How do I get on an AAU or club team to help myself during the athletic recruiting process?

Before diving into this article, the main subject of this article is basketball but it can also be carried over into sports that have club teams (soccer/volleyball) and the majority of sports that have different off-season all star teams (football is the main sport that does not have this).  So even if you see that I may be talking mostly about AAU teams, this information can apply to a number of other sports.

First off, the key is timing and that makes it very difficult for athletes to get on teams.  While there are still tryouts for a number of these teams in all states, the majority of the sports (basketball and volleyball for instance) kick off their season early in the spring.  As a note, I must say that I am mainly talking about 16, 17, and 18 year old AAU and club teams.  I don’t plan on delving any younger just because playing at that young of level will do little to help you with the recruiting process.  What really matters is after your sophomore and junior years so keep that in mind.

When these teams do have tryouts, I am willing to bet that the majority of them already have a solid core of players that they know will be making the team.  These players amongst the core may have already been playing on younger versions of the team and will be making the move up to the older level this summer.  Not all players are asked or invited back so there obviously will be opening for players that are good enough.

Most of the top AAU basketball teams that I am aware of do not have tryouts.  Their coaches take the time to travel to games, jamborees, State tournaments, and anything else in their area that can help them see the top players in action.  They also usually have a very trusted network of people around their area that can help them find excellent athletes.  This really helps them finding players throughout the entire process.

So how do I go about finding out what teams have openings?  The first thing you need to have knowledge of is the teams that are currently being run across your state.  While you can look outside of state borders, the first and likely easiest place to search is those that are close.  If you are a high school basketball player who is a junior, you honestly should know exactly who the top AAU teams in your state are.  You should have heard about them or read about them many times by now.  If you don’t know, ask your friends.  If they don’t know, then search AAU teams in your state (or club teams as well).

Once you have found as many teams as you can, then you will need to go about contacting them.  You can either email or call them.  What you should honestly do is tell them a little about yourself, your accomplishments/stats, and then ask them about tryouts or what needs to be done for you to be evaluated.  Many coaches will tell you about the tryouts or they may say they are full.  If they are full, you spent ten minutes of your time looking into something that just didn’t come through.  No big deal there.  You should also ask about being an alternative on the team as well.  Finding out as much information as possible is extremely helpful.

Again, the sooner that you do this, the better.  Most club/AAU coaches want to have their teams finalized as soon as possible for the upcoming spring/summer season.  They don’t want to be hoping for a bigman to give them a call two weeks before their first tournament.  For basketball teams, they usually practice as soon as the majority of players have wrapped up their season.  Some even have practices in the same city as the State tournament.  While the players at State won’t be playing, the others will get a chance to practice together.

You should also look into potential new teams.  While they may not be as reputable, it could give you a fresh start.  You can’t blame politics if it is a new team!  Again, taking the time to do this can be a major boast to you during the recruiting process.  In these sports, college coaches want to evaluate your abilities first hand and not on tape (especially basketball).  So getting on a quality AAU team with good players can help.

 

 

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The Recruiting-101 Effect

I have preached on this site for a year and a half about the recruiting process.  It matters more about you and your family taking these steps to help yourself rather than the sport that you play.  Yes, this site is more football and basketball specific but a Junior Day is a Junior Day, regardless if it is soccer or football.  So I recently got a comment that basically made my month from a father of an athlete.  Here is what he said:

First of all, I would like to thank Recruiting-101 for helping my son get an offer from our school of choice. We utilized the concepts mentioned here, did our own recruiting plan! My son came from a small school with a new football program, he only played 2 years, 1 JV and 1 varsity. He has great athleticism, size and grades, but hidden at a small school. Like this article, some other schools in the same NAIA conf. loved his tapes, but scared of experience, but the school with the better tradition (and several NAIA Natl Championships), said they didn’t worry about that and made the offer. They liked the whole package, potential, my son as a person and as a student.

