Show Notes
My guest is Katie Andersen, a former NCAA Division 1 Women’s Soccer player at Duke University, who now advises student-athletes through her organization, College Fit OC. She’s also the co-founder of The Student-Athlete Advisors, which focuses on educating and mentoring educational consultants who advise college-bound student-athletes.
Our conversation turned into a veritable crash course in college athletic recruiting. We get into, among other things:
How a student can know if they can realistically play their sport at the college level
When students should start their athletic recruiting process
Can a college coach actually help a student get accepted to a university?
How college-list building is different for student athletes
Recent rule changes families should be aware of
Tips for social media
Tips for recruiting videos
And lots more!
Play-by-Play
0:00 – Intro / Who is Katie Anderson?
1:37 – Katie shares a little bit about her journey as a student athlete
4:29 – How can a student know if they can realistically play their sport at the college level?
9:00 – When should students start their athletic recruiting process?
12:45 – Should student athletes visit campus?
15:36 – How do students know if a coach is serious about recruiting them?
18:11 – How can students be proactive in their recruiting process?
21:30 – What influence do coaches have on the admissions process?
25:05 – What are coaches looking for in student athletes?
29:51 – How is building a college list different for student athletes?
35:50 – How do early decision applications impact the students’ athletic recruiting journey?
39:03 – Are there any recent shifts in athletic recruitment that students should know?
42:18 – How can social media be used to help a student in the recruiting process?
47:04 – What are some tips for creating recruiting videos?
50:32 – What are some of the misconceptions that students and families have about this process?
52:46 – Advice to families who are considering hiring somebody to help them with this process?
54:46 – What resources are available for families throughout this process?
54:43 – Wrap-Up
Resources
Podcast 121: Which Schools Are the Most Generous With Financial Aid? (US Version) – Jeff Levy, financial aid expert
Podcast 122: Which Schools Are the Most Generous With Financial Aid? (International Version) – Jennie Kent, international financial aid expert
Podcast 123: Should You Apply Early Decision or Regular Decision? (And the Chart That Can Help You Decide) – Jennie Kent and Jeff Levy
Show transcript
Ethan Sawyer 0:08
Hey friends, what's up? Ethan Sawyer, the College Essay Guy here, and welcome to the podcast, where it's my goal to bring more ease, joy and purpose to your life through the college admissions process. On this here podcast, my guest is Katie Anderson, who's a former NCAA division one women's soccer player at Duke. She now advises student athletes through her organization, college fit OC, and she's the co founder of the student athlete advisors, which focuses on educating and mentoring educational consultants who advise college bound student athletes. So what kind of started is me asking Katie some questions about common questions that student athletes and their families have during the process turned into basically a crash course in college athletic recruiting. So that's what we're calling this episode. We get into, among other things, how a student can know if they can realistically play their sport at the college level, we talk about when students should start their athletic recruiting process. Katie gives us a kind of timeline. There can a college coach actually help a student get accepted to a university? Katie gives us the answer. We talk about how college list building is different for student athletes, some recent rule changes that families should be aware of. She gives tips for social media and recruiting videos and a whole bunch more. Without further ado, let's get into it.
Hi Katie, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. So I'd love to just jump right in. I'd love to hear a little bit about your own journey as a student athlete,
Katie Andersen 1:42
absolutely. So I was a three sport athlete in high school. I played volleyball, soccer and I ran track. I decided at the end of my junior year I wanted to try to play either volleyball or soccer in college, so I reached out to college coaches, and it turns out, I got recruited by Duke University for soccer, and they were starting a brand new women's soccer team. So thank you. Title Nine. I got to go to Duke primarily because of their basketball team, but that all worked out really well. I started my freshman year. I played every minute of every game my freshman year, it was incredible experience. Since we were a first year team, there were pretty much 11 freshmen starting and amazing freshman year my sophomore year roll around, and the coach recruited another full team of players, and so now we had about 22 of us, and I found my playing time getting cut in half that I was it just kind of for me that that wasn't even part of my plan. So I had to sort of reevaluate what I wanted from the program, and realized that I wanted a lot more out of college as an experience. So I made the decision at the end of my sophomore year to leave the program. In that moment, I when I left my coach's office, I to tell him I was leaving. I went straight to the study abroad office and signed up to go to Australia and not, you know, more than a few months later, I was living in Sydney, going to the University of New South Wales and traveling all over Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, and which I mean, I guess for me worldwide, travel became my new door that opened in my life. Because, you know, later down the line, I married a Norwegian and moved to Oslo and lived, all, you know, in Amsterdam and all sorts of things. So that was kind of the beginning of that experience. But I also did other things on the college campus. When I returned, I was an RA on a freshman hall for a whole year, and I specifically requested to live with athletes. I worked for my school newspaper, The Chronicle, and for about a year and a half, worked for them, and got lots of great job experience. So that when I went out and applied for jobs, which is what we all do pretty much after college, for those of us who don't go on to play pro, I had a really great resume. And so I just think I've lived both sides of this athletic experience, and I've had to deal with what happens when you are the crash that comes down when you realize you're no longer a competitive athlete, and what do you do with yourself? And that that, for some kids, is just this big time reality check on on their lives. So I think I all of that experience helps me guide families through this process, because I can speak to pretty much all of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1 4:19
I really appreciate hearing that context. It's it sort of reminds me that you never quite know how your life is going to go. And yeah, I appreciate hearing how you made the best of it. Let's jump right in. So how can a student know if they can realistically play their sport at a college level, right?
Speaker 2 4:35
And that is, that is a question I get all the time. So it's a good one. It's a good place to start. Well, I think that you kind of have to start with two pretty important aspects here. And one is that at the college level really encompasses a very wide range of competition. Right? We think about college as being this next level up, but truly between the NCAA division one, Division two. Division Three, Naia, and then you've got Community College and junior college all as opportunities to be able to play in college. There, within each of these governing bodies, you have teams at the top, teams in the middle, and teams at the bottom. So So truly there, there is a very wide range of opportunity. And so given that, then I think that it's really important for student athletes to kind of take an assessment of their own talent level. And I know this can be really tough, because sometimes it's hard to see beyond the world you live in, but there are a lot of resources you can use to get some feedback about what is your talent level of where might you be a good fit within that collegiate framework, and so, you know, talk to club coaches. Talk to your high school coaches, if you have a personal trainer, if you've been to camps and had evaluations or feedbacks from college coaches. That is all great information, being proactive and asking the question, coach, where do you think I would be a good fit? Right? Sometimes coaches are great at giving that feedback, and other times not so so much so again, just being inquisitive about that, it's, I think, is a great start. And then also looking at where older players from your club program, for example, have gone off to play in college, or maybe even your high school program, again, just because they did, it doesn't mean you can do it, but it certainly is a an indication of, you know, that kind of talent level. And then, where does your you know? Where are you located? Where is your team located within the league, and the kind of the conference that you play in, for example, knowing that you know, do you just play locally? Do you play more regionally? Is your team competing nationally or even internationally, right? Those are all sort of factors to look at. You can also look at some data points. Think, for example, you know, if you are a volleyball player, right, height means a lot in volleyball. So take a look at some of the statistics. Compare yourself. Now, if you're looking at, you know, the various things that a volleyball player, or really any sport, right? Look at height and weight. Look at, you know, your your wingspan. Look at, you know, I don't want to get into the weeds here, but like, if you do a little roster check and look up some college rosters, you're going to find that you can kind of compare yourself sports like cross country and track or swimming make it really easy to sort of assess, okay, here's where I am today. Here's where I could be in a year or two from now. And here's exactly the times these college, you know, athletes are swimming or running in college. So how do I fit with that? Can I get there by the time I you know, I would be in college. And I think all of those things are that starting point for assessing where could I possibly play in college. And then I think there are even more complicating factors, and this is where I feel like families get tripped up a bit is, you know, you first talk about your athletic talent level, but then you kind of have to layer in all these other things about college, like, who are you as a student? What kind of you know, Grade, Grade Point Average Do you have? Do you have test scores? Do you want to go to a big school, a small school, a medium sized School, where, where in the country? What is your family? What can your family afford? What kind of social environment you want to be in? Like, all the normal college counseling questions start to layer into this. And so I think really the biggest question, and again, like I said, is a little more complicated, but you have to ask yourself, can I realistically play my sport at a college where I will be a happy student and where my you know that my family can afford? So I don't know that I answered. I don't know that I made this any easier for you. Families need to understand that it's not just about the talent level, right? They're getting a good fit or realizing there's a misalignment. Are just an important part of this, you know, kind of understanding of the big, grander scheme of things.
Speaker 1 8:58
So when should students start their athletic recruiting process. Give us a timeline here.
Speaker 2 9:02
I'm very glad you asked that question, too, because this one is one that I have families that will come to me early, early, early, like eighth grade or freshman year. I really prefer unless that and that's that student athlete is truly outstanding as as an athlete, and I can see that the talent is there where that that student athlete might get really, really early recruiting opportunities. For the most part, I really like to start with kids in the second semester of their sophomore year. That's just a preference of mine. But I'm sure you could find other athletics counselors who would say, you know, that they like working earlier. And partly that's because I think that kids need a chance to see who they are as the student and see who they are as an athlete, and sometimes you just need a little bit of a start in high school before that really starts to surface and understand where you are by doing it, then by getting this process really started, then you also, do, you know, take advantage of some other things, which is the time. Being per the NCAA rules regarding, you know, contact, in terms of when coaches can actually talk back to you. So if you do start that conversation, you're going to be doing a couple things in that second semester of sophomore year, which is starting a conversation around discussing your own family's priorities, all the things I just mentioned before, you know, athletic, academic, financial, social, you have time to start pulling together a recruiting video. Now, not all sports need a recruiting video, but many do so starting to kind of recognize, okay, do I have access to the kind of video that I'm going to need to be able to start sending my sending my video out to coaches. You know, time based sports typically don't necessarily need a video. But for example, I'm work with track athletes who are throwers or jumpers, and you know, if you're a pole vaulter, you probably want to send video, because coaches, you know, can they, they'd love to be able to see your technique so and then other things you want to be doing in that second semester of sophomore year is preparing an introduction email that you're going to send out to coaches. You may also want to put together a social media profile that is dedicated to athletics. And just remember that in this whole process, you are going to have to be proactive. You've got to start putting together a list of coaches and colleges and coaches where you're going to start reaching out so and then once you have done all of that, then you're going to, you know, as you go into your junior year and you go into your senior year, those are the that's the toolkit, that's the toolbox you're going to use to be able to communicate with those coaches. So really starting to send out those messages just before summertime of your junior year, and then throughout the summer between sophomore and junior year, attend camps, start to get familiar with what those programs look like. You're probably, you know, if you're playing a sport that does showcase tournaments, right, you're going to start to kind of see a little bit of that interest. Because that's really that timing of between sophomore and junior year is when, for many sports, college coaches can start talking with you, and then you're just going to continue to reach out to coaches and be seen as much as you can during your junior year. And then hopefully, end of junior year, you're starting to kind of sense who's showing interest and moving through the rest of the process. But for kids who come into this process late, meaning they just get started at the end of junior year, or even, like some athletes, where it's the beginning of their senior year, you know, it kind of depends on the sport, but it's not not all is lost. It's not impossible, but certainly, if you come to this process late, doors have already closed, so you're kind of left with whatever's left as being the opportunity.
