Thursday, October 21, 2010

Launching the College Athletics Recruiting Effort

Launching the College Athletics Recruiting Effort

By Tom Kovic


The college experience is, in many cases, the most important four years in our children’s lives, as it will shape their future personal and professional direction. That being said, securing admission to a college or university that best match students’ desires, strengths, and aspirations is essential.

Whether it happens to be that long awaited home improvement project, saving for a summer vacation or preparing for retirement, I think we can agree that any worthy project will go through a “launch phase.” This phase consists of a time of dreaming, planning and targeting specific time-lines to hit as you begin to “execute” your plan. The same holds true in the college search for athletes and below are snapshots of general suggestions that might just help you along the way.

Gather Information

Gathering information is critical to the successful organization of any worthy project. Building a college recruiting information base can begin as early as the ninth grade as a family hobby and increasingly grow into a highly organized, disciplined project by the end of the junior year.

Begin by gathering information on the student-athletes colleges of choice including team and coach profiles, statistics, ranking, and academic offerings. Continue to update and maintain individual e-files on these favorite college programs.

Develop your initial college list

This is where the fun begins! You have built an initial knowledge foundation about the college search and you have a pretty good idea of what you are looking for in a college experience. Now it’s time to develop a grouping of institutions that potentially meet that end.

Peterson’s College Search (www.petersons.com/collegesearch) is a great resource where you can input specific information about what you are looking for in a 4 year college experience and up comes a listing of colleges and universities that initially “match.” Investigate both the general and athletic college websites. From there you can begin to put together a more detailed list of coaches and their contact information.

Build your Team

Parents, prospect, high school/club coach, college advisor, guidance counselor and a personal mentor could all be part of your team in the college recruiting process. Each team player will have a specific role to play in order to ensure the prospect’s best chances in navigating the college search with confidence. Advance goals should be set with clarity and purpose that compliment the organizational structure of the recruiting process.

By selecting the team approach, the responsibilities are equally distributed to the area experts. All assignments should be clearly spelled out and communication between the team members should be frequent and consistent. This will help streamline the college quest and assist in avoiding any confusion that could contribute to unclear thinking, misdirection and potentially poor choices.




Define Yourself: The Profile

It is important to streamline your portfolio into a comprehensive and efficient format that stands above the rest. Keep your profile simple, neat and professionally formatted. Make the job of initial evaluation easy for the college coach by highlighting pertinent information including:

• Personal and school contact information
• Academic standing, awards, and test results
• Physical characteristics
• Athletic clubs and level, showcase tournaments, and elite camps
• Athletic Statistics, Records, and Awards
• Mission Statement
• Coach’s Comments

Show your Stuff: The Video

A videotape, DVD or web stream are means of developing a first impression and trust me when I say that first impressions are remembered. Typically, a coach will roughly evaluate a recruit within the first 2 minutes of a video. They need to! Along with the hundreds of profiles, they are also being bombarded with hundreds of videos!

Make your video succinct, professional, and yet attention grabbing. Keep in mind that as individual collegiate sports differ, it is important to communicate with the individual college coaches about their requirements for DVD footage.


Develop your Plan

A knowledgeable consumer will have a clear edge in the pursuit of the attainment of any worthy product. I believe that the same holds true in the college search and I encourage families to make every effort and commitment to organize pertinent information regarding this process and to execute well-designed plans.

Develop timelines that will target general events in the beginning of the college search (making unofficial visits, maintaining your data base, and attending competitions) and continue with more specific events (compiling a video and player profile, communicating with coaches, and making official visits, etc.) as time progresses. This will increase the chances of “hitting targets” throughout the recruiting process.

Similar to a NASA Space Shuttle launch, the beginning phase of any college recruiting plan will be time consuming, demanding and require the greatest effort. That said, once you break free of that “gravity” and you remain persistent with your plan, you will give yourself the best chance in building and maintaining momentum toward your ultimate goal.

