July 2004 – Athlete’s Advisor Newsletter…in this edition                  Subscribe!

New Articles - Background Checks - Phone calls to coaches - Database of coaches- Kenyon College - NCAA Rule Change on Phone Calls - Cedar Crest College Outreach Program-Conditioning -Links -

Mistakes in the recruiting process
Effectiveness of recruiting services
What is your plan for recruiting - Part I

Toot my own horn! The first book I wrote, Baseball: Playing Outside the Lines, has been completely updated and is now available for you baseball parents.  It is for sale on this site and via Webball.com.  Email me if you want to sample a chapter

Wanted: Private Investigator for University Athletic Department
"Before you sign that National Letter of Intent, we just need to run a routine background check on you"...Baylor University will begin seeking criminal background checks for transfer student athletes and character reports on all other new athletes before they are allowed to play sports, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle.  While the campus murder and cover-up involving the basketball team was not the typical behavioral problem most athletic departments have, you can bet that this practice will become more common before offering $140,000 worth of scholarship money.  Miami signed a Prep Star with 10 prior charges on his rap sheet and claimed they had no idea (after much ado he was accepted by the university).  The negative press was dramatic.  Bottom line is that your character and past will be judged.
...  While most of us are not a Division I recruit, the phrase "Character Counts" is important at any level.

My readers - so far this summer I have heard from parents and athletes in the following sports:
- Football, baseball, softball, men's ice hockey, women's ice hockey, track, cross county, and basketball. You all have unique situations, but it is interesting to see just how similar the process for everyone. I think we may need a message board?
Nations represented include: USA, Nigeria, and Pakistan.

Gotta Quarter?  A  Division I baseball coach was recently overheard lamenting that he never gets any phone calls from Prospective Student Athlete's.  It is all emails and information from recruiting companies. Not the actual player himself. 
  Myth:  Coaches don't have time to take my calls! 
  Fact: It is their job to identify, evaluate and recruit PSA's!  They relish the chance to speak with one. Pick up the phone- no matter what sport you play!http://www.craigslist.org/cgi-bin/smp/37701494/rfrn7


Coaches 411 - Ok, so you want to pick up the phone and call some coaches. Where do you get their contact info?  One way is the school web sites but if you plan on several calls and are still searching out schools, there might be a better way. I had a long talk with Andy Gold who owns College Coaches On-line,  a searchable directory of almost every college team in the country. What do I like about this database/product?
 - Searchable and sortable - important search criteria like  location, size, athletic level, general academic level, tuition, and a few others make it easy to narrow a search.
- Information is updated regularly- college coaches change jobs all the time and there is a lot of turnover, so regardless of the source it is always good to double check your addresses, BUT as opposed to printed resources, this is updated constantly.
 - Web site links - to the schools home page and the athletic departments home page.
 - The Price -for easy  and fast access to this data, the price is a good value, $19.95 for a web subscription.  If you are interested use PROMOTION CODE: AA123 and Andy will knock off another $5.
- Just a Regular Guy - Andy runs an Apple computer dealership in Denver and started this business after his son (now a pitcher at a Pac 10 University),  went through the process.

Kenyon Calling...I spoke at the New England Elite Football Clinic  earlier in the month and had a chance to meet Ted Stanley, the Kenyon College head football coach  who came east to look at the talent.  With 30 scholarship schools in the state of Ohio, a lot of boys are not excited to pay $30,000 for an education and to play football, so he looks in other places besides Ohio.  Kenyon is selective (SAT =1323) so they will draw out of state interest, but it shows you how a coach at a private, selective school really needs to dig deep for players.

NCAA Rules Change - Starting August 1, 2004, Division 1 coaches may make one phone call to a prospect during the month of March of a prospective student-athlete's junior year. It is now permissible for coaches to make one in-person off campus recruiting contact on the recruit's high school campus during the month of April of their junior year. Additional phone calls may not be made until after July 1 following the junior year, which was the standard contact time for most sports (football and basketball being the exception) at the D1 level.

Cedar Crest College, PA (SAT =1079) ...Dan Donohue, assistant AD and a cross country coach at the all-girls school is spearheading an interesting outreach program for incoming student athletes.  Coach Donohue wrote, that the program "Becoming a College Athlete will
address such issues as nutrition, balancing sports and studies, time management, even sportsmanship. We are hoping to ease the transition and increase participation. Your book (The Making of A Student Athlete )will hopefully go a along way towards helping us prepare for that."
Apparently a lot of the recruited athletes are choosing not to play upon arrival, causing obvious problems for coaches, and think they will play in their sophomore year after they "adjust"...BAD IDEA...most never play again and fail to realize that being a Student Athlete gives you a built in support network of upperclassmen who know the ropes and there to help you...good luck to Dan and Cedar Crest! 
 
Conditioning News: Mike Boyle, the famous functional strength guru from Boston who relocated to California has a new book out that is excellent.  In an email, Boyle indicated that he is relocating back to Boston this summer.  His plans include a new book and several educational seminars.  The book is titled, Functional Training for Sport, - very handy - I have been reading it every night.  One of the things that got my eye was the importance of acceleration speed over raw speed.  Often called "Closing Speed", the ability to accelerate is more important than raw speed itself, at least as it pertains to sport  Boyle compares a Porsche to a Kia to make his point in that both can go 60 miles and hour, but only one can get to that speed quickly.  Of course he has drills to train acceleration speed in the book.

Final Remarks - from an anonymous reader, this one is about Division III liberal arts colleges.

Small private liberal arts colleges have been dominant in D-III for two reasons I believe.

First: This country is full of "all-arounders" as I like to call them- kids who are smart, talented, athletic...pretty much just all-around talented people. These types of kids, particularly those from wealthy families, place a high(er) priority on receiving the best education possible. In other words, they won't sell their education down the river to play sports at a bigger program. Schools like Middlebury (SAT=1410) or Amherst  (SAT=1422) are absolutely overflowing with kids who needed to go somewhere prestigious academically, and the fact that they are phenomenal athletes is just a perk for the institution: it is NESCAC school's academic strength that makes them strong athletically.

Reason number 2: Playing a sport at one of these smaller private liberal arts schools is one of the most enjoyable experiences in America. The teams are so indescribably close-knit that striving for excellence is as much a result of wanting to be as involved as possible with their team as it is pure athletic drive

Do you agree?

Links -
NCAA.com now links to www.ncaasports.com
NCAA.org  is their official business site - rules, publications, etc. Let's hope they make that site a little user friendly as well.
College Coaches On-line - see above for description. Save $5 with code AA123
Collegiate Choice Walking Tours - a cheap way to see a campus!
estudentloan.com - the Lending Tree of student loans- comparison tool.
Flunking Out to Be Eligible - a new trend in blue chip recruiting?

Next Month: Paying for College

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