Speaker 1 12:45
I'm curious. I'd love to double click on the notion of visiting a campus. Does for a student who's interested in playing sports in college, does that visit to the campus actually help? Or, maybe more specifically, what specific things can students do that can potentially make a difference in their recruiting process,
Speaker 2 13:05
right? So visiting campuses is certainly something that can be very helpful. Now, the number one rule when it comes to stepping on a college campus is, especially if you hope or expect to be able to talk to a college coach during that time, is to know your recruiting calendar. And I know that might seem like a really weird comment to make on a campus visit, but recruiting calendars are important, and that is so the simple thing for you to do, for student athletes to do, is to Google NCAA recruiting calendar for your sport, and you will start to see what the rules are regarding when coaches are allowed to speak with you, and where they're allowed to speak with you so and really the key period to not expect to be able to step on a college campus, it's during a den period. But again, that will vary by sport, so that's why I'm saying first look at that. Now, visiting campuses can come in a couple different forms. Attending a camp on a college campus is one way to start to see that process, and you get exposure to what is the, you know, if it's a sleepover event, you might, you know, be able to get a real better sense of what the school's kind of like. If you are just attending for a visit, for the day with your family on an that would be, you know, where your family is paying for it, right? That would be one where you're you're going, and you're maybe attending a campus tour and walking around, and maybe you stop in and visit the coach and his or her office for for a bit and get an introduction, right? That's an unofficial visit. And then an official visit is one in which the coach has already established. You have had a running relationship with this coach now for a while, and the coach then invites you, on the on the school's dime, to visit the program. And that's an invite only sort of scenario that is called an official visit. So there are lots of ways to visit the colleges and get a sense for what you want. And. I really feel very strongly that kids should take advantage of those opportunities, because it's very easy to look at the web, you know, look at websites, and look at the pretty pictures and think, oh, this place is just amazing. I can't wait to go there. But I've had kids go on visits and they looked at, you know, they looked at it one way, and then realized when they got there that this was not at all what they thought it was. You know, the pictures didn't do, didn't tell the whole story, right, especially regarding their sport. And so those campus visits really are a critical opportunity for to get a realistic view of what's you know, what's going on, interesting.
Speaker 1 15:36
So in terms of that realistic view, I'm curious, is there? How do students know if, let's say, a coach says to them, we're interested in you, how do they know if this is real, if they're really interested or not, right?
Speaker 2 15:49
This is always a hard one for families to distinguish that real interest from sort of the mild interest, right? And so there are a couple things, when you first start reaching out to coaches through email or through social media when you first start that process, when a coach writes back to you and says, Thank you so much for your email and again, part of this depends on the timing of what coaches are allowed to say to you when. But say that, say that you're in a time frame when coaches are allowed to speak with you about recruiting in your junior year or your senior year. If what you hear back is, thanks so much for your email. Fill out our recruiting questionnaire, and here's a list of our camps. That is a bit of a you know, it could be an interesting response, but it's, it's generally more on the mild side. Let's say that the Yeah,
Speaker 1 16:38
it sounds like a polite No, it's a polite note. Yeah, right, thanks. But no thanks, yeah.
Speaker 2 16:43
The the more interesting response from a coach is, I think you look like a really interesting prospect. I'm gonna, I'd like to set up a phone call with you, or a zoom call with you, so that we can, yeah, get to know each other better, and you can learn about our program, and we can get to know you. That is what you're looking for. And when that happens, oftentimes coaches will provide their mobile numbers as part of, you know, part of that process, and that truly is a step in the way. It's certainly not the end all, be all, but it's kind of golden moment, right, when a coach reveals their mobile number, because that allows you to have a lot more direct communication with a coach. I find that lots of kids, once they get to that phase, then the texting is just a quicker, easier, faster way to get responses back from a coach, and to kind of stay in touch, you don't have to write the formal email so much, and you can get to that texting place. And that's, again, it's a really great step in the right direction for recruiting, but also recognize that there will be phases of that relationship. You start by maybe speaking with an assistant coach, and then maybe there's, you know, another assistant there could be it start. It could start with a recruiting coordinator and then an assistant coach, and then move up to the head coach in terms of conversations before they ever get to the point where they say we'd like for you to come on an official visit. Usually, there's also a pre read involved. But, you know, we can, we can get into that later. But there's definitely, you know, phases of that relationship that move along the way.
Speaker 1 18:10
Yeah, gotta get them digits, all right. So I'm curious, to what extent do students need to be proactive in their search? Are they just going to get recruited if they're just, like, incredible athletes, or, you know, and not just like to what extent, but how can they be proactive,
Speaker 2 18:26
right? So, first of all, I'll start with the concept of the blue chip athlete, right? There are going to be student athletes out there who are just that super hot player, right? They're playing for junior national teams. They're getting recognized as one of the hottest players in the country, those kids. I mean, I have had students in the past who have received 40 phone calls on day one that coaches can contact you, right? So those kids are don't really have to work that hard to get recruited. They don't have to be that proactive, because everyone's running after them and and I promise you, if you're in that boat, you know who you are. The most of the kids that I work with are not that student athlete. Most of them are in a situation where they're playing for a pretty good team, and they need to establish what their own priorities are, and start being actively contacting coaches to let them know you know that they're interested in their school. Imagine if you flip this around and you're in the coach's situation, right? A coach comes to a, let's just say, soccer, right? The coach is standing on the sideline at a a showcase tournament, right? And these, some of these tournaments are, you know, volleyball, soccer, they're just massive. You've got court after court after court of players, and you're sitting there, and maybe you know something about those student athlete you're watching, or the team that you're watching, and maybe you don't, but you're standing there assessing, you know athletic talent, right? But you don't know anything about that students grades. You don't know anything about that student's ability to pay for college. And those are two pre. Important, or there are other, you know, other things that we've talked about, right? So, so that's where the student athlete, proactively reaching out, introducing themselves, letting them know, Hey, Coach, I have, you know, especially at those high academic schools, I have a 4.3 GPA, and I have, you know, I took the s, a T, and I got an x, right? Or I took the ECT, I got a 31 If a family is looking for money. Personally, I would, I mean, you just have to decide how much you know what, when does that net price you're willing to pay. But you don't necessarily want to talk about money right away, but knowing, in your own mind what's affordable, you want to be able to give some, at least some background to those coaches to let them know that you are not only athletically, the talent that they're looking for, but also the academic you have, the academic you know resume to back it up at some of these schools where they cannot recruit kids, right? You're going to find schools that are 100% need based aid schools and say, let's just use division three schools, right, where they can't recruit kids who can't pay full price, because they don't really do marinade, right? So a coach is limited by what, by what they can who they can recruit based on, you know, certain other factors. So anyway, that's all just to say that being proactive is not just about reaching out to coaches and sharing your video, but it's about sharing who you are and what kind of qualifications you have in more than just athletics to be a good fit at that school.
Speaker 1 21:30
One thing I'm curious about relevance. What you just said is, to what extent can a coach actually make a difference? Like, is this a situation where a coach can be like, you know, I want Katie on my team, and boom, they're in. Or how does that work?
Speaker 2 21:43
So coaches will have a a process that they follow. Usually, the first step in that process, from uh, from an admissions perspective, is called a pre read. And so typically, again, this could happen earlier, but I find that for many of my, more you know, middle ground student athletes, coaches like to do those pre reads at the end of junior year, because then you have a transcript that is essentially what you will be applying to college with. And so they'll ask for that Junior Year Transcript and or that, I mean everything through junior year in terms of a transcript. They'll ask for test scores. They'll ask for senior year classes. And in some cases, I am even had schools ask for a full resume of activities like a normal student resume. And in one case, I had a coach ask for an essay about how you want to contribute to our team, which I thought was very interesting. That's not a normal thing that most coaches will ask for. But coaches will kind of walk again at the Division One schools and division two schools, and really all of them, they will walk that information into their athletics liaison in the admissions department, and they will say, Okay, so these are this, you know, these are the the group of athletes that I am interested in recruiting and admissions will look at that information again. That's usually over the summer, time between junior and senior year, and gives an admissions pre read to say, you know, here's that's either a yes, thumbs up, like this kid is going to pass through the admissions process, no problem. Or sometimes it's a thumb sideways, which is a, well, the student needs to maybe increase their rigor a little bit more in their senior year, or needs to retake the s, a T, or A, C, T, or, you know, whatever that looks like, to improve their grade point average, which is usually the, I mean, from an admission perspective, that's usually the biggest deal. Or a thumbs down, which is like, Nope, I'm pretty sure that's not going to work for us. Tell this student athlete that they probably need to be looking, you know, at other options. So to say that division one schools and division two schools, those coaches have a little more pull, and because they, you know, they have athletic scholarships to offer, and they have a little bit more influence over that admissions process, as long as their admissions department agrees that they are admissible. And there are, there are some admissions departments that are more flexible about academic criteria than others at Division three schools, I think you're going to find that, and this is a very general term, because there are certainly coaches in division three schools that have slots or have, you know, they have the ability to sort of have a little more influence over admissions, but generally speaking, at most division three schools, you're going to find that you have to be a good fit as a student, as a as a student, academically with the school to to get through that admissions process. You kind of to say that you have to get in on your own. Is kind of the way many coaches will put it, and then the coach will say, like, I've got a roster spot for you if you can get it. That's kind of the kind way to put it. So and again, some division three schools have a little more pull than others, but, or coaches in certain sports may have a little more pull than others, but, but, generally speaking, with d3 be prepared that you need to. Be a really solid academic bit to really have that be a strong option for you. Katie, will you
Speaker 1 25:05
take us inside the mind of a coach? In other words, sort of like Coach vision as they're looking at a student athlete. What are they looking for in what are they using to, like, assess a student's athletic ability and to try and figure out if a student might be a good fit for their program?