I did not help Greg and his son out specifically or individually.  From my understanding, he has been an avid reader on the site and trusted my guidance and what I write about enough to give it a try.  And no, the NAIA level is not Division I but at the same time, he is getting a scholarship as well as playing for a national title contender.

Would this recruit have ended up there and with a scholarship in hand if not for the advice that this site has mentioned?  That I couldn’t tell you specifically at this point because I have not emailed Greg as of yet.  But it shows that taking the time yourself as a parent or a family and going through the athletic recruiting process is what I feel the best way to go after a scholarship offer.

I have said this before but the recruiting process for your son or daughter is the same way as those that manage your money.  The person that will care most about your money is you, not a money manager or a financial planner.  The same goes for your son or daughter during the athletic recruiting process.  The person who is going to care most about the eventual outcome is you, the parent.  That is just the way it is, no matter what you hear or are told.

You are the one that needs to be there to take the time to and help your child with putting together a recruiting profile.  If you don’t think you can do it, then you must find a way to get a computer savvy friend to do it.  You need to take the painstaking time to go through a number of different websites for schools and see what majors they offer and how good their athletics.  Let me stress painstaking in that process as well because that is not going to be a ton of fun.

But if you put the time in and have a child with the skills needed to play at the college level, then you can get a scholarship.  As shown with Greg from his comment above, if he can do it, the question that comes to mind is why can’t you?  He invested his time into finding all he could about the recruiting process by using what is written here for free.  You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars.  It just takes time.  And in the end, I can assume that the time Greg spent with his son during this process helped their relationship as well.  That is likely going to be something that they can look back on fondly in the years to come.

If you feel motivated by this story, which is 100% true, then I would say the best place for you to start is on The Five Steps to a Scholarship.  After that, consider subscribing via email to get daily updates in your inbox.  There is no perfect path for every single athlete to get a scholarship.  But this site will do what we can to help you get as much information as possible about recruiting.

 

 

 

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Steps to avoid being stressed out by the athletic recruiting process – Part Two

Click here to read the first part of this article.  Continued from part one: Time may be tight but it is very important that you continue to reevaluate where you sit with the recruiting process.  This may get a little old but you need to have a good feel of where you sit with colleges.  You may have gotten two letters from your dream school but realistically, you need to be realistic and continually reevaluate where you sit with the programs that are after you.  You can use your recruiting attention log and figure out which schools are contacting you the most.

This evaluation process of the schools should be done as a family because it gives a great opportunity for parents to figure out where your children want in a future college.  And parents, realize that the answers you get from your child are likely going to change by the month, week, and potentially day.

You also should make adjustments based on this overall evaluation.  For example, say that you contacted all of the Division I-A coaches in your state and the surrounding state.  I wouldn’t recommend this but it was something you did so that you could play at the highest level possible.  In that contact, you included a link your website and highlight video.  A number of coaches contacted you back at the time but few have been in contact since.

When this happens, you need to start being realistic and setting your sights a little lower.  It may be a tough pill to swallow, even if State University is your dream school, but broaden your search to programs that fit you academically that may be at the Division I-AA/FCS, Division II, and Division III levels.  In the end, you want to have a lot of options on the plate to be able to choose from.  You can eliminate schools late in the process but the more options you have, the better for you in the long run.

Even if you decided to waste spend the money on a recruiting service or someone that you are paying to help you with recruiting, realize that the person(s) who will care most about the situation is you and your family.  This person/company you are paying is doing it in order to put a roof over their head.  It is the same when it comes to investing your money.  Realize that it is your money (or your recruiting future) and the person who will dedicate the most time/energy is you.

If that company doesn’t get you a scholarship, they are not going to be fitting the bill for a college tuition.  Regardless of what you decide, realize that you always need to keep learning in recruiting.  It just kills me when parents will complain about how great their son is and wonder where their scholarships are but won’t want to learn about recruiting because their “guy” is handling it for them.  That is a huge mistake that you must avoid at all costs.

