Chris Roeder

Justin D'Amato

Former NSR baseball prospects, Chris Roeder, a sophomore shortstop, and Justin D’Amato, a sophomore hurler, for St. John Fisher College in Pittsford, New York, each received post season honors recently.  Chris recorded 41 hits on the year with 12 doubles, four triples, 26 RBI and 70 total bases.  He was selected to the Second Team for his numbers at the designated hitter position.  The sophomore led Fisher with six home runs this year, recording a .556 slugging percentage with 28 RBI, 34 hits and 69 total bases. recorded 41 hits on the year with 12 doubles, four triples, 26 RBI and 70 total bases.  Justin D’Amato was selecterd as the conference’s  Co-Pitcher of the Year after posting another stellar season on the mound recording a 1.83 earned run average.  Justin leads Fisher with 10 wins this season, as he holds a perfect 10-0 record overall and 4-0 in Empire 8 play.  The Canandaigua native has struck out a team-high 89 batters in 68.2 innings pitched.  On May 6th, D’Amato set the Fisher single-season strikeout record with his 87th to break the previous record of 86 set by Dan Jurik, who was drafted in the 25th round by the Atlanta Braves, in 2010.  His 10th win also broke a single-season record, which he had set at nine in the previous season.  Their NSR scout was Tom Sydeski, Rochester, New York.  Former

Preparing for the fall can be fun, if you take the right attitude

Summertime is THE time to get some productive things accomplished.

Making plans for the summertime may seem a fun to-do list for high school athletes.  With free time staring you in the face, what is an athlete to do?

At NSR we are constantly aware of the necessity for preparation.  And even though summers is a time for vacations, fun and rest, the dedicated student-athlete must keep an ever vigilant eye on the future.  Staying in shape, communicating with college coaches, attending camps and taking campus visits are all on our summer checklist for athletes.  Here are those and few more which serious high school athletes should consider including in their summer plans:

1. Hit the Road.  Early mornings are ideal for getting exercise out of the way for the busy high school athlete.  Doing so takes discipline and dedication, but nothing can replace staying in top condition through the lazy days of summer.  Want to impress college coaches?  Give them a record of the mornings that you were up and at it over the summertime.  Now, THAT will make coaches pay attention.
2. Fire One Off.  When coming in from your exercise, stop by your computer or sit down with your phone and fire off a quick E-mail to a college coach.  Tell him or her that you just finished a workout session and wanted to say hi.  That’s all it takes to get a coach to notice you.  Do this every day.  Pick a handful of coaches and send them a quick message every week.
3. Camp Time is Face Time.  If a college is recruiting you hard, don’t miss the opportunity to attend their camp this summer.  Getting face time with a coaching staff and team members is extremely helpful to your understanding of a program and how it operates.
4. Step on the Grounds.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, is more valuable to a high school student-athlete than actually stepping foot on the grounds of a college campus.  Even if the campus is not one which you are interested in attending.  You need the experience of seeing and feeling what different campuses are like to eventually make a decision about which type works for you.
5. Bury Your Head.  Read something.  Strange, right?  But you will find that taking in a good book, or several of them, over the summer months will be prove to be about the most relaxing thing you can do.  Go ahead, try it.

Kendall Bayer

NSR 2013 softball prospect, Kendal Bayer, is a first baseman and outfielder from Howell High School in Howell, Michigan.  This past Saturday she had what could easily be characterized as a showstopper-type experience as she stacked up some extraordinary stats at the Fred Pieper Memorial Softball Tourney.  The 5’6″ multi-talented player, who last year was selected to be in the “The Best in USSSA Fastpitch Softball” 2011 Edition, went 9 for 11 on Saturday with a home run, triple, double and 9 RBIs.  Her NSR scout, Steve LaMay, says in his scouting report on Kendal, “Kendal is an athletic, enthusiastic, energetic ballplayer with plenty of talent. Speed is one of her best assets on the field. She turned in a 2.97 H-1st time at the Blue Chip Camp at Madonna University (Livonia, MI). While speed is an asset Kendal is far from being one-dimensional. She is also very strong and has very good gap power. In the box she is an extra base hit waiting to happen.”