Speaker 2 25:21
Well, I think that that's a that's probably going to vary a lot at different schools. It depends on if you, you know, if you're a really, really top ranked program, you're probably looking for a little something different than programs that are struggling. You know, programs that are struggling maybe had a, you know, a losing season, and maybe over multiple seasons, have had losing seasons, right there? Would they look at as talent might might be completely different than what a top program would be, but I think that in general, and I ask, I really ask kids to when they have a conversation with a coach, to ask them that question, what is it that you're looking for? What traits, values, you know, skills are you looking for in your top recruits, mostly, so that they can assess for themselves whether they have what the coach is looking for. Coaches are always obviously looking for, you know, especially in stats, heavy sports, they're looking for the stats that match the the caliber of program that they've got, right? So having and again, you know, whether it's baseball or whether it's volleyball or football, whatever those you know, there's so many sports out there that have an a stat that goes with it that's important, or ranking tennis, for example, UTR universal tennis rating is going to be a key factor in whether you fit into a the zone of being a reasonable recruit. But I also think that coaches look especially those that are trying to really build a program and are trying to scoop up some players that aren't don't maybe have the initial stats exactly where they want them, but they see something else, right? They see raw talent. They see coach ability. They see great character. They see they maybe, you know, I've had coaches, high school coaches and club coaches write some amazing letters on behalf of kids who just stood out for so many reasons, and coaches were willing to take a chance on that. I think of my own recruiting process in this question. Because I think that when I look at when I played soccer at Duke University, I was a member of the very first recruiting class that they had the coach. I believe there were like 11 of us that were, you know, freshman recruits, and when I stepped foot out on that field, I was not the best player. I was one of the fastest on the team, which I know the coach definitely saw my speed, because he saw that in video, and he saw it, you know, in many other ways, right? But what I and what he probably saw in my own playing was the possibility to help me with my just my one on one soccer skills. And so, you know, he had, there were some absolute there were some players on our team that had incredible skills. Weren't the fastest, you know, on the field, but their skill set made up for their speed. So again, I think that many coaches, depending on where they are, you know, they fit. They're looking at all those factors. And I also know that character counts. I I had one of my former coaches in college. He I had a conversation with him years ago, and he said, you know, just yesterday, I had to let go one of my best recruits, one of my best players, because she did something really, really stupid on social media. And I just, I had to let her go. I could it was not something I could tolerate on my team. And you know, that's again, how do you know that when you're standing there trying to recruit players, you don't, but you try to, as a coach, I think you try to do your best to decide, you know, make some some smart decisions about kids character as best you can, and assess that, and through things like, obviously, phone conversations and zoom calls, but through those visits, that's where the official visit really makes you start asking your own player. As a coach, you start asking your own players, okay, how did it go? What did you learn about this player? Were the you know, was the kid asking good questions? Did they do or say? Anything that made you concerned? Are there any red flags I should know about? You know, in a way there, you know that everyone's a part of this process is to decide who those final choices might be on a particular team, and that that official visit time period is a really, is a great way to assess that, because it kind of goes beyond really, you get to spend 48 hours with a player and get to know who they are.
Speaker 1 29:34
Yeah, this is it's it can be complicated, I imagine. So one of the things you talked about earlier was about building a college list. And I'd be curious to hear we'll link in the show notes to like our general guide to building a college list, but I'd be curious to hear from you. Katie, how is building a college list different for a student athlete?
Speaker 2 29:53
There are I think that the first thing you have to recognize in a recruiting list is that it's going. To be bigger and broader than a typical college list, where a college counselor who does not do athletics recruiting might suggest that you apply to 1012, schools. And again, I'm just throwing out kind of an average number. I really like to start with a little bit of a broader scope and part of that, and to throw out a number, I mean, that could be sometimes I have if I can really narrow down, and I know usually it's for, like, swimmers or or track or a numbers based sport, or tennis or golf, where there's like, a number that helps, really help me zero in on where a kid might be a good fit. I feel like I sometimes I'll have kids contact 20 schools to start, but overall, they might contact, you know, throughout their recruiting process. If those 20, if none of those coaches really show interest, you're going to contact another 20. So you might end up in the land of, you know, 40 or 50, or you know, even more, before you really zero in on those coaches that are interested in recruiting you. So I think that is one thing is you just have to get comfortable with the fact that you have to kind of draw outside the traditional lines of what college counselors are are, you know, they're used to being able to zero in on that list pretty easily by the time you talk about location and other factors that really help you figure that out. And I think also part of this process is understanding where athletic recruiting fits in the priorities of a student athlete. Again, some kids will tell me, I want to go to the best school I can go to, and being an athlete is sort of a secondary concern if I can't get recruited at a top academic school, then I'm probably going to choose to not be a recruit. I hear that a lot, because kids are are interested. So again, you might find that your list gets building. That list gets a little easier, because you can see, okay, if they don't get recruited at these schools, they're just going to go with their regular, you know, regular academic list of colleges. So first of all, it's just the number of schools on the list. And then I think that the other big thing here, in terms of building that list is most college counselors, of course, don't have to factor in the strength of an athletic program. For me, I like to start my list by taking into account the factors that the student athlete gave me the, you know, the academic kind of profile of what the type of school, the location, the size, area of the country, the weather, y'all that kind of stuff. Like, throw it all in there, potentially a major, if the student athlete has a major that is not that is maybe a little more unique and and only offered at certain types of schools. Again, I really try to advise student athletes like, don't get wrapped unless you are dead set on a particular major. Let's let that be a factor, that there are probably two or three different ways you can get to any, you know, a career path through various different majors. So don't get too locked in, because, and I also know that many of the kids I work with have changed their major when they got to college, so I really like to make that a factor that's not as critical. But then you've got to layer in the strength of their program. So you've got to go out and search the internet for some rating sites that tell you where did that college program rank for that sport in the last full season, and then put those numbers into your list, and sort by that number. And I usually keep my division one school separate from Division Two, separate from division three, and NAIA again, to kind of form a ranked order list, but by the strength of the athletic program and that that helps provide context so that families understand, Oh, I'm getting Yeah, the coaches that are replying back to me are the top end of, you know, athletically, of the division three colleges. And I'm also getting interest from sort of the bottom end of division one. Okay, now I kind of know where I'm going, but a final layer that I like to always put in here, especially when I think that that a student athlete is maybe a good fit at Division three. And that could because the student athlete told me that's what they're looking for. Those that kind of small, private liberal arts college, right? That division three, you know, Quintus, near the schools in that category, or because I kind of feel like that's probably where athletically they're going to fit. Just know that there are two resources that you can use that are really, really great at zeroing in on where to find the merit money in Division three. Okay, the first one is Jeff Levy and Jenny Kent's list, and that's on Big J educational consulting.com I think it's website. I know you'll correct me if I'm wrong, and then it's all good. And then the other one is Jeff So lingo, buyers and sellers list. Both of those lists will give you a feel for which schools are a little more merit aid friendly in that division three group of schools. And again, if you're a full pay family and you don't mind spending $90,000 a year, great look at the schools that. Don't offer any merit aid, because there's really only a, you know, certain kind of kid who can play their sport at those schools. But if you need merit money, zero in on those two lists and kind of use their their system for, especially Jeff's system for sort of being a buyer or a seller or somewhere in between. It makes it easy to see which ones would be a little more, you know, reasonably priced, I guess, to say because, because division three schools do not offer athletic scholarships, so you've got to look for that merit aid if you don't qualify for the need based aid.
Speaker 1 35:27
Yes, and Jeff and Jenny have both been guests on the podcast. Jeff was speaking about which schools are the most generous with financial aid, and then Jenny spoke about the same topic, but for international students, that is to say, students applying from outside the US. And then they were both my guests, talking about, should you apply early decision or regular decision? And I'd be curious to know from you, Katie, how early decision applications impact or not the student athletic recruiting journey. Well,
Speaker 2 35:56
they have, they have a big impact because they are a commitment. So I only I mean, first of all, you have to when you get into this and you start talking to colleges, and you can see that certain colleges are getting serious about you, do your homework to look up to see what kind of admissions policies they have around early action, early decision, regular decision rolling right? Know what you're know what you're getting yourself into. And if you're talking to a school and does have early decision, then when you do that official visit, or an official visit, whatever that is, and you start really understanding what. You know, if the coach is going to make an offer to you, most likely that coach will utilize that program, because not all schools offer ed or Ed two. So coaches that have it as an option at their school typically, not always, but typically will sort of use that to get their athletes to apply Ed, make that commitment and get in, be in that first round of admissions, you know, coming into school because they want to lock in their roster spots, and that's kind of how they they do that. Now, on the flip side, I think the biggest question for families who maybe are unsure about where that leaves them with financial aid. It's one thing that when a coach offers you an athletic scholarship, but for many student athletes, that's not a full ride, right? Or, you know, again, flip any of the sports that are head count sports you've got the full ride, or you're or you're not getting any athletics money. But like I said, most sports in the NCAA are not head count sports or equivalency sports, so the coaches are breaking up those scholarships into smaller pieces, which means that you might not really know where you might end up financially. And so by going Ed, I advise all those families to ask at the time that you have a pre read for academics, ask for a financial pre read. So you know, you really by the time you apply Ed, that you have a better sense for what your family is committing to from a financial perspective. But remember also that Ed blocks you from getting other offers and accepting other offers. You know, once you're admitted to the to the school you're in, you're done, you're withdrawing all of your other application. So it can it can backfire on you as a student athlete, if you are someone who's kind of waiting around to see what other options, options might surface in that November, December, January, February time frame. So you have to think carefully before you before you commit to that. And just know that if a coach offers it, and you know, expects that all of his or her athletes are going to apply ed, and you say you're not willing to do that, some coaches are okay with that, because, you know whatever their situation is, but some of them might say, Okay, if you're not already to do Ed, then we need to move on and recruit someone else, because you essentially just told me you're not that interested. So, so it's tricky. It's a really tricky one, and I and a lot of families feel kind of trapped by that. So I think the best thing to do is educate yourself about what that means and be prepared for the consequences of, you know, all the consequences that come with making that decision right,
Speaker 1 39:03
financially and otherwise. Yeah, for those who are listening and who are thinking, trying to think through this, there's a whole guide that we'll link in the show notes, including the links that Katie just mentioned on Jeff and Jenny's resources, which are just tremendous. So you're a recruited athlete, but you know, things have changed. I'm sure. Are there any more recent changes or things that have shifted that you think would be important to have on folks radar? Absolutely.
