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College Recruiting
COLLEGE BASEBALL
HOW TO GET RECRUITED
By: Michelle Kretzschmar
So your first question is what would a homeschool mom know about how to get recruited to play college baseball? Simple, it’s like everything else in homeschooling–once our son decided that he wanted to play baseball in college we realized that we would have to figure out the process ourselves. A lot of what we learned can be applied to anyone trying to play college sports but the specifics here will be on baseball.
The next question is probably something like, “so what big scholarship did your son get?” The answer–none. And here’s the first point about playing specifically college baseball, if you’re spending all that money on teams, traveling, lessons to get a scholarship, it would probably be better spent on SAT prep. The reality is that Division I schools are allowed 11.7 baseball scholarships while Division 2 get 9. One website takes that information and announces that means 5,423 scholarships in the NCAA alone!
But don’t sign up for their recruiting service just yet.
Stop and think a little about the 11.7 number. How many players does an average college team carry? That’s not 11.7 scholarships per year but for the entire team. Some teams carry more than 11 pitchers alone. Coaches aren’t handing out full scholarships, they are giving 25%, 40%, or maybe if you’re really good, 50% scholarships. Unless you’re a left-handed pitcher with a 95 mph fastball, baseball isn’t going to provide your son with a full ride to college.
Play College Baseball
Make sure you visit the NCAA’s table on the Probability of competing in athletics beyond high school. It has a great table showing the different sports and the numbers of players at each level. It shows 33,465 NCAA baseball players for those 5,423 scholarships. Of course, the players includes Division III players who receive no scholarships. But the scholarships include Division II schools that do not always fully fund all of their baseball scholarships which means they aren’t offering even 9 scholarships.
Some more food for thought about baseball funding your college education. The other numbers to look at are the percentage of players moving to the next level. The NCAA lists 6.8% high school seniors as playing at the NCAA level. Think about it this way, during a game only one player from the combined 9 starters for the two teams will be playing at the next level. Once you take into account extenuating factors such as that not all players will even try to go to the next level or the quality of the teams’ players, the actual number may increase to 3 or 4 for that specific game.
Now here’s something else to think about and it gets back to the original question of “what big scholarship did your son get,” those players in the game who go on to play in college aren’t necessarily the best players on the field. The ones who are playing in college fall into two groups. The first group consists of those who were considered top 100 blue chip prospects and have been on the coaches’ radars since tenth grade. Nice group to be in but most players in the second group. This group is made up of players who figured out how to get themselves recruited, sometimes without a single coach showing up to watch them at a game.
It’s not just about talent. In fact, it’s a lot like baseball itself. Everyone knows a few players who get away without having to work hard just because they are so talented (this isn’t going to last beyond high school). And then there are the players who get playing time because they always hustle even when other players on the team are just going through the motions. If your son wants to play at the college level, he can’t just go through the motions waiting for someone to notice.
So what do you have to do? The “easiest” approach would seem to be to hire a service to take over the process for you–this is for people who have a couple of thousand dollars to spend.
But be aware of what the service provides and what you’ll still have to do. Depending on the service, they’ll put together a recruiting video from video you provide and send it to a bunch of college coaches. If you’re lucky, they’ll have more insight into what positions/players the college is looking for than you and target them appropriately. The player will still have to call the coach himself. The player will still have to provide the film. The player will still have to take the SAT/ACT.
For a lot of families, it’s useful to have someone other than the parent telling the kid that you have to pick up the phone and make the call or that you need to practice for the SAT. There are plenty of people who use such services just for the college admissions process. It’s worth it to them so that the parent isn’t the one who has to do the nagging. But don’t think that you can’t do this yourself.
There are plenty of books and websites with information on how to do it yourself. It’s not hard to find a timeline with the steps the player should be taking to advance the recruiting process. The trick is to start looking into the process before your son’s senior year! Even a recruiting service can’t change when coaches make their decisions about recruiting. Thinking about recruiting should start by the sophomore year. (The DIY College Rankings Baseball Spreadsheet can help.) This isn’t to say that if you’re a senior, it’s too late–it’s just a lot easier the earlier you start.
