National Scouting Report is dedicated to finding scholarship opportunities for athletes who possess the talent, desire, and motivation to compete at the collegiate level. We’ve helped connect thousands of athletes with their perfect college.
If you are ready to take your recruiting to the next level, click the Get Scouted button below to be evaluated by an NSR College Scout.
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Nobody survives for long inside an idyllic bubble. Regardless how hard they try, life simply doesn’t work that way.
There are issues, incidents, accidents, missteps, hiccups, happenstances and brouhahas. Life, as it turns out, is complicated and full of unexpected ways our bubbles can be burst.
Why then do most parents and high school prospects think everything will go smoothly in college recruiting when common sense says it is next to impossible? There are as many moving parts as there are in, say, an automobile or computer. And everyone knows that for those to work well, everything must be lined up perfectly or they annoyingly sputter along or stop.
When things go awry, an expert must be called in to make them work properly again. Most people are not qualified to skillfully analyze a prospect’s recruiting problems. Moreover, they do not have the experience to correct the problems.
That’s where National Scouting Report, the nation’s oldest and largest high school scouting and college recruiting organization, comes in. With 200 trained scouts to guide prospects and their families through the recruiting process, NSR is an expert in the field.
A college coach can receive 10 or 20 times as many emails as the typical person. What makes a coach stop and read one? The answer is familiarity, trust and confidence.
Recruiting is a huge part of a college coach’s job, but recruiting time is not infinite. Many college coaches teach two or three classes. There are practices to organize and conduct, conditioning sessions to attend, bed checks to do, meetings to lead, games to prepare for and tiring road trips. Plus, coaches also have their own lives to lead. It is not that recruiting takes a back seat to everything else, but it has its place and has to fit into a very tight time frame.
However, many parents and prospects don’t realize this. They think a college coach’s time is limitless, and most of it is dedicated to recruiting.
Not so.
Every relationship requires time to nourish and build. When a college coach decides to make a scholarship offer to a prospect, the coach is in essence saying, “Let’s spend the next four or five years together.” For that to happen, coaches must have explored as many aspects of a recruit as possible. That involves numerous encounters and conversations — in person, over the phone and electronically.
Coaches often recruit three or four times the number of recruits they need to sign. They are constantly whittling them down, one by one, or adding one here or there, until they arrive at a final few who specifically meet their recruiting needs and can thrive academically at their institution.
It takes hours upon hours.
What can prospects and parents do to help their cause?
- Start early. Ninth grade is best. The longer you wait, the less time coaches have to find out about you, follow you and begin the relationship-building process.
- Understand the role of your coaches. Your high school, club or travel coaches play a vital role for you. They prepare you to compete at the next level of competition. Their role is invaluable. However, guiding you through the recruiting process is not their specialty. Yes, there are exceptions. But even those rare individuals are not studying NCAA rules or talking to college coaches every day. Recruiting professionals are the only ones qualified.
- Use a well-respected recruiting organization. Major-college coaches have big budgets to scour events and pick and choose from the cream of the crop. Other coaches don’t have that luxury. With limited recruiting budgets. they have to rely on other sources to find prospects. A reputable recruiting organization that represents only viable college prospects can help immensely.
- Get involved. Even the most successful recruiting organization will struggle unless families provide all the information a scout needs to fully promote a prospect to college coaches over a long period of time. Help us help you.
National Scouting Report is dedicated to finding scholarship opportunities for athletes who possess the talent, desire, and motivation to compete at the collegiate level. We’ve helped connect thousands of athletes with their perfect college.