Tom Kovic is a former Division I college coach and the current director of Victory Collegiate Consulting, where he provides individual advisement for families on college recruiting. For further information visit: www.victoryrecruiting.com.


Copyright © 2010 Victory Collegiate Consulting. All Rights Reserved.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Rising above temporary setbacks in the college search for athletes

Rising above temporary setbacks in the college search for athletes

By Tom Kovic


The college recruiting process can be a daunting effort if it is not well planned and executed with organization and enthusiasm from start to finish. In addition, one’s mental approach to the college search, especially when checkered with roadblocks, can make the difference between a fair and a great experience. What follows is a “snapshot” on how prospects and families can proactively prepare for and effectively deal with personal setbacks that will undoubtedly surface along the way.

College recruiting roadblocks come in different shapes and sizes. Whether it is a direct communication from Coach to inform you his athletic scholarships have been exhausted, or a difficult phone call to inform you that you just don’t have what it takes to impact his team, a good college coach will be honest and forthcoming with prospects and families.

If you happen to be that blue chip athlete that most coaches have their sites on, your recruiting effort will likely have fewer barriers. Conversely, if you are the prospect who sits in the “mid-pack” of athletes where recruiting is brutally competitive’ you will need to prepare better and more effectively to rise above the rest.

As a college advisor for athletes I use a number of exercises to help my families organize for the best and prepare for the worst. Presenting yourself as a worthy candidate needs to be at the top of the list and this can be done in many ways. Whether it is by developing an easy to read personal profile, streaming an eye catching highlight clip, or by cultivating a solid relationship with a college coach through regular communication, the manner in which you present yourself will determine the level of “grip” your recruiting effort will have.

Develop Thick Skin

OK. You have brilliantly crafted your recruiting plan and you are regularly providing the coaches with academic, athletic and personal updates and you have made an unofficial visit to campus. You are feeling confident about the effort you have made and you’re confident it will have some impact. Unfortunately, this is 50% of the battle and the next question is simply…How does Coach see me?

There are going to be some tough questions you will eventually present college coaches, especially when it comes to roster availability, admissions support and financial aid. Before you jump in, I suggest you firstly develop some “tough skin.” Compare the recruiting process to a job interview and I think you’ll see my point. If you have lined up 10 job interviews and they all go brilliantly, do you think you will receive 10 offers? Probably not. Just as the company’s you will eventually interview with, the college coaches are looking for specific candidates to fit specific roles.

If a college coach has to communicate bad news to a prospect, it is not because you have a character flaw and you should never take bad news personally. Considering the volume of recruits that coaches are cultivating, they need to develop a filtering system that will help them trim down their list to a more manageable grouping. A good college coach will be upfront with families and offer truthful and honest communication from start to finish.

Letting go and moving forward

If and when (and you most likely will) receive that phone call from Coach explaining politely that you will no longer be part of the active list of recruits, you have to be able to accept it, let go and move forward. There is no doubt that this can be a hurtful moment, but the prospect that has the ability to “take it,” saddle up and get back “in the moment,” will have a greater chance in grabbing that brass ring.

Everything in this world happens for a reason and where one family may see a negative experience as devastating; another family will see it as an opportunity. One prospect might break down from bad news, while another athlete will rise up, a little tougher, with a little more drive and determination to move on.

For most prospects and families, the college search will not be a straight line, nor will it be a downhill run in finding that right college match. In most cases, it will be a struggle and in that struggle will be intangible life lessons to be learned, hurdles to cross and heartaches to suffer, but in the end and with a proper and realistic approach, the right match is out there and waiting for you to snatch.

Tom Kovic is a former Division I college coach and the current director of Victory Collegiate Consulting (www.victoryrecruiting.com), where he provides advisement and counseling for prospective student-athletes and families in preparing for the college search.


Copyright © 2010 Victory Collegiate Consulting. All Rights Reserved.