Summer Camps Are Fun, but Prospects Should Understand the “Camp Game”

Zero In on the Schools Showing You Genuine Interest

NSR prospects across the globe are attending summer college sports camps.  It’s an annual ritual which is both misunderstood and essential for high school prospects. 

Of course, big college camps will be filled with aspiring prospects hoping to grab the attention of their favorite coaches and players.  These camps teach good skills, but the number of participants discourages quality, individual instruction.  That’s not good for prospects wanting to progress to the college level.  Freshmen and sophomores, who should be over star gazing, should attend camps which specialize in their positions.  Juniors and seniors, on the other hand, should go to the camps of colleges  which have shown them keen interest.  And mind you, one recruiting letter is not enough evidence to sway a prospect to attend that camp. 

College camps have another, less obvious purpose, too.  In many cases, the head coaches are using them as money raising efforts for the supplemental income of their coaching staffs, if not their own.   Especially in NCAA Division II and III as well as NAIA and NJCAA programs, it is not unusual for assistant coaches to be nine- or ten-month employees whose salaries are generally below what a high school head coach makes annually.  These assistants need additional income to justify working as second or third fiddles. 

In big time programs, the money goes toward hiring their own players and outside coaches from area high schools and other colleges to do the camp’s grunt work such as leading kids from point A to point B, rousting players up in the mornings, doing bed checks at night and running drills and scrimmages.  The hours are long, but it’s usually excellent pay.  But for the head coaches, perhaps the biggest benefits are PR and seeing firsthand their top prospects, the ones they desperately want to evaluate and develop relationships with.  Advantage, coach.   

In the end, camps are, or should be, all about eventually getting scholarship offers for prospects.  To that purpose, having a realistic view of which level one fits in college athletics is paramount.  For instance, if only DII, DIII and NAIA schools are contacting a prospect, going to a DI camp is pointless.  The chances of landing an offer from a DI program is infintesimal.  Dreams aside, DII prospects should be bellying up to the DII coaches at camps, not so much to land an offer on the spot, but to do up close and personal due diligence on the coach, the team and the campus.  There is nothing more valuable to a prospect than spending multiple days in the presence of a coach with whom he or she might be spending a full four years with.