In her essay to college coaches, Kendal says, “I know the academic and athletic requirements necessary to move onto playing softball at the collegiate level. I love this sport and I believe I have what it takes within me to play at the next level. In order to meet this dream, I have set academic and athletic goals. Academically my goal is to improve my GPA and to score a 28 or higher on my ACT. Athletically, my goal is to be a leader on my varsity softball team, improve my plate coverage, increase my batting average of .349 and contribute to wining a conference title. My experiences playing sports have helped me develop a strong work ethic, true leadership skills, and the ability to perform well under pressure which has made me the person I am today.”

Unsuccessful experience promoting son to colleges leads parent to NSR

NSR athletes like Arielle Pollock are identified and sent to college coaches after actual on-the-ground scouting.

Riding from the hotel to the NSR home office this morning, I was talking to one of our new scouts from California.  He said that what really inspired him to become an NSR licensee and scout was that in 2010, when his son was a senior in high school, he and his wife tried to promote him on their own.  His next statement was all-telling.

“We didn’t hear a peep from a single college coach that we contacted.   We sent loads of E-mails and letters and go nothing, nada.  When I learned about the effectiveness with which NSR promotes their athletes, it was a no-brainer to me that this is what I needed to be doing for the athletes in my area of Northern California.”

Parents thinking that college coaches will jump on every package of info and E-mail are in for a long wait.  College coaches trust viable sources and parents aren’t in that group.

Go into practically any college coach’s office and you will find somewhere, usually tucked off in a corner, a stack of packages and tapes they’ve gotten from parents.  It’s a dust collecting area which coach’s rarely get around to reading or viewing.  Why?  Well, if you were a college coach and you had a choice of going through the info provided to you by the world’s most trusted scouting service that has been sending their program great high school student-athletes for 32  years or a parent, which would you take seriously?  Bingo.

High school scouting and college recruiting is no longer a mom ‘n pop affair where you can list your info on a free recruiting site or send a few letters or E-mails to coaches and realistically expect to get a response, much less a recruiting letter or phone call.  Not going to happen.  So, get real.

College coaches are like anyone else in business, they want to save time to make their recruiting efforts as efficient as possible.  When they decide which prospects to spend their valuable time evaluating, they aren’t silly enough to think that the top prospects will come from Mom and Dad.  That simply makes no sense.  They access info and the opinions of the pros that scout for a living, that are on the ground actually doing their prelim work of gathering athletic, academic and personal data, pushing unqualified prospects to the side and homing in on those prospects that are legitimate college athletes.

When NSR scouts pinpoint, scout and then enroll a prospect, it is because as scouts they have done the initial work that college coaches don’t have time or funds, in many instances, to do for themselves.  And, over the years these coaches have developed a level of professional respect for our scouts and our scouting and verification methods which coaches are confident result in a list of genuine college prospects.

NSR scouts are on the up-and-up with prospects and parents from the first contact

NSR scouts that contact prospects are carefully vetted and approved by America's largest on-the-ground high school scouting organization.

Social Media is taking center stage at Ohio State University, but not in a good way. The alarming development exposes the Twitter activities of one Charles Eric Waugh, 31, a man listed on Kentucky’s sex offender registry. Waugh had reached out to several Buckeye football coaches, recruits and current players on Twitter and had gone as far as to post pictures of himself with some of them. While the snapshots appeared innocent on the surface, one highly-prized 2013 OSU football commitment de-committed over the weekend due to the implications raised by the contacts.  And because of this specfic problem, National Scouting Report is making a stand to support the families of high school athletes that have come to rely on Social Media as a communication devise.

Upon learning of the problem, OSU athletic director for (NCAA) compliance, Doug Archie, made a stern statement to the a school’s coaches, athletes as well as to recruits regarding the attempts by Waugh to contact them  through Twitter.   Archie’s email statement said, “We strongly recommend that you take the to block his access to your Twitter and Facebook accounts.  In addition, we’ve enclosed a photograph and a link to a news article regarding this individual. As a reminder, the individuals who you associate with on social networking sites (i.e., Twitter, Facebook) can have negative implications on your reputation and the university. Please remember to choose your ‘social media friends’ carefully!”

We applaud OSU for taking this action. It was the right thing to do and it obviously had to be done.

The imbroglio highlights a problem with Social Media which many parents in particular have reportedly long feared — that their children are open to being “friended” by unsavory individuals with nefarious intentions. At NSR we do reach out to high school athletic prospects as a matter of operational procedures, but it is our careful and well-considered policy to always insist that our scouts instruct prospects to immediately inform their parents that we have made contact with them, including providing the prospects and parents with the scout’s name, email address and phone number.  We want there to be no doubt that parents need to know that our scout has made initial contact and that it is for sound, acceptable reasons.

