is actually sit down and talk to family and say what type of schools am I looking for? What’s most important? Where do academics fit into the mix? Where does the budget fit into the mix? How much money do we have for college? What type of scholarship and financial aid package do I need to be able to go to college? Am I looking to go to a big school? Do I want to go to a school far from home or close to home? Have that discussion and have a plan of what type of schools you want to look at.

Then I think the next phase is a research phase. You want to research lots of different schools to see what’s out there. We find that most families and athletes have no idea what’s out there. Maybe the parents know what they went through 20 years ago, but things have changed and colleges are different.

We have with our program a college matching program that helps the athlete do this initial research, which is really cool. They can go through and check out different schools that maybe they have never heard of that might be a great fit for them.
Through that research phase, a really important step in the process is proactively sending your information and sending your interest in to the schools you are looking at. Not waiting for them to come to you, but you say I want to look at these schools and I want to give them my information. Now not every school that you send information is going to recruit you, but at least they had a chance to look at your information. At least they had a chance to respond to you and see if you are somebody they are looking for.

Reach out to lots and lots of schools. With that includes in the research and reaching out phase, is making campus visits. And if I had to sum it up in one word it would be to be proactive. Be proactive about the process. Going out and making your recruitment process happen.

The last phase is to follow through. A lot of times what happens is an athlete reaches out to a coach and maybe they go on a campus visit. Or maybe they have a couple of emails back and forth. The coach says something like we’ll be in touch. Then the athlete never responds and just waits for that coach to respond back to them. What the athlete needs to understand is that this coach has hundreds of kids looking for that one spot.

Now obviously you have to have ability and be someone that the coach wants, but the coach also wants someone that is interested in them. It is kind of a two way street. If you are 5’9” and 125 pounds and you are really interested in playing football at Notre Dame, it is probably not going to help you.

Assuming you are at the level they are looking for, you are really interested in them and you say, “I really want to go to your school, I really want to be in your town, and I want to major in this that you specialize in.” You want to take a personal interest in their school. That’s going to help them to say, “Okay then this guy is really interested. Let’s take a second look, third look, and so on.” You want to be very proactively interested in them instead of just wanting them to be interested in you.

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.