Speaker 2 39:28
One of the first ones is really a post COVID change that happened when the NCAA removed the s, a T and a c t requirement from the eligibility center. So, very simply, student athletes no longer need to have sat or a CT scores as part of the eligibility process for NCAA division one or division two schools, that is, I think that's probably a permanent change. I don't see them going back on that. But. Having said that, recognize that again, you you as a student athlete, need to look at the schools that are recruiting you and understand what their requirements are for admissions. There are certainly still a hand more than a handful of schools out there that require test scores. But there's also the Cal State and UC system that don't want to see them at all. So most, most schools are probably still in the land of test optional and so again, you just need to understand you know, what the those admissions requirements look like at those schools, so that you know whether an S, a T or s or a C, T is required. Another change that has happened in the the recent years is that, and this one is fairly recent, there are now no limits on the number of official visits that a division one student athlete can take. That change, there used to be a limit of five, five official visits, and now there's no limit on those visits. So realistically, again, you know certain super hot blue chip athletes, that is a big, huge advantage for them, because now they can do, you know, a lot more visits and really get a sense for more than five schools that are their top choice. You know, that may be in that top group of schools that are recruiting them. For most student athletes, I think five is probably a pretty average number. For many students that I work with, they might only get two or three. So I think it just that that very much depends, but not having a limit on that is certainly going to be helpful for some kids. The another rule that that has changed, that has again, it's going to help those, those blue chip athletes or kids who are really entrepreneurial and want to take full advantage the rules around name, image and likeness have again, been a fairly recent change, and it simply allows student athletes to take advantage of making some money off of their name, image and likeness. And again, I would rather than get too into Weave on that one, I would just encourage you to Google NCAA, name, image and likeness and start reading about, there's lots and lots of articles out there around kids who have successfully, you know, promoted products, promoted their own names, been able to make some money off of summer camps and all sorts of, you know, things to help supplement the money that goes towards paying for college. So yeah,
Speaker 1 42:18
let's, I want to go deeper there, I want to talk about social media and student efforts, or efforts that they can make to get their name out there. What are some tips that you would give for students as it relates to social media? And then I'd love to talk a little bit about recruiting videos after that. So
Speaker 2 42:34
regarding social media, I think it's important that kids and families understand that this is an opportunity, but it is not an absolute mandatory, except, I would say in certain sports like football and basketball, where I feel like you pretty much have to have a social media account, specifically for athletic recruiting. For many kids, this is an opportunity that I tell them they can take advantage of. So a couple things that they want to do. First of all, pick your platform. That could be Twitter, x, that could be Instagram. Those are the two kind of most popular platforms I see sometimes, Tiktok. So, you know, picking that platform don't feel like you have to do all of them, but utilizing, you know, one and being fairly consistent with it. The second thing would be to make sure that your pictures are clear. That could be a headshot. It could be a picture of you playing your sport. Make sure that the name, your username or handle on those whatever that platform is, is clear that it's not something funky. It is your name and possibly your graduation year from high school, to make it easier for coaches to identify you. And then when it comes to the bio, you want to put the critical data points that a coach would be interested in. You know, where do you go to high school, where, what Club program do you play? For any particular stats that you want to cite? You know, height, weight, UTR, I mean, 10 of them, depending on your sport. You're going to have different stats that you might want to cite there having a you could include your NCAA ID number, and certainly having the a link to your wherever your videos are housed, whether that's on YouTube huddle, you know, or any other platform where the video your video content might be, even though you're going to link your videos as individual posts in your social media account, having a link to that overall account is also great for coaches to be able to go back and see previous videos that you may have produced. You want to use social media in a couple key ways. One would be to follow college programs that you're interested in and recognize that coaches can follow you back before they're allowed to talk to you per NCAA rules so they can follow you. They may not be able to write to you, they can't send you a direct message, but they can certainly follow you, and that's kind of one way to kind of see if there's any interest there. That's nice when you go to events, when you visit campuses, when you attend a camp, when you do even out there doing what you do in you. Community, or you know, things you're participating in, using that as an opportunity to share video clips and other information about you know, who you are as a student and as a student athlete. This is, this is your opportunity. Think about this as you know, these are kind of short clip moments up to a couple minutes of video. But obviously, like I said, sometimes a recruiting video could be up to five minutes. So depending on the limits, the limitations of the video, the the length of your video, you're probably also going to want to link to the more complete video. If that's if that's the option that you have, other stats you want to put in that header. I'm not sure I mentioned, you know, GPA test scores. So again, just making sure that your bio is complete and that you are using that video for you know the full extent, or using that platform as a full extent of its capabilities. Make sure your direct messages, your DMS are open so that coaches can contact you. And again, realize that there are multiple ways to be in contact with coaches, through email, through their mobile numbers, and then also through direct message. So sometimes coaches prefer direct message to other platforms. I'm seeing with a lot of the super top ranked football programs, for example, that they are actually removing their emails from their profiles on their school their staff directories, and that they're sort of only listing their Twitter accounts as being a way to communicate with them, which I think is sort of interesting, but I'm not seeing that everywhere. I'm just seeing it in a few key programs. So remember, when you post videos of yourself, don't forget to tag the people that are if you know, if you've got a game situation and you know you've got other kids on your team who are being recruited. Don't be afraid to tag them. I mean, probably want to communicate with them in advance to let them know you want to do that. But this is the power of social media, and that the power of cross referencing your accounts, and, you know, getting even more interest in what you're doing. So I hope that helps. I definitely see that social media has continued to become a great way to show interest in coaches and have them be able to follow you and learn about you as well. Let's
Speaker 1 47:04
talk recruiting videos. I'm sure we could do like, a whole separate podcast on tips for recruiting videos, but give us, like, you know, two or three tips for students to really make the most of their videos. So videos
Speaker 2 47:15
are pretty critical part of the recruiting process, probably the most important. So first of all, recognize, if you play a sport that doesn't need a video, then really, truly, don't worry about it. You don't need to have a video. For those that are that do need video, and they're really those sports are ones where, usually not the time based sports. But again, it's it's not a bad idea, but keeping that video as clear as you can, and what I mean by that, meaning that it's really ideal to have a hopefully elevated perspective. So for example, if you're up in this if whoever's videotaping you, whether that's through a system like vo or trace ID or one of those sort of automatic camera systems, or whether it's a parent sitting up in the stands, getting elevated up, usually provides a little better perspective, and kind of trying to keep you know, again, depending on your sport, if you're playing soccer or lacrosse or something, that's kind of on a big feel right, being able to find about a third of the feel at any one time, to be able to show how a play is developing, and not just having it, you know, zeroed in on you So far that you can't see the play around you. You definitely want to have that right sort of perspective, and enough, you know, not too far zoomed out, so you can't see anything, and not too far, too zoomed in, that you can only see the one player and nothing else that's going around you. So I think that you want to, when it comes to constructing your video, you can clearly video has become so easy for kids to do on their own. If you have an iPhone, you have Ibu me, if you have, you know, access to some basic editing tools. You can put together a recruiting video. It does not require a full blown editing suite. So putting together that video, there's a couple thing key parts to it. You want to have some sort of basic intro screen that like a slide, like a PowerPoint slide, that you know, just as a basic introduction, again, just giving the stats on your name, your club program, your high school, your GPA, your contact information, or any other stats that are relevant, same, basically the same bio information you would put in your social media account. And then you want to start your video, and you want to again, show enough of the video clip that you see a play develop, and then you see what happens afterwards. When you first start that clip, you want to let it play for just a moment, pause it. And then in many sports, and unless it's one where the year the only one on the on the court right that you or the field, you want to pause it so that you can either use like a halo or a highlight or an arrow or something to identify where you are on the court, especially with Team date sports, this is really important, and then let the play continue and then transition to the next one. You generally want to get about five minutes worth of video that makes kind of a good mix. Or a good length for coaches to assess your talent level. You also want to put some of your best plays up front in this video. Because honestly, if coaches are busy people, and if they don't see something interesting in the first minute or two of that video, it's highly likely that they'll just move on to the next one. So really, don't feel like you need to leave your best stuff to the end, put it up front and let coaches see you know something that they're interested in, so that they want, you know, want to take the next step to contact you and let them know that you're interested, you know they're interested in having conversation. Katie,
Speaker 1 50:32
what are some of the misconceptions that you feel students and families have about this process?
Speaker 2 50:37
There are plenty of them. I think one is that somehow grades don't matter, that if they have the talent necessary, they will get recruited by, you know, whatever school you know they want. That is not true. I think that grades very much matter. And so I can't emphasize enough the importance of concentrating in the classroom, being a good student, and obviously being great athlete too, but really making sure that you are making your best effort in the classroom. Really, really important. I think, another area where they there's a lot of misconception, or maybe it's not so much misconception, but it's sort of where the family going back to sort of the beginning, where we started with, how do I know where I'm a good fit? How do I how do I assess my talent level? It's overestimating your own talent level with respect to where you might be a good fit for recruiting. I get a lot of families that will start this conversation with, I want to be a d1 athlete, and they really don't even know what that means, or you know what that looks like. So one of the things I one of the exercises I like to do to sort of bust that myth, is to say, well, let's take a take, you know, give me your Give me your favorite school, right? And inevitably, it's, you know, I end up, you know, one of my favorites is Stanford, right? We're in California. And so I say, Okay, let's, let's take a pause here, and we're going to do a recruit a roster check, right? We're going to do a recruiting roster check. So let's go and look up Stanford's roster, and let's look at the players on their current roster, and we're going to see does that is that who you are as an athlete, and for many kids, where I'm kind of trying to make the point like, Okay, let's get a little more realistic about this. They realize, oh, okay, now I get it. So, you know, those are two of the big ones that I see where I feel like it's important for I do a lot of resetting of expectations early on in the conversation so that we are all on the same page with regards to how we move forward through the rest of the process. What
Speaker 1 52:46
advice would you give to families who are considering looking to hire somebody to help them with this process? How do you know, for example, what are some questions that families can ask to see if folks really know their stuff?
Speaker 2 52:58
I think that families who are trying to consider their various options with with athletics recruiting, first of all, read what those people say on their websites. Now, not everybody has a website, but certainly go, go look at their background. You can always ask, well, you know, once you've had an initial conversation with a someone who works in athletics, recruiting, asked for references. Say, you know, can you give me one or two people that you know, recent families that you've worked with that I could contact so that I can get a sense for how you know, how you work with them, and what they really thought of your services. I think those are, you know, two really great things you can do, I will say that my one of my biases, is that I'm also a college counselor. And while it is certainly possible to separate athletics, recruiting and college counseling, I think that it's really, really important that whoever you work with that the the on the athletic side, whether that person is a college counselor or maybe they just do athletics recruiting, but that that person has a respect and a knowledge and a really great understanding of the whole this whole experience of who you it's not just about who you are as an athlete. It's who it's you know, it's the financial side, it's the academic side. And again, if that, if that person that you're looking to you know to hire is not doesn't do college counseling, that they that they really do have enough of a background in it so that you're all speaking the same language, and that everybody is kind of working in the same direction and working on the same page, because when there's a disconnect there, it can be really confusing for families. So I feel like that's, that's really, you know, an important factor.
Speaker 1 54:45
Yeah, thanks for that. I'm really grateful for this. So I'm curious, as we wrap here, are there, what resources would you recommend for folks? Katie,
Speaker 2 54:54
well, there's one that is a really obvious one that I would highly encourage every family to go download. And that is the NCAA guide for the college bound student athlete. And you can find that as a downloadable PDF file on the website, NCAA publications.com and then another one is going to be the blog post that goes along with this podcast, which is, you know, a crash course in college athletic recruiting. You know, we've got lots of of resources that are going to be posted there that people can find, and we'll hopefully give you a great, you know, overview of this, of this process, and give you some resources to further investigate, either within your sport or, you know, the types of schools you might be interested in, and give you a good, solid place to start.