One great thing about learning the process together as a family from a site like this (and a few others if you look hard enough) is that it will be a bonding experience.  Most teenagers don’t like to talk but if they want a college scholarship, then it will open up some lines of communication that should help with more than just recruiting.  This may be cheesy but it definitely can be a bonding experience that the athlete should be thankful for (and hopefully will realize that as they get older).

The last thing is to be realistic.  The more you try fooling yourself about the attention that you are getting and who is really recruiting you, the harder it is going to be to face facts and realize that you may just be a Division III athlete.  And for the record, there is nothing wrong with that at all.

I know of athletes, which I will talk about more in a future article, who didn’t start for the football team as a junior that plays in one of the smaller states of the country.  His team was good but not great.  In this state, if you are talented enough, regardless of who is in front of you, chances are that they may change your position and try to get you on the field.

Because this athlete has marketed himself (to the wrong schools I might add) and paid big money to go to all these combines, he is getting letters from some of the top programs across the country.  The issue is that when Signing Day nears for him, there is no possible way that these schools will still be in the picture.  The family continues to fool themselves and think that this is serious attention in the recruiting process.

If you had dreams of playing at the highest level, it really is tough to be realistic.  I have seen many athletes not get offers from big time schools so instead of getting your education paid for, they decided to give up their sport of choice.  While there is nothing wrong with that, having your education paid for is a luxury that most families cannot pass up.  So be realistic and know that even if the big boys are sending you letters, that doesn’t mean a damn thing until you get a scholarship offer.

The reason that this can be disappointing is because you may be stressing over if Florida offered a kid at your position.  Well, if the Gators are not really recruiting you, then chances are that offers doesn’t mean anything.  Following these steps will help alleviate a lot of the stresses that I see during the athletic recruiting process.

 

 

 

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College coaches are not always confident of their evaluation skills when offering scholarships to prep athletes

When talking about football camps during the summer months, I have mentioned the importance of going to just one day of camp at a number of different places.  The reason is to save money, time, and get to more camps along the way.  I have stressed this and will continue stressing this to readers simply because I feel college coaches are skilled enough to know in one day if an athlete can play or not.  You will either get a scholarship, continue to be recruited/evaluated, or no longer be on their recruiting radar.

But one thing that I saw a great deal of this winter in the months leading to the second portion of Signing Day was the inability of college coaches to pull the trigger in offering an athlete.  These were college coaches who had evaluated prospects for years and the reason they were not so confident about their evaluation skills was because the players in question didn’t have any other offers at the time.  These coaches didn’t have the confidence and evaluation skills to be the first.

Let me say that the athletes that I am talking about all did end up with scholarships at the Division II level or above.  Each was an All State performer over the last few years so it wasn’t as if they couldn’t play.  They had provided the coaches with plenty of highlight film, game tape, and everything they could ask for.  They were also strong students in the classroom and I was unaware of any problems that they got into away from the field.

So what gives?  Scholarship offers breed other scholarship offers and the reason is because these coaches trust the evaluation skills of other coaches.  If they see a school has done the research, looked into a prospect, and offered him, then another program may jump on board with less evaluation and film watching then the prior program.  Then the more offers this athlete has, even less evaluation will be done down the stretch of the recruiting process.

This shows me first hand the importance (and weight off of your shoulders) that the first offer can bring.  Once that scholarship is on the table, you need to make certain that the other schools that are recruiting you know about it.  I don’t care what level those schools are at, the more people that know, the better for you during the recruiting process.

I recently had a chance to see a highlight video of an athlete who is a junior.  In the tape, the quality is terrible, there are no arrows pointing out where he is on the field, and the tape was under two minutes long.  But the lineman looked pretty athletic.  That tape, along with passing the eyeball test, helped this standout recently receive his first scholarship offer.  From there, the momentum started rolling as he picked about another in-state offer and a scholarship from an out-of-state powerhouse.  If that first school would not have stepped up, what would have happened then?  My personal opinion is that he would currently be holding zero scholarship offers at this point.

