NSR Scouts Reaching Out to Qualified Prep Student-Athletes

Prospect Families Are Left with Few Options in Wake of Open-enrollment Companies’ Methods and Ineffectiveness

National Scouting Report is the world’s most effective on-the-ground scouting organization and our scouts worldwide are constantly searching for college-qualified high school student-athletes in all sports.  Our goal of identifying and enrolling qualified prospects in an all-out effort to help them reach their goal of being recruited is a never ending quest.  But we are confronted with competitors whose methods are tainting our industry. 

History tells us that NSR’s selection process is what college coaches want to see in a scouting company.  Our method of personally vetting prospects on the basis of athletic talent, academic performance, personal character and family support allows college coaches to save immeasurable time on the front end of the recruiting process.  And, with digitized, evaluation videos available online for coaches to conduct their initial assessments, NSR puts more qualified prospects in front of college coaches than any other scouting organization. 

It’s true that there are scouting organizations which have more prospects in their database for coaches, but many of these companies are open enrollment groups.  That is to say that they take virtually any prospect whose parents are willing to fork over money to see their children’s faces posted on a Web site.  But, for these companies all the bells and whistles cannot fool coaches who are reluctant to sift through hundreds of non-qualified prospects to find a few which are legitimate.  That is one of the biggest differences between these companies and NSR. 

We only accept and promote prospects which have proven through their high school careers to be of true value to college coaches and who will not only attract their attention, but will be evaluated and recruited.  NSR does this because every day our reputation is on the line with college coaches.  They depend on us to remain steadfast to their high standards of prospect identification.  And because we are dedicated to only provide genuine college prospects to coaches, our prospects consistently get recruited. 

Recently our scouts are experiencing a windfall of interest and subsequent enrollments from prospects and parents who, after having been lured onto our competitors’ sites, want results, not empty promises.  Over the past few years a disturbing trend has taken hold and it is doing more damage than good to the status of high school scouting and college recruiting.  Telemarketing has made its way into scouting organizations as their main means of enrolling prospects.  By signing mass numbers of prospects without properly having scouted and evaluated their talent, these companies have put the status of real high school scouting organizations like NSR at risk.  Moreover, in the wake of this sign-at-all-cost approach, college coaches are complaining, prospects and parents are left disappointed and those of us in the scouting field still doing real scouting are left holding the bag and suffer the consequences – we too often get lumped in with them.   

America being a free enterprise society, there really is nothing anyone can do to counter these companies’ overly aggressive methods.  They are free to run amuck because that is their business model and it makes the principals a ton of, you guessed it, money.  But, we ask, what about the kids whose dreams are left in tatters?  Is there no consideration for their futures? 

At NSR, our only alternative is to continue to do our level best by our client-prospects and families.  We feel a keen sense of responsibility to them in particular, but also to the families we approach as potential NSR prospects, many of whom have already been targeted, called and entangled in the telemarketing’s sticky web.  How bad can it really be?  We recently learned about a scouting telemarketer who conducted an over-the-phone presentation.  When the parents declined to sign up, the telemarketer allegedly said to the prospect, “See?  Your parents don’t really care about your future.”  The parents hung up the phone on the telemarketer.  This story was told to an NSR scout during a face-to-face, in-home interview with the same family.  The family, recognizing the clear difference between NSR and the telemarketers, enrolled with NSR.  Within days that prospect was receiving interest from college coaches.  Get it?  As they say, that’s what we’re talking about. 

It comes down to this:  NSR proudly will not stoop to an open enrollment philosophy for the sake of padding our bank accounts.  That is our choice.  We will continue to do the right thing.  Call us naive.  But at NSR our company conscious still means something to us and our reputation with college coaches and in the athletic community means even more.