Speaker 1 55:41
Awesome. Thanks for that, and I really appreciate all of that you've shared so far. I'm curious if there's one last thing you'd like for families to keep in mind as they go through this process. What would that be? I
Speaker 2 55:53
think probably one of the most important things is just to understand that this can be a long process and a long road, and to not give up. I get a lot of families that start down this road in that second semester of sophomore year, and sort of by through the end of junior year, they start to get frustrated because maybe they haven't heard from the coaches that they were hoping to hear from, or they had the recruiting isn't progressing as fast as they would like, and they feel like giving up. And I, I think that if you're if a student athletes priority is to try to play college athletics, then don't give up on the process, because a lot can shift, and a lot can happen during a student athlete senior year. You know, as as student athletes, other recruits start to make decisions. Coaches are found with all the kids they thought they were recruiting are now committed somewhere else, and they still need to find new student athletes. When December hits and early decision, early action, answers come back, and all of a sudden, coaches realize that the kids they thought were getting in their school that they had, you know, kind of done pre reads on for some reason, you know, somebody didn't get in. So now they bought a roster spot, and I've had this happen to my kids, or there's an injury that happens, and, you know, all of a sudden a coach might be looking for another player. So just don't give up on this process. That is really, really important. And I think the other thing that really to keep in mind is to make sure that at the end of the day, you make decisions that are going to make you a happy student on whatever campus you end up on, a lot can happen. Like I said, injuries, right? You get there, you get injured. Or even my own story where, you know, I got there, and it kind of didn't, you know, work out the way I wanted midway through. And so I thankfully was in a position to be able to make the choice to stop playing. And I was still, I stayed. I was a happy student. I finished. Everything was good, right? So making making smart decisions that are financially sound for you and are the right social and academic fit, in addition to athletic fit, will hopefully ensure that you have a great four year experience on a on a college campus no matter what. Katie, thanks so much for your time. Thank you so much. It's been a great call. Thanks.
Speaker 1 58:08
Thanks friends for listening. As ever, you'll find the resources we discussed in the show notes, including a link to Katie's blog, the NCAA guide for the college bound student athlete and more awesome free resources. Thanks much, y'all and stay curious. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Show transcript
Ethan Sawyer 0:08 Hey friends, what's up? Ethan Sawyer, the College Essay Guy here, and welcome to the podcast, where it's my goal to bring more ease, joy and purpose to your life through the college admissions process. On this here podcast, my guest is Katie Anderson, who's a former NCAA division one women's soccer player at Duke. She now advises student athletes through her organization, college fit OC, and she's the co founder of the student athlete advisors, which focuses on educating and mentoring educational consultants who advise college bound student athletes. So what kind of started is me asking Katie some questions about common questions that student athletes and their families have during the process turned into basically a crash course in college athletic recruiting. So that's what we're calling this episode. We get into, among other things, how a student can know if they can realistically play their sport at the college level, we talk about when students should start their athletic recruiting process. Katie gives us a kind of timeline. There can a college coach actually help a student get accepted to a university? Katie gives us the answer. We talk about how college list building is different for student athletes, some recent rule changes that families should be aware of. She gives tips for social media and recruiting videos and a whole bunch more. Without further ado, let's get into it. Hi Katie, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. So I'd love to just jump right in. I'd love to hear a little bit about your own journey as a student athlete, Katie Andersen 1:42 absolutely. So I was a three sport athlete in high school. I played volleyball, soccer and I ran track. I decided at the end of my junior year I wanted to try to play either volleyball or soccer in college, so I reached out to college coaches, and it turns out, I got recruited by Duke University for soccer, and they were starting a brand new women's soccer team. So thank you. Title Nine. I got to go to Duke primarily because of their basketball team, but that all worked out really well. I started my freshman year. I played every minute of every game my freshman year, it was incredible experience. Since we were a first year team, there were pretty much 11 freshmen starting and amazing freshman year my sophomore year roll around, and the coach recruited another full team of players, and so now we had about 22 of us, and I found my playing time getting cut in half that I was it just kind of for me that that wasn't even part of my plan. So I had to sort of reevaluate what I wanted from the program, and realized that I wanted a lot more out of college as an experience. So I made the decision at the end of my sophomore year to leave the program. In that moment, I when I left my coach's office, I to tell him I was leaving. I went straight to the study abroad office and signed up to go to Australia and not, you know, more than a few months later, I was living in Sydney, going to the University of New South Wales and traveling all over Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, and which I mean, I guess for me worldwide, travel became my new door that opened in my life. Because, you know, later down the line, I married a Norwegian and moved to Oslo and lived, all, you know, in Amsterdam and all sorts of things. So that was kind of the beginning of that experience. But I also did other things on the college campus. When I returned, I was an RA on a freshman hall for a whole year, and I specifically requested to live with athletes. I worked for my school newspaper, The Chronicle, and for about a year and a half, worked for them, and got lots of great job experience. So that when I went out and applied for jobs, which is what we all do pretty much after college, for those of us who don't go on to play pro, I had a really great resume. And so I just think I've lived both sides of this athletic experience, and I've had to deal with what happens when you are the crash that comes down when you realize you're no longer a competitive athlete, and what do you do with yourself? And that that, for some kids, is just this big time reality check on on their lives. So I think I all of that experience helps me guide families through this process, because I can speak to pretty much all of it. Yeah, Speaker 1 4:19 I really appreciate hearing that context. It's it sort of reminds me that you never quite know how your life is going to go. And yeah, I appreciate hearing how you made the best of it. Let's jump right in. So how can a student know if they can realistically play their sport at a college level, right? Speaker 2 4:35 And that is, that is a question I get all the time. So it's a good one. It's a good place to start. Well, I think that you kind of have to start with two pretty important aspects here. And one is that at the college level really encompasses a very wide range of competition. Right? We think about college as being this next level up, but truly between the NCAA division one, Division two. Division Three, Naia, and then you've got Community College and junior college all as opportunities to be able to play in college. There, within each of these governing bodies, you have teams at the top, teams in the middle, and teams at the bottom. So So truly there, there is a very wide range of opportunity. And so given that, then I think that it's really important for student athletes to kind of take an assessment of their own talent level. And I know this can be really tough, because sometimes it's hard to see beyond the world you live in, but there are a lot of resources you can use to get some feedback about what is your talent level of where might you be a good fit within that collegiate framework, and so, you know, talk to club coaches. Talk to your high school coaches, if you have a personal trainer, if you've been to camps and had evaluations or feedbacks from college coaches. That is all great information, being proactive and asking the question, coach, where do you think I would be a good fit? Right? Sometimes coaches are great at giving that feedback, and other times not so so much so again, just being inquisitive about that, it's, I think, is a great start. And then also looking at where older players from your club program, for example, have gone off to play in college, or maybe even your high school program, again, just because they did, it doesn't mean you can do it, but it certainly is a an indication of, you know, that kind of talent level. And then, where does your you know? Where are you located? Where is your team located within the league, and the kind of the conference that you play in, for example, knowing that you know, do you just play locally? Do you play more regionally? Is your team competing nationally or even internationally, right? Those are all sort of factors to look at. You can also look at some data points. Think, for example, you know, if you are a volleyball player, right, height means a lot in volleyball. So take a look at some of the statistics. Compare yourself. Now, if you're looking at, you know, the various things that a volleyball player, or really any sport, right? Look at height and weight. Look at, you know, your your wingspan. Look at, you know, I don't want to get into the weeds here, but like, if you do a little roster check and look up some college rosters, you're going to find that you can kind of compare yourself sports like cross country and track or swimming make it really easy to sort of assess, okay, here's where I am today. Here's where I could be in a year or two from now. And here's exactly the times these college, you know, athletes are swimming or running in college. So how do I fit with that? Can I get there by the time I you know, I would be in college. And I think all of those things are that starting point for assessing where could I possibly play in college. And then I think there are even more complicating factors, and this is where I feel like families get tripped up a bit is, you know, you first talk about your athletic talent level, but then you kind of have to layer in all these other things about college, like, who are you as a student? What kind of you know, Grade, Grade Point Average Do you have? Do you have test scores? Do you want to go to a big school, a small school, a medium sized School, where, where in the country? What is your family? What can your family afford? What kind of social environment you want to be in? Like, all the normal college counseling questions start to layer into this. And so I think really the biggest question, and again, like I said, is a little more complicated, but you have to ask yourself, can I realistically play my sport at a college where I will be a happy student and where my you know that my family can afford? So I don't know that I answered. I don't know that I made this any easier for you. Families need to understand that it's not just about the talent level, right? They're getting a good fit or realizing there's a misalignment. Are just an important part of this, you know, kind of understanding of the big, grander scheme of things. Speaker 1 8:58 So when should students start their athletic recruiting process. Give us a timeline here. Speaker 2 9:02 I'm very glad you asked that question, too, because this one is one that I have families that will come to me early, early, early, like eighth grade or freshman year. I really prefer unless that and that's that student athlete is truly outstanding as as an athlete, and I can see that the talent is there where that that student athlete might get really, really early recruiting opportunities. For the most part, I really like to start with kids in the second semester of their sophomore year. That's just a preference of mine. But I'm sure you could find other athletics counselors who would say, you know, that they like working earlier. And partly that's because I think that kids need a chance to see who they are as the student and see who they are as an athlete, and sometimes you just need a little bit of a start in high school before that really starts to surface and understand where you are by doing it, then by getting this process really started, then you also, do, you know, take advantage of some other things, which is the time. Being per the NCAA rules regarding, you know, contact, in terms of when coaches can actually talk back to you. So if you do start that conversation, you're going to be doing a couple things in that second semester of sophomore year, which is starting a conversation around discussing your own family's priorities, all the things I just mentioned before, you know, athletic, academic, financial, social, you have time to start pulling together a recruiting video. Now, not all sports need a recruiting video, but many do so starting to kind of recognize, okay, do I have access to the kind of video that I'm going to need to be able to start sending my sending my video out to coaches. You know, time based sports typically don't necessarily need a video. But for example, I'm work with track athletes who are throwers or jumpers, and you know, if you're a pole vaulter, you probably want to send video, because coaches, you know, can they, they'd love to be able to see your technique so and then other things you want to be doing in that second semester of sophomore year is preparing an introduction email that you're going to send out to coaches. You may also want to put together a social media profile that is dedicated to athletics. And just remember that in this whole process, you are going to have to be proactive. You've got to start putting together a list of coaches and colleges and coaches where you're going to start reaching out so and then once you have done all of that, then you're going to, you know, as you go into your junior year and you go into your senior year, those are the that's the toolkit, that's the toolbox you're going to use to be able to communicate with those coaches. So really starting to send out those messages just before summertime of your junior year, and then throughout the summer between sophomore and junior year, attend camps, start to get familiar with what those programs look like. You're probably, you know, if you're playing a sport that does showcase