Two athletes over the last few years were waiting and hoping for the in-state powerhouse to offers them a scholarship.  For both players, it took a conference rival to offer a scholarship for them finally to extend an offer to the athletes.  One ended up signing with the school and the other is a junior currently who is leaning towards them.  What is amazing about this story is that the in-state school is the one that is not afraid to recruit diamonds in the rough despite playing in the Big Ten conference.

Getting back to the original topic, if you don’t have any scholarship offers, it is a tough boat to be in.  It is both stressing because you have no idea what you will be doing as well as frustrating because you have to wonder if you are good enough.  This leads to doubts and worry about your future.  All because a good number of college coaches think you are missing one part of your game and the don’t have the confidence in themselves to pull the trigger.

If you are in this situation, broaden your recruiting horizons and market yourself to more schools.  The program that ends up offering you may have never recruited your state before but because you are a good fit for them, they may extend a scholarship.  It is all about being in the right place at the right time in order for doors to open up at the college level for you.  So be patient, work hard, and come to our camp (wait, that is what a college coach says every time you ask them about an offer).

 

 

 

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4 Ways to Get Rid of Keloid Scars

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Steps to avoid being stressed out by the athletic recruiting process – Part One

It always seems that when Signing Day nears, the stress levels for entire families continue to rise.  Making that final decision is never going to be easy regardless of the situation.  But there are some ways that we will talk about that can help with reducing your overall stress level and making things easier for your entire family.

Again, these steps are not going to be a magical list that makes the athletic recruiting process a breeze.  What these will do is help you get things in line and ready so that when coaches come calling and visiting, you won’t be scrambling and struggling to get your information in line.

The first step, by far, is start everything early.  The later that you wait, the tougher and more stressful it is going to be on you.  I spoke with the owner of http://ift.tt/2de41iU and one of the biggest things he told me is that everyone needs things turned around quickly.  The turnaround is needed because coaches are asking for the recruiting tape and now the family is stressed because they need to get it done.

Like I have said before in other articles, if you are seriously considering playing college athletics (especially football), then you need to get a highlight video produced shortly after your junior season.  And if you are smart enough to work ahead, you should use time during the football season to contact highlight video companies and find one that you trust and feel good about.  The hope will be that this company comes through and allows you to get things done early.

The same is said about getting information out to coaches.  You would be amazed how many athletes continue to think they are better off waiting until the season comes around and then the real recruiting will start.  It is vital that you market yourself to college coaches and the earlier you have varsity experience, the better it is to do that.

After you have everything done early, the next thing you need to do is keep track of all the recruiting attention.  You can use an excel file, a manila envelope, or anything that works for your family (and especially your son/daughter who will hopefully be fielding the calls).  You want to keep information about letters, calls, what was discussed, visits, and anything else that may be important.  The more information, the better down the road when making a final decision needs to be made.

Time may be tight but it is very important that you continue to reevaluate where you sit with the recruiting process.  This may get a little old but you need to have a good feel of where you sit with colleges.  You may have gotten two letters from your dream school but realistically, you need to be realistic and continually reevaluate where you sit with the programs that are after you.  You can use your recruiting attention log and figure out which schools are contacting you the most.

This evaluation process of the schools should be done as a family because it gives a great opportunity for parents to figure out where your children want in a future college.  And parents, realize that the answers you get from your child are likely going to change by the month, week, and potentially day.

You also should make adjustments based on this overall evaluation.  For example, say that you contacted all of the Division I-A coaches in your state and the surrounding state.  I wouldn’t recommend this but it was something you did so that you could play at the highest level possible.  In that contact, you included a link your website and highlight video.  A number of coaches contacted you back at the time but few have been in contact since.

When this happens, you need to start being realistic and setting your sights a little lower.  It may be a tough pill to swallow, even if State University is your dream school, but broaden your search to programs that fit you academically that may be at the Division I-AA/FCS, Division II, and Division III levels.  In the end, you want to have a lot of options on the plate to be able to choose from.  You can eliminate schools late in the process but the more options you have, the better for you in the long run.

Look for part two soon!

 

 

 

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