What happens during the recruiting process?

The recruiting process is about a coach evaluating you, you evaluating the school/coach and making sure you are going to meet the academic requirements. The process is not quick and it is not easy, but you are making a very important decision when selecting a college and it is important to take the time in evaluating your options.

College coaches evaluating you

College coaches are evaluating you athletically, academically and personally. Athletically they are trying to determine if you can come in a play right away and/or projecting how good you can be. Academically, they want to make sure you can get into the school, you will be academically eligible and that you will be able to maintain your eligibility while in college. The last area coaches are evaluating you is trying to determine if your personality will fit their school and program.

As a recruit, you want provide coaches with what they need to evaluate you. This means sending them video, playing in tournaments and attending camps. Once you have established contact, make sure to keep a good dialog with the coaches so they can get a better sense of what kind of person you are.

You evaluating coaches and the school

When thinking about a particular school you need to be able to answer yes to this question; would you want to attend this school even if you weren't an athlete? If the only reason you are attending a particular school is because you are getting a scholarship, you are not going to enjoy your time in college. Being an athlete is only one part (all be it a very big part) of your experience in college.

You want to consider things like what size school you want, whether you want to play right away or take time to develop, what you want to study, what kind of weather you like, what the coach is like, among several other things.

Meeting the academic requirements

Many athletes confuse the academic minimums set by the NCAA or NAIA as the requirements in order to get into a particular college. For example, just because you would meet the GPA requirement with the NCAA or 2.3, doesn't mean you would be able to get into Stanford. College coaches know what you need academically in order to get into their school and unless you can meet those minimums, there is nothing they can do about putting you on their team.

One of the first things you want to do once you establish contact with a coach is set targets for your academic qualifications. Having a clear expectation from the coach about what your GPA and SAT or ACT test scores needs to be can help in avoiding any problems in not qualifying late in the process.