tournaments, right, you're going to start to kind of see a little bit of that interest. Because that's really that timing of between sophomore and junior year is when, for many sports, college coaches can start talking with you, and then you're just going to continue to reach out to coaches and be seen as much as you can during your junior year. And then hopefully, end of junior year, you're starting to kind of sense who's showing interest and moving through the rest of the process. But for kids who come into this process late, meaning they just get started at the end of junior year, or even, like some athletes, where it's the beginning of their senior year, you know, it kind of depends on the sport, but it's not not all is lost. It's not impossible, but certainly, if you come to this process late, doors have already closed, so you're kind of left with whatever's left as being the opportunity. Speaker 1 12:45 I'm curious. I'd love to double click on the notion of visiting a campus. Does for a student who's interested in playing sports in college, does that visit to the campus actually help? Or, maybe more specifically, what specific things can students do that can potentially make a difference in their recruiting process, Speaker 2 13:05 right? So visiting campuses is certainly something that can be very helpful. Now, the number one rule when it comes to stepping on a college campus is, especially if you hope or expect to be able to talk to a college coach during that time, is to know your recruiting calendar. And I know that might seem like a really weird comment to make on a campus visit, but recruiting calendars are important, and that is so the simple thing for you to do, for student athletes to do, is to Google NCAA recruiting calendar for your sport, and you will start to see what the rules are regarding when coaches are allowed to speak with you, and where they're allowed to speak with you so and really the key period to not expect to be able to step on a college campus, it's during a den period. But again, that will vary by sport, so that's why I'm saying first look at that. Now, visiting campuses can come in a couple different forms. Attending a camp on a college campus is one way to start to see that process, and you get exposure to what is the, you know, if it's a sleepover event, you might, you know, be able to get a real better sense of what the school's kind of like. If you are just attending for a visit, for the day with your family on an that would be, you know, where your family is paying for it, right? That would be one where you're you're going, and you're maybe attending a campus tour and walking around, and maybe you stop in and visit the coach and his or her office for for a bit and get an introduction, right? That's an unofficial visit. And then an official visit is one in which the coach has already established. You have had a running relationship with this coach now for a while, and the coach then invites you, on the on the school's dime, to visit the program. And that's an invite only sort of scenario that is called an official visit. So there are lots of ways to visit the colleges and get a sense for what you want. And. I really feel very strongly that kids should take advantage of those opportunities, because it's very easy to look at the web, you know, look at websites, and look at the pretty pictures and think, oh, this place is just amazing. I can't wait to go there. But I've had kids go on visits and they looked at, you know, they looked at it one way, and then realized when they got there that this was not at all what they thought it was. You know, the pictures didn't do, didn't tell the whole story, right, especially regarding their sport. And so those campus visits really are a critical opportunity for to get a realistic view of what's you know, what's going on, interesting. Speaker 1 15:36 So in terms of that realistic view, I'm curious, is there? How do students know if, let's say, a coach says to them, we're interested in you, how do they know if this is real, if they're really interested or not, right? Speaker 2 15:49 This is always a hard one for families to distinguish that real interest from sort of the mild interest, right? And so there are a couple things, when you first start reaching out to coaches through email or through social media when you first start that process, when a coach writes back to you and says, Thank you so much for your email and again, part of this depends on the timing of what coaches are allowed to say to you when. But say that, say that you're in a time frame when coaches are allowed to speak with you about recruiting in your junior year or your senior year. If what you hear back is, thanks so much for your email. Fill out our recruiting questionnaire, and here's a list of our camps. That is a bit of a you know, it could be an interesting response, but it's, it's generally more on the mild side. Let's say that the Yeah, Speaker 1 16:38 it sounds like a polite No, it's a polite note. Yeah, right, thanks. But no thanks, yeah. Speaker 2 16:43 The the more interesting response from a coach is, I think you look like a really interesting prospect. I'm gonna, I'd like to set up a phone call with you, or a zoom call with you, so that we can, yeah, get to know each other better, and you can learn about our program, and we can get to know you. That is what you're looking for. And when that happens, oftentimes coaches will provide their mobile numbers as part of, you know, part of that process, and that truly is a step in the way. It's certainly not the end all, be all, but it's kind of golden moment, right, when a coach reveals their mobile number, because that allows you to have a lot more direct communication with a coach. I find that lots of kids, once they get to that phase, then the texting is just a quicker, easier, faster way to get responses back from a coach, and to kind of stay in touch, you don't have to write the formal email so much, and you can get to that texting place. And that's, again, it's a really great step in the right direction for recruiting, but also recognize that there will be phases of that relationship. You start by maybe speaking with an assistant coach, and then maybe there's, you know, another assistant there could be it start. It could start with a recruiting coordinator and then an assistant coach, and then move up to the head coach in terms of conversations before they ever get to the point where they say we'd like for you to come on an official visit. Usually, there's also a pre read involved. But, you know, we can, we can get into that later. But there's definitely, you know, phases of that relationship that move along the way. Speaker 1 18:10 Yeah, gotta get them digits, all right. So I'm curious, to what extent do students need to be proactive in their search? Are they just going to get recruited if they're just, like, incredible athletes, or, you know, and not just like to what extent, but how can they be proactive, Speaker 2 18:26 right? So, first of all, I'll start with the concept of the blue chip athlete, right? There are going to be student athletes out there who are just that super hot player, right? They're playing for junior national teams. They're getting recognized as one of the hottest players in the country, those kids. I mean, I have had students in the past who have received 40 phone calls on day one that coaches can contact you, right? So those kids are don't really have to work that hard to get recruited. They don't have to be that proactive, because everyone's running after them and and I promise you, if you're in that boat, you know who you are. The most of the kids that I work with are not that student athlete. Most of them are in a situation where they're playing for a pretty good team, and they need to establish what their own priorities are, and start being actively contacting coaches to let them know you know that they're interested in their school. Imagine if you flip this around and you're in the coach's situation, right? A coach comes to a, let's just say, soccer, right? The coach is standing on the sideline at a a showcase tournament, right? And these, some of these tournaments are, you know, volleyball, soccer, they're just massive. You've got court after court after court of players, and you're sitting there, and maybe you know something about those student athlete you're watching, or the team that you're watching, and maybe you don't, but you're standing there assessing, you know athletic talent, right? But you don't know anything about that students grades. You don't know anything about that student's ability to pay for college. And those are two pre. Important, or there are other, you know, other things that we've talked about, right? So, so that's where the student athlete, proactively reaching out, introducing themselves, letting them know, Hey, Coach, I have, you know, especially at those high academic schools, I have a 4.3 GPA, and I have, you know, I took the s, a T, and I got an x, right? Or I took the ECT, I got a 31 If a family is looking for money. Personally, I would, I mean, you just have to decide how much you know what, when does that net price you're willing to pay. But you don't necessarily want to talk about money right away, but knowing, in your own mind what's affordable, you want to be able to give some, at least some background to those coaches to let them know that you are not only athletically, the talent that they're looking for, but also the academic you have, the academic you know resume to back it up at some of these schools where they cannot recruit kids, right? You're going to find schools that are 100% need based aid schools and say, let's just use division three schools, right, where they can't recruit kids who can't pay full price, because they don't really do marinade, right? So a coach is limited by what, by what they can who they can recruit based on, you know, certain other factors. So anyway, that's all just to say that being proactive is not just about reaching out to coaches and sharing your video, but it's about sharing who you are and what kind of qualifications you have in more than just athletics to be a good fit at that school. Speaker 1 21:30 One thing I'm curious about relevance. What you just said is, to what extent can a coach actually make a difference? Like, is this a situation where a coach can be like, you know, I want Katie on my team, and boom, they're in. Or how does that work? Speaker 2 21:43 So coaches will have a a process that they follow. Usually, the first step in that process, from uh, from an admissions perspective, is called a pre read. And so typically, again, this could happen earlier, but I find that for many of my, more you know, middle ground student athletes, coaches like to do those pre reads at the end of junior year, because then you have a transcript that is essentially what you will be applying to college with. And so they'll ask for that Junior Year Transcript and or that, I mean everything through junior year in terms of a transcript. They'll ask for test scores. They'll ask for senior year classes. And in some cases, I am even had schools ask for a full resume of activities like a normal student resume. And in one case, I had a coach ask for an essay about how you want to contribute to our team, which I thought was very interesting. That's not a normal thing that most coaches will ask for. But coaches will kind of walk again at the Division One schools and division two schools, and really all of them, they will walk that information into their athletics liaison in the admissions department, and they will say, Okay, so these are this, you know, these are the the group of athletes that I am interested in recruiting and admissions will look at that information again. That's usually over the summer, time between junior and senior year, and gives an admissions pre read to say, you know, here's that's either a yes, thumbs up, like this kid is going to pass through the admissions process, no problem. Or sometimes it's a thumb sideways, which is a, well, the student needs to maybe increase their rigor a little bit more in their senior year, or needs to retake the s, a T, or A, C, T, or, you know, whatever that looks like, to improve their grade point average, which is usually the, I mean, from an admission perspective, that's usually the biggest deal. Or a thumbs down, which is like, Nope, I'm pretty sure that's not going to work for us. Tell this student athlete that they probably need to be looking, you know, at other options. So to say that division one schools and division two schools, those coaches have a little more pull, and because they, you know, they have athletic scholarships to offer, and they have a little bit more influence over that admissions process, as long as their admissions department agrees that they are admissible. And there are, there are some admissions departments that are more flexible about academic criteria than others at Division three schools, I think you're going to find that, and this is a very general term, because there are certainly coaches in division three schools that have slots or have, you know, they have the ability to sort of have a little more influence over admissions, but generally speaking, at most division three schools, you're going to find that you have to be a good fit as a student, as a as a student, academically with the school to to get through that admissions process. You kind of to say that you have to get in on your own. Is kind of the way many coaches will put it, and then the coach will say, like, I've got a roster spot for you if you can get it. That's kind of the kind way to put it. So and again, some division three schools have a little more pull than others, but, or coaches in certain sports may have a little more pull than others, but, but, generally speaking, with d3 be prepared that you need to. Be a really solid academic bit to really have that be a strong option for you. Katie, will you Speaker 1 25:05 take us inside the mind of a coach? In other words, sort of like Coach vision as they're looking at a student athlete. What are they looking for in what are they using to, like, assess a student's athletic ability and to try and figure out if a student might be a good fit for their program? Speaker 2 25:21 Well, I think that that's a that's probably going to vary a lot at different schools. It depends on if you, you know, if you're a really, really top ranked program, you're probably looking for a little something different than programs that are struggling. You know, programs that are struggling maybe had a, you know, a losing season, and maybe over multiple seasons, have had losing seasons, right there? Would they look at as talent might might be completely different than what a top program would be, but I think that in general, and I ask, I really ask kids to when they have a conversation with a coach, to ask them that question, what is it that you're looking for? What traits, values, you know, skills are you looking for in your top recruits, mostly, so that they can assess for themselves whether they have what the coach is looking for. Coaches are always obviously looking for, you