I offer this information just as a way to put all the resources I found, some used, some not, in one place. Consider these some of the tools you can use to plan your trip through the process since the trip itself will vary from player to player. As for my son, he had three D3 schools offer him a place on their teams and is now a college sophomore on the college’s baseball team.
COLLEGE RECRUITING PROCESS
Freshman/Sophomore– college coaches can only provide Questionnaires and camp brochures only.
Junior – college coaches can provide recruiting materials beginning September 1. They can make telephone calls once per week beginning on July 1 following junior year. Coaches can make off-campus contact beginning July 1 following junior year.
Senior – college coaches can make telephone calls once per week. Off-campus contact beginning July1 can be made and an official visit can occur beginning with the opening day of prospect’s classes.
RECRUITMENT INFORMATION
FRESHMAN
Make a list of schools that interest you. Select schools from all levels, not just the NCAA’s top 25 ranking schools in the country. Be sure to consider cost of each school on your list; schools are allowed 35 players, but only 27 on aide. The Geography/location of the school is important too; see how your parents feel about you being two states away, let alone the West Coast. Lastly, it’s not too early to have a general idea of what Majors are offered on your list. Stay on track with your academic progress. Having good grades and test scores will make a huge difference in the schools you can consider. Check the NCAA’s minimum academic requirements. http://web1.ncaa.org/ECWR2/NCAA_EMS/NCAA.jsp
While it is likely to happen more during 16U, you will likely begin to get letters to attend college camps and individual showcases. While player development is important at all HS ages, it is paramount during 15U, so budget your time accordingly for development.
SOPHOMORES
Review the list you developed as a 15U player, because your focus will have changed a bit. Some schools will pick up the more developed sophomores on the heels of the HS season, but that is the exception, and not the norm. You need to create a baseball resume and don’t get hung up on format. More importantly, you need to create your account on Field Level (https://www.fieldlevel.com/)
However, having a resume will ultimately help shape your e-mail correspondences with schools. You are trying to sell yourself to the college recruiters who are contacted by hundreds of other players. College Showcases & Camps are a better option this year, particularly if it appears a particular school is taking more interest in you than others, but we build schedules to get you the exposure you need, and because of the schedule we build, you will start getting inundated with camp information. You will have to gauge the response as to whether it’s a generic camp invite or a more serious and genuine show of interest. We will try and help with that. Typically, if a school invites you to a camp, a good question to ask them is, “have you seen me play.” A video is also a great way to spark college interest or confirm how sincere their interest is; and much more inexpensive than traveling to multiple showcases outside of the schedule we build for you. We can link you with pro video companies or exemplars from our savvy-tech coaches who simply did their own for our players.
JUNIORS
You can go broke attending camps and individual showcases. Pick ones that have multiple schools attending, or ones that are local in the area and don’t require hotels, eating out, or excessive gas mileage. You can call a coach anytime, but they cannot call you until after your junior year ends. They are not allowed to speak to you directly unless you call or present on their campus. They will use our coaches to relay messages or have you call them at a certain time.
· No Official Visits (school cannot pay for any part of the visit)
· Unlimited Unofficial Visits
· Unlimited contact through mail and email; Coaches cannot text or IM recruits.
· Recruits can call schools, but schools cannot call recruits, even to return messages
SENIORS
· Recruit may take up to 5 official visits (may start taking visits once Sr year of HS has begun) - Unlimited unofficial visits
· Phone calls are unlimited during evaluation periods after July 1st
· Phone calls are limited to 1 time per week during quiet periods after July 1st
· National Letter of Intent: Early period is 2nd week in November.
Recruiting Terms and Current NCAA Legislation
Contact - A contact is any face-to-face encounter between a prospect or the prospect’s parents, relatives or legal guardian(s) and an institutional staff member or athletics representative during which any dialogue occurs in excess of an exchange of a greeting. Any such face-to-face encounter that is prearranged (e.g., positions himself/herself in a location where contact is possible) or that takes place on the grounds of the prospect’s educational institution or at the site of organized competition or practice involving the prospect or the prospect’s high school, preparatory school, two-year college or all-star team shall be considered a contact, regardless of whether any conversation occurs. However, an institutional staff member or athletics representative who is approached by a prospect or the prospect’s parents, relatives or legal guardian(s) at any location shall not use a contact, provided the encounter was not prearranged and the staff member or athletics representative does not engage in any dialogue in excess of a greeting and takes appropriate steps to immediately terminate the encounter.
