High school coaches and club organizations can help athletes with recruiting, but they are limited in their effectiveness

As college scouts, we interview a lot of high school prospects.  Whether a senior facing the final months of their prep careers or seventh graders about to enter the recruiting fray, one question consistently pops up:  Will my coach help me?  Good question.  We seldom see these coaches refusing to help athletes and their families, but they are severely limited in what they can do to help promote athletes to college coaches.

Most all coaches in the high school and club realm will assist in any way they can.  But going down that road with one athlete often means, and they know this, that they have to do the same for most, if not all, of their other athletes.  And that presents problems – three major issues coaches face about which families frequently overlook or are woefully uninformed.

First on the high school level, with the rare exception of private schools, coaches’ contracts do not include a provision requiring them to either make calls to college coaches on the behalf of their athletes or to widely promote their athletes to college programs through direct mailings.  In nearly every situation, a high school coach is hired and assigned to teach, coach, watch over their team and run the program within the standards set by their schools.  These responsibilities take up an inordinate amount of time.  In fact, in a study we conducted at NSR several years ago, a high school coach typically spends 70+ hours per week on his or her teaching and coaching duties.  In short, there is no time to promote their athletes.  Another key point: few high school coaches know more than a handful of college coaches.  Why?  College coaches no longer scout high school events, nor do they depend on prep-level coaches for info on prospects.  So, communications between high school and college coaches has all but dissipated over the past ten years.  Finally, getting the right info to coaches, that is, the info they need to quickly assess whether or not they want to explore an athlete’s qualifications is something most high school coaches generally have no idea of how to organize and compile.  Simply stated, it’s not what they do and they cannot reasonably be expected to be proficient at it.

it gives families a false sense of security which leads them to relax their own efforts to connect with colleges.  Consequently, as the days and months go on and their athlete does not get the attention from college coaches, it puts families in a race to catch up with other prospects.  In most cases. it’s a matter of too little too late.

That said, there are top-tier club organizations that do have a large percent of their athletes getting scholarship offers.  However, in truth, that has more to do with the organization’s reputation for selecting top talent than through their promotional activities.  College coaches have learned to gravitate to them without the benefit of pre-event promos, and the clubs in that category benefit from the exposure.

That, of course, leaves all the other athletes from lesser known organizations.  What are these athletes to do?  How can they get noticed, evaluated and recruited?  There is an answer – one which history shows year in and year out gets over 90 percent of engaged athletes recruited.  Consistent.  Proven.  Professional.  www.nsr-inc.com.