know, especially in stats, heavy sports, they're looking for the stats that match the the caliber of program that they've got, right? So having and again, you know, whether it's baseball or whether it's volleyball or football, whatever those you know, there's so many sports out there that have an a stat that goes with it that's important, or ranking tennis, for example, UTR universal tennis rating is going to be a key factor in whether you fit into a the zone of being a reasonable recruit. But I also think that coaches look especially those that are trying to really build a program and are trying to scoop up some players that aren't don't maybe have the initial stats exactly where they want them, but they see something else, right? They see raw talent. They see coach ability. They see great character. They see they maybe, you know, I've had coaches, high school coaches and club coaches write some amazing letters on behalf of kids who just stood out for so many reasons, and coaches were willing to take a chance on that. I think of my own recruiting process in this question. Because I think that when I look at when I played soccer at Duke University, I was a member of the very first recruiting class that they had the coach. I believe there were like 11 of us that were, you know, freshman recruits, and when I stepped foot out on that field, I was not the best player. I was one of the fastest on the team, which I know the coach definitely saw my speed, because he saw that in video, and he saw it, you know, in many other ways, right? But what I and what he probably saw in my own playing was the possibility to help me with my just my one on one soccer skills. And so, you know, he had, there were some absolute there were some players on our team that had incredible skills. Weren't the fastest, you know, on the field, but their skill set made up for their speed. So again, I think that many coaches, depending on where they are, you know, they fit. They're looking at all those factors. And I also know that character counts. I I had one of my former coaches in college. He I had a conversation with him years ago, and he said, you know, just yesterday, I had to let go one of my best recruits, one of my best players, because she did something really, really stupid on social media. And I just, I had to let her go. I could it was not something I could tolerate on my team. And you know, that's again, how do you know that when you're standing there trying to recruit players, you don't, but you try to, as a coach, I think you try to do your best to decide, you know, make some some smart decisions about kids character as best you can, and assess that, and through things like, obviously, phone conversations and zoom calls, but through those visits, that's where the official visit really makes you start asking your own player. As a coach, you start asking your own players, okay, how did it go? What did you learn about this player? Were the you know, was the kid asking good questions? Did they do or say? Anything that made you concerned? Are there any red flags I should know about? You know, in a way there, you know that everyone's a part of this process is to decide who those final choices might be on a particular team, and that that official visit time period is a really, is a great way to assess that, because it kind of goes beyond really, you get to spend 48 hours with a player and get to know who they are. Speaker 1 29:34 Yeah, this is it's it can be complicated, I imagine. So one of the things you talked about earlier was about building a college list. And I'd be curious to hear we'll link in the show notes to like our general guide to building a college list, but I'd be curious to hear from you. Katie, how is building a college list different for a student athlete? Speaker 2 29:53 There are I think that the first thing you have to recognize in a recruiting list is that it's going. To be bigger and broader than a typical college list, where a college counselor who does not do athletics recruiting might suggest that you apply to 1012, schools. And again, I'm just throwing out kind of an average number. I really like to start with a little bit of a broader scope and part of that, and to throw out a number, I mean, that could be sometimes I have if I can really narrow down, and I know usually it's for, like, swimmers or or track or a numbers based sport, or tennis or golf, where there's like, a number that helps, really help me zero in on where a kid might be a good fit. I feel like I sometimes I'll have kids contact 20 schools to start, but overall, they might contact, you know, throughout their recruiting process. If those 20, if none of those coaches really show interest, you're going to contact another 20. So you might end up in the land of, you know, 40 or 50, or you know, even more, before you really zero in on those coaches that are interested in recruiting you. So I think that is one thing is you just have to get comfortable with the fact that you have to kind of draw outside the traditional lines of what college counselors are are, you know, they're used to being able to zero in on that list pretty easily by the time you talk about location and other factors that really help you figure that out. And I think also part of this process is understanding where athletic recruiting fits in the priorities of a student athlete. Again, some kids will tell me, I want to go to the best school I can go to, and being an athlete is sort of a secondary concern if I can't get recruited at a top academic school, then I'm probably going to choose to not be a recruit. I hear that a lot, because kids are are interested. So again, you might find that your list gets building. That list gets a little easier, because you can see, okay, if they don't get recruited at these schools, they're just going to go with their regular, you know, regular academic list of colleges. So first of all, it's just the number of schools on the list. And then I think that the other big thing here, in terms of building that list is most college counselors, of course, don't have to factor in the strength of an athletic program. For me, I like to start my list by taking into account the factors that the student athlete gave me the, you know, the academic kind of profile of what the type of school, the location, the size, area of the country, the weather, y'all that kind of stuff. Like, throw it all in there, potentially a major, if the student athlete has a major that is not that is maybe a little more unique and and only offered at certain types of schools. Again, I really try to advise student athletes like, don't get wrapped unless you are dead set on a particular major. Let's let that be a factor, that there are probably two or three different ways you can get to any, you know, a career path through various different majors. So don't get too locked in, because, and I also know that many of the kids I work with have changed their major when they got to college, so I really like to make that a factor that's not as critical. But then you've got to layer in the strength of their program. So you've got to go out and search the internet for some rating sites that tell you where did that college program rank for that sport in the last full season, and then put those numbers into your list, and sort by that number. And I usually keep my division one school separate from Division Two, separate from division three, and NAIA again, to kind of form a ranked order list, but by the strength of the athletic program and that that helps provide context so that families understand, Oh, I'm getting Yeah, the coaches that are replying back to me are the top end of, you know, athletically, of the division three colleges. And I'm also getting interest from sort of the bottom end of division one. Okay, now I kind of know where I'm going, but a final layer that I like to always put in here, especially when I think that that a student athlete is maybe a good fit at Division three. And that could because the student athlete told me that's what they're looking for. Those that kind of small, private liberal arts college, right? That division three, you know, Quintus, near the schools in that category, or because I kind of feel like that's probably where athletically they're going to fit. Just know that there are two resources that you can use that are really, really great at zeroing in on where to find the merit money in Division three. Okay, the first one is Jeff Levy and Jenny Kent's list, and that's on Big J educational consulting.com I think it's website. I know you'll correct me if I'm wrong, and then it's all good. And then the other one is Jeff So lingo, buyers and sellers list. Both of those lists will give you a feel for which schools are a little more merit aid friendly in that division three group of schools. And again, if you're a full pay family and you don't mind spending $90,000 a year, great look at the schools that. Don't offer any merit aid, because there's really only a, you know, certain kind of kid who can play their sport at those schools. But if you need merit money, zero in on those two lists and kind of use their their system for, especially Jeff's system for sort of being a buyer or a seller or somewhere in between. It makes it easy to see which ones would be a little more, you know, reasonably priced, I guess, to say because, because division three schools do not offer athletic scholarships, so you've got to look for that merit aid if you don't qualify for the need based aid. Speaker 1 35:27 Yes, and Jeff and Jenny have both been guests on the podcast. Jeff was speaking about which schools are the most generous with financial aid, and then Jenny spoke about the same topic, but for international students, that is to say, students applying from outside the US. And then they were both my guests, talking about, should you apply early decision or regular decision? And I'd be curious to know from you, Katie, how early decision applications impact or not the student athletic recruiting journey. Well, Speaker 2 35:56 they have, they have a big impact because they are a commitment. So I only I mean, first of all, you have to when you get into this and you start talking to colleges, and you can see that certain colleges are getting serious about you, do your homework to look up to see what kind of admissions policies they have around early action, early decision, regular decision rolling right? Know what you're know what you're getting yourself into. And if you're talking to a school and does have early decision, then when you do that official visit, or an official visit, whatever that is, and you start really understanding what. You know, if the coach is going to make an offer to you, most likely that coach will utilize that program, because not all schools offer ed or Ed two. So coaches that have it as an option at their school typically, not always, but typically will sort of use that to get their athletes to apply Ed, make that commitment and get in, be in that first round of admissions, you know, coming into school because they want to lock in their roster spots, and that's kind of how they they do that. Now, on the flip side, I think the biggest question for families who maybe are unsure about where that leaves them with financial aid. It's one thing that when a coach offers you an athletic scholarship, but for many student athletes, that's not a full ride, right? Or, you know, again, flip any of the sports that are head count sports you've got the full ride, or you're or you're not getting any athletics money. But like I said, most sports in the NCAA are not head count sports or equivalency sports, so the coaches are breaking up those scholarships into smaller pieces, which means that you might not really know where you might end up financially. And so by going Ed, I advise all those families to ask at the time that you have a pre read for academics, ask for a financial pre read. So you know, you really by the time you apply Ed, that you have a better sense for what your family is committing to from a financial perspective. But remember also that Ed blocks you from getting other offers and accepting other offers. You know, once you're admitted to the to the school you're in, you're done, you're withdrawing all of your other application. So it can it can backfire on you as a student athlete, if you are someone who's kind of waiting around to see what other options, options might surface in that November, December, January, February time frame. So you have to think carefully before you before you commit to that. And just know that if a coach offers it, and you know, expects that all of his or her athletes are going to apply ed, and you say you're not willing to do that, some coaches are okay with that, because, you know whatever their situation is, but some of them might say, Okay, if you're not already to do Ed, then we need to move on and recruit someone else, because you essentially just told me you're not that interested. So, so it's tricky. It's a really tricky one, and I and a lot of families feel kind of trapped by that. So I think the best thing to do is educate yourself about what that means and be prepared for the consequences of, you know, all the consequences that come with making that decision right, Speaker 1 39:03 financially and otherwise. Yeah, for those who are listening and who are thinking, trying to think through this, there's a whole guide that we'll link in the show notes, including the links that Katie just mentioned on Jeff and Jenny's resources, which are just tremendous. So you're a recruited athlete, but you know, things have changed. I'm sure. Are there any more recent changes or things that have shifted that you think would be important to have on folks radar? Absolutely. Speaker 2 39:28 One of the first ones is really a post COVID change that happened when the NCAA removed the s, a T and a c t requirement from the eligibility center. So, very simply, student athletes no longer need to have sat or a CT scores as part of the eligibility process for NCAA division one or division two schools, that is, I think that's probably a permanent change. I don't see them going back on that. But. Having said that, recognize that again, you you as a student athlete, need to look at the schools that are recruiting you and understand what their requirements are for admissions. There are certainly still a hand more than a handful of schools out there that require test scores. But there's also the Cal State and UC system that don't want to see them at all. So most, most schools are probably still in the land of test optional and so again, you just need to understand you know, what the those admissions requirements look like at those schools, so that you know whether an S, a T or s or a C, T is required. Another change that has happened in the the recent years is that, and this one is fairly recent, there are now no limits on the number of official visits that a division one student athlete can take. That change, there used to be a limit of five, five official visits, and now there's no limit on those visits. So realistically, again, you know certain super hot blue chip athletes, that is a big, huge