Contact period - permissible for authorized athletic department staff members to make in-person, off-campus recruiting contacts and evaluations.
Dead period - not permissible to make in-person recruiting contacts or evaluations on- or off-campus or permit official or unofficial visits.
Evaluation - Evaluation is any off-campus activity designed to assess the academic qualifications or athletics ability of a prospect, including any visit to a prospect’s educational institution (during which no contact occurs) or the observation of a prospect participating in any practice or competition at any site.
Evaluation Days - An evaluation day is defined as one coach engaged in the evaluation of any prospect on one day (12:01 a.m. to midnight); two coaches making evaluations on the same day shall use two evaluation days.
Evaluation period - permissible for authorized athletics department staff to be involved in off-campus activities to assess academic qualifications and playing abilities. No in-person, off-campus recruiting contacts with a prospective student-athlete are permitted.
Quiet period - permissible to make in-person recruiting contacts only on the member institution's campus.
Recruited Prospective Student-Athlete - Actions by staff members or athletics representatives that cause a prospect to become a recruited prospect at that institution are:
a. Providing the prospect with an official visit (Each prospect is allowed 5 official visits and cannot b taken until your senior year);
b. Having an arranged, in-person, off-campus encounter with the prospect or the prospect’s parent(s), relatives or legal guardian(s);
c. Initiating or arranging a telephone contact with the prospect, the prospect’s relatives or legal guardian(s) on more than one occasion for the purpose of recruitment; or
d. Issuing a National Letter of Intent or the institution’s written offer of athletically related financial aid to the prospect (excluding summer term awards prior to initial full-time enrollment).
Practice or Competition Site - Recruiting contact may not be made with a prospect prior to any athletics competition in which the prospect is a participant during the day or days of competition, even if the prospect is on an official or
unofficial visit. Contact includes the passing of notes to a prospective by a third party on behalf of an institutional staff member. Contact shall not be made with the prospect as follows:
a. At any site prior to the contest on the day or days of competition;
b. From the time the prospect reports on call and becomes involved in competition-related activity to the end of the competition;
c. After the competition, including competition that requires more than one day of participation (e.g., a tournament), until the prospect is released by the appropriate institutional authority and departs the dressing and meeting facility; and
d. Coaching staff members may send general correspondence to a prospect while the prospect is participating in an athletics event, provided the general correspondence is sent directly to a prospect (e.g., the front desk of the hotel, the prospective student-athlete’s personal fax machine) and there is no additional party (e.g., camp employee, coach) involved in disseminating the correspondence.
Telephone Calls - All electronically transmitted human voice exchange (including videoconferencing and idiophones) shall be considered telephone calls. All electronically transmitted correspondence (e.g., electronic mail, facsimiles) shall not be considered telephone calls.
Divisions I and II-Printed Recruiting Materials - A Division I or Division II institution may not provide recruiting materials to a prospect (including general correspondence related to athletics) until September 1 at the beginning of the prospect's junior year in high school.
Electronic Transmissions-Divisions I and II - Facsimiles and electronic mail may be sent to a prospect. Prearranged electronically transmitted correspondence between an authorized institutional staff member and one or more prospects shall be considered a telephone call.
Prearranged Electronic Communication - Electronically transmitted correspondence between an institutional staff member and a prospective student-athlete shall be considered prearranged whenever a time and method for such electronic correspondence has been designated in advance. Any electronic correspondence sent by "instant messenger" or similar means also would be considered a telephone call, regardless of whether such forms of communication are prearranged.
The National Letter of Intent
The National Letter of Intent (NLI) is a binding agreement between a prospective student-athlete and an institution in which the institution agrees to provide a prospective student-athlete who is admitted to the institution and is eligible for financial aid under NCAA rules athletics aid for one academic year in exchange for the prospective student-athlete's agreement to attend the institution for one academic year. Additional information can be obtained through the NLI program Web page at www.national-letter.org. Please contact the NCAA membership services staff at 317/917-6222 if you have further questions.
ATHLETIC RECRUITING / ADVISORY SERVICES