Social Media certainly has its advantages, but parents are right to monitor their children’s activities including making certain that they are “friends” with or being “followed” by people whose intentions are legitimate and non-threatening in any way.

At National Scouting Report, as the world’s oldest and most widely respect high school scouting and college athletic recruiting service, we have highly-trained scouts stationed across the country and in five foreign nations.  We vet these scouts carefully prior to bringing them aboard our team.  And, because of our 32-year history of working with coaches at every level of competition, we are well known by area and state coaches as hard working people of the communities where we live whose objective is to help high school athletes realize their dreams of participating in college athletics.

More importantly, we want to insure parents and prospects that if they ever have any doubts about an individual’s validity as an NSR scout, we are more than happy to provide proof of our scouts’ identities and affiliations with our company. Please, do not hesitate to contact us if there you have a question or concern.  Families can reach our Director of Communications, Alan Parham, at (800) 354-0072 or via email at alan@nsr-inc.com.  We will be happy to help.

Get moving with it, or get left behind

The recruiting process is starting earlier than ever before and prepared families have the advantage.

“It’s too early.  We’re going to wait.”  “Our son is only a freshman, so we’ll see what happens.”  “Our coach says that she is taking care of all that for us.”  “We have a friend in the athletic department at her favorite college who says that he’ll put in a good word for her.”  Blah, blah, blah.  Those are the pat answers we as NSR scouts often hear from parents that are actually outside of the recruiting loop, but yet convinced they know better then we do.  Wrong.  Very wrong.

Recruiting is a living, breathing entity that never stops its forward momentum.  While parents are at work, recruiting is happening.  While prospects are sitting in class, recruiting is going on.  When they congregate together at practices, games and tournaments, college coaches are evaluating talent.  Recruiting is constantly in motion.  And you are either available to coaches for evaluation or you are not.  It’s really that simple.  If your profile is not readily accessible by coaches, you can bet that fancy Ford Fusion that another prospect is.

Let’s start with the premise that a company, National Scouting Report, that has been in the high school scouting and college recruiting business for 32 years has expertise that you don’t.  With that absolute in mind, pay attention.  Today, the recruiting process begins for prospects in the eighth grade.  What, you say?  Yes, that’s right, the eighth grade.  College coaches are beginning their recognition phase, the key holder to any prospect’s recruiting process, when athletes are in or just coming out of what could be called their pre-freshman year.

The most astute parents and prospects are setting out a plan during the eighth grade year which takes them from start to finish, which is securing a college, athletic scholarship offer.  These forward thinking families are learning about NCAA rules, pondering which club or travel team they will play for, looking at local and regional college Web sites, and making what is arguably their most critical decision — determining where their very best promotional option lies.

Understanding and accepting that recruiting is a tough, long-term competition is the first light bulb which must be turned on by families that want and need their child to earn a college athletic scholarship.  Anything short of that type of deliberate effort puts prospects in a precarious and dangerous position.  Dangerous?  Yes.  For families that delay in their preparations, they are putting their athlete in danger of not being considered for an offer because as they sit and wait, other prospects are being evaluated in earnest by college coaches.

So, how then does a family choose which course to take?  Here are some thoughts and suggestions to seriously discuss:

• Will my coach be able to help?  Most likely not.  Both high school and club or travel coaches have limited access to college coaches.  They may know a handful of coaches, but that is not enough, frankly.  We rarely, and to be clearer, almost never, hear a college coach say these words, “If it hadn’t been for his coach, I would have never known about that kid.”  Your coaches are not paid to promote your child to colleges.  They do not have the means to conduct an effective promo campaign.  And, if they do, they are faced with the obligation to follow suit for all their athletes interested in playing at the next level.  So, leaving it up to a coach is not as reasonable, or smart, as it might sound.  Time is also a stumbling block.  Your coaches have jobs, families of their own and obligations which take precedent over your primary needs.  There simply is not enough time for them to do it all.  If you want to have  your athlete promoted, select someone that represents a company that specializes in athlete promotions full time.
• Will my travel team get me exposure?  Yes, but no.  If the team participates in high-profile events, your chances are better than if you don’t.  But here’s the rub:  college coaches do not go to events to discover talent.  They arrive already knowing which athletes they are going to scout.  All the other athletes are white noise in the background to them.  A prospect entering a club or travel season should have one main concern which is this:  How do I get on those coaches’ lists?  We can count on both hands the number of club or travel teams that do a pre-season promo of their athletes and your probably is not one of them.  And those which do send out a brochure that lists all their players, not just you, are painfully ineffective because the follow-up is woefully lacking.  So, getting lost in the shuffle of Club/Travel World is normal.  If coaches don’t know your athlete exists, they would have to happen to stop at your game and watch for a few minutes and hopefully in that small window of time your child will make the play of a lifetime to catch their attention to the point of them ignoring other players they came to scout and shift their attention to your athlete.  Now, those are odds so long that it’s incomprehensible such a scenario would occur.  Because a viable scouting service is at the wheel day after day promoting your child, coaches have a realistic chance to notice and evaluate your child.
• Will a good word from a friend who knows the coach make a difference?  In short, no.  It may result in you getting a recruiting letter, but actually being recruited?  Nah, not happening.  College coaches frequently do these people similar favors.  They have to as a courtesy.  It would be rude not to.  But will it realistically influence a coach?  Unlikely.  But, what if a respected, on-the-ground scout called that same coach and offered detailed info, athletic and academic, on your child to a college coach.  Now that would work for both the coach and the athlete.

Our best advice?  Do your due diligence ASAP.  Don’t wait another day.  There is no advantage to waiting regardless of what anyone says.  Trust us on this.

While you are in the start-up process, look at all the promotional options available to you.  There are free sites, but they are too much trouble for coaches to sift through.  There are far too many unqualified athletes self-posting info on these sites for coaches to take seriously.  There are other, fee-paid recruiting sites, too.  But in most cases you will find that they are telemarketers, not legitimate scouting organizations and their promos are limited in scope for what you really need to connect with college coaches.  And, where’s your scout?  Oh, he or she is sitting in a cubicle somewhere.  If that works for you, have at it, but most people want a real scout working with them, not a person playing like a scout.

What you really need is a comprehensive, promotional campaign which will make your child’s profile accessible to every coach in your sport, not just a few, while allowing your family to target specific schools with snail mail (it really is effective) and E-mail.  And, you need a scout that can personally vouch for you because he or she knows your athlete, has seen him or her play and can speak firsthand to college coaches about his or her personality, character and abilities.

National Scouting Report does all these things and we do them better than anyone in the world.  That is a fact you can bank on.

Sometimes it’s not all about sports

Vincent Viola, the quintessential NSR student-athlete excels at Rhodes College.

Throughout his four years at Paramus Catholic High School in Paramus, New Jersey, and now as a first-year student at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, former NSR basketball prospect, Vincent Viola, has maintained a delicate balance of academics and athletics. As a 6’7″ basketball player for the Lynx, he commits himself fully to improving his skills and being the best team player he can be. At the same time, he keeps his studies and academic pursuits in first place on his priority list.

After graduating as salutatorian from a high school class of 418 students, Vincent entered Rhodes as a Physics major and recruited basketball player.  National Scouting Report and his scout, Dan Greco, had proved to be valuable assets in helping him find a school with the right balance of academics and athletics he desired.  While playing on the junior varsity team this past winter, Vincent made the Dean’s List with a 3.92 GPA. Adding to his academic commitment, he was an active member of the Society of Physics Students.  In this group he traveled to local elementary schools as part of a science outreach program. After the JV season ended, Vincent enjoyed playing on an intramural basketball team of science majors.

Most recently, Vincent traveled to NASA’s John Marshall Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the 19^th Annual Great Moonbuggie Race in mid-April. He attended the first design meeting last October and spent many long hours helping the Rhodes College Physics Team assemble what turned out to be an award-winning moonbuggie. As a first-time participant, Rhodes was eligible for the “Rookie Award” and the team was thrilled to win it with the fastest vehicle.

This summer will feature more science and more basketball for Vincent.  As soon as the spring semester ends, he will travel to Italy with the Rhodes men’s basketball team to play some friendly games against Italian teams. Then he returns to Memphis to spend 10 weeks on the Rhodes campus as part of a science research team. He will be working with the moonbuggie’s student project leader to improve the current design for next year’s competition.