advantage for them, because now they can do, you know, a lot more visits and really get a sense for more than five schools that are their top choice. You know, that may be in that top group of schools that are recruiting them. For most student athletes, I think five is probably a pretty average number. For many students that I work with, they might only get two or three. So I think it just that that very much depends, but not having a limit on that is certainly going to be helpful for some kids. The another rule that that has changed, that has again, it's going to help those, those blue chip athletes or kids who are really entrepreneurial and want to take full advantage the rules around name, image and likeness have again, been a fairly recent change, and it simply allows student athletes to take advantage of making some money off of their name, image and likeness. And again, I would rather than get too into Weave on that one, I would just encourage you to Google NCAA, name, image and likeness and start reading about, there's lots and lots of articles out there around kids who have successfully, you know, promoted products, promoted their own names, been able to make some money off of summer camps and all sorts of, you know, things to help supplement the money that goes towards paying for college. So yeah, Speaker 1 42:18 let's, I want to go deeper there, I want to talk about social media and student efforts, or efforts that they can make to get their name out there. What are some tips that you would give for students as it relates to social media? And then I'd love to talk a little bit about recruiting videos after that. So Speaker 2 42:34 regarding social media, I think it's important that kids and families understand that this is an opportunity, but it is not an absolute mandatory, except, I would say in certain sports like football and basketball, where I feel like you pretty much have to have a social media account, specifically for athletic recruiting. For many kids, this is an opportunity that I tell them they can take advantage of. So a couple things that they want to do. First of all, pick your platform. That could be Twitter, x, that could be Instagram. Those are the two kind of most popular platforms I see sometimes, Tiktok. So, you know, picking that platform don't feel like you have to do all of them, but utilizing, you know, one and being fairly consistent with it. The second thing would be to make sure that your pictures are clear. That could be a headshot. It could be a picture of you playing your sport. Make sure that the name, your username or handle on those whatever that platform is, is clear that it's not something funky. It is your name and possibly your graduation year from high school, to make it easier for coaches to identify you. And then when it comes to the bio, you want to put the critical data points that a coach would be interested in. You know, where do you go to high school, where, what Club program do you play? For any particular stats that you want to cite? You know, height, weight, UTR, I mean, 10 of them, depending on your sport. You're going to have different stats that you might want to cite there having a you could include your NCAA ID number, and certainly having the a link to your wherever your videos are housed, whether that's on YouTube huddle, you know, or any other platform where the video your video content might be, even though you're going to link your videos as individual posts in your social media account, having a link to that overall account is also great for coaches to be able to go back and see previous videos that you may have produced. You want to use social media in a couple key ways. One would be to follow college programs that you're interested in and recognize that coaches can follow you back before they're allowed to talk to you per NCAA rules so they can follow you. They may not be able to write to you, they can't send you a direct message, but they can certainly follow you, and that's kind of one way to kind of see if there's any interest there. That's nice when you go to events, when you visit campuses, when you attend a camp, when you do even out there doing what you do in you. Community, or you know, things you're participating in, using that as an opportunity to share video clips and other information about you know, who you are as a student and as a student athlete. This is, this is your opportunity. Think about this as you know, these are kind of short clip moments up to a couple minutes of video. But obviously, like I said, sometimes a recruiting video could be up to five minutes. So depending on the limits, the limitations of the video, the the length of your video, you're probably also going to want to link to the more complete video. If that's if that's the option that you have, other stats you want to put in that header. I'm not sure I mentioned, you know, GPA test scores. So again, just making sure that your bio is complete and that you are using that video for you know the full extent, or using that platform as a full extent of its capabilities. Make sure your direct messages, your DMS are open so that coaches can contact you. And again, realize that there are multiple ways to be in contact with coaches, through email, through their mobile numbers, and then also through direct message. So sometimes coaches prefer direct message to other platforms. I'm seeing with a lot of the super top ranked football programs, for example, that they are actually removing their emails from their profiles on their school their staff directories, and that they're sort of only listing their Twitter accounts as being a way to communicate with them, which I think is sort of interesting, but I'm not seeing that everywhere. I'm just seeing it in a few key programs. So remember, when you post videos of yourself, don't forget to tag the people that are if you know, if you've got a game situation and you know you've got other kids on your team who are being recruited. Don't be afraid to tag them. I mean, probably want to communicate with them in advance to let them know you want to do that. But this is the power of social media, and that the power of cross referencing your accounts, and, you know, getting even more interest in what you're doing. So I hope that helps. I definitely see that social media has continued to become a great way to show interest in coaches and have them be able to follow you and learn about you as well. Let's Speaker 1 47:04 talk recruiting videos. I'm sure we could do like, a whole separate podcast on tips for recruiting videos, but give us, like, you know, two or three tips for students to really make the most of their videos. So videos Speaker 2 47:15 are pretty critical part of the recruiting process, probably the most important. So first of all, recognize, if you play a sport that doesn't need a video, then really, truly, don't worry about it. You don't need to have a video. For those that are that do need video, and they're really those sports are ones where, usually not the time based sports. But again, it's it's not a bad idea, but keeping that video as clear as you can, and what I mean by that, meaning that it's really ideal to have a hopefully elevated perspective. So for example, if you're up in this if whoever's videotaping you, whether that's through a system like vo or trace ID or one of those sort of automatic camera systems, or whether it's a parent sitting up in the stands, getting elevated up, usually provides a little better perspective, and kind of trying to keep you know, again, depending on your sport, if you're playing soccer or lacrosse or something, that's kind of on a big feel right, being able to find about a third of the feel at any one time, to be able to show how a play is developing, and not just having it, you know, zeroed in on you So far that you can't see the play around you. You definitely want to have that right sort of perspective, and enough, you know, not too far zoomed out, so you can't see anything, and not too far, too zoomed in, that you can only see the one player and nothing else that's going around you. So I think that you want to, when it comes to constructing your video, you can clearly video has become so easy for kids to do on their own. If you have an iPhone, you have Ibu me, if you have, you know, access to some basic editing tools. You can put together a recruiting video. It does not require a full blown editing suite. So putting together that video, there's a couple thing key parts to it. You want to have some sort of basic intro screen that like a slide, like a PowerPoint slide, that you know, just as a basic introduction, again, just giving the stats on your name, your club program, your high school, your GPA, your contact information, or any other stats that are relevant, same, basically the same bio information you would put in your social media account. And then you want to start your video, and you want to again, show enough of the video clip that you see a play develop, and then you see what happens afterwards. When you first start that clip, you want to let it play for just a moment, pause it. And then in many sports, and unless it's one where the year the only one on the on the court right that you or the field, you want to pause it so that you can either use like a halo or a highlight or an arrow or something to identify where you are on the court, especially with Team date sports, this is really important, and then let the play continue and then transition to the next one. You generally want to get about five minutes worth of video that makes kind of a good mix. Or a good length for coaches to assess your talent level. You also want to put some of your best plays up front in this video. Because honestly, if coaches are busy people, and if they don't see something interesting in the first minute or two of that video, it's highly likely that they'll just move on to the next one. So really, don't feel like you need to leave your best stuff to the end, put it up front and let coaches see you know something that they're interested in, so that they want, you know, want to take the next step to contact you and let them know that you're interested, you know they're interested in having conversation. Katie, Speaker 1 50:32 what are some of the misconceptions that you feel students and families have about this process? Speaker 2 50:37 There are plenty of them. I think one is that somehow grades don't matter, that if they have the talent necessary, they will get recruited by, you know, whatever school you know they want. That is not true. I think that grades very much matter. And so I can't emphasize enough the importance of concentrating in the classroom, being a good student, and obviously being great athlete too, but really making sure that you are making your best effort in the classroom. Really, really important. I think, another area where they there's a lot of misconception, or maybe it's not so much misconception, but it's sort of where the family going back to sort of the beginning, where we started with, how do I know where I'm a good fit? How do I how do I assess my talent level? It's overestimating your own talent level with respect to where you might be a good fit for recruiting. I get a lot of families that will start this conversation with, I want to be a d1 athlete, and they really don't even know what that means, or you know what that looks like. So one of the things I one of the exercises I like to do to sort of bust that myth, is to say, well, let's take a take, you know, give me your Give me your favorite school, right? And inevitably, it's, you know, I end up, you know, one of my favorites is Stanford, right? We're in California. And so I say, Okay, let's, let's take a pause here, and we're going to do a recruit a roster check, right? We're going to do a recruiting roster check. So let's go and look up Stanford's roster, and let's look at the players on their current roster, and we're going to see does that is that who you are as an athlete, and for many kids, where I'm kind of trying to make the point like, Okay, let's get a little more realistic about this. They realize, oh, okay, now I get it. So, you know, those are two of the big ones that I see where I feel like it's important for I do a lot of resetting of expectations early on in the conversation so that we are all on the same page with regards to how we move forward through the rest of the process. What Speaker 1 52:46 advice would you give to families who are considering looking to hire somebody to help them with this process? How do you know, for example, what are some questions that families can ask to see if folks really know their stuff? Speaker 2 52:58 I think that families who are trying to consider their various options with with athletics recruiting, first of all, read what those people say on their websites. Now, not everybody has a website, but certainly go, go look at their background. You can always ask, well, you know, once you've had an initial conversation with a someone who works in athletics, recruiting, asked for references. Say, you know, can you give me one or two people that you know, recent families that you've worked with that I could contact so that I can get a sense for how you know, how you work with them, and what they really thought of your services. I think those are, you know, two really great things you can do, I will say that my one of my biases, is that I'm also a college counselor. And while it is certainly possible to separate athletics, recruiting and college counseling, I think that it's really, really important that whoever you work with that the the on the athletic side, whether that person is a college counselor or maybe they just do athletics recruiting, but that that person has a respect and a knowledge and a really great understanding of the whole this whole experience of who you it's not just about who you are as an athlete. It's who it's you know, it's the financial side, it's the academic side. And again, if that, if that person that you're looking to you know to hire is not doesn't do college counseling, that they that they really do have enough of a background in it so that you're all speaking the same language, and that everybody is kind of working in the same direction and working on the same page, because when there's a disconnect there, it can be really confusing for families. So I feel like that's, that's really, you know, an important factor. Speaker 1 54:45 Yeah, thanks for that. I'm really grateful for this. So I'm curious, as we wrap here, are there, what resources would you recommend for folks? Katie, Speaker 2 54:54 well, there's one that is a really obvious one that I would highly encourage every family to go download. And that is the NCAA guide for the college bound student athlete. And you can find that as a downloadable PDF file on the website, NCAA publications.com and then another one is going to be the blog post that goes along with this podcast, which is, you know, a crash course in college athletic recruiting. You know, we've got lots of of resources that are going to be posted there that people can find, and we'll hopefully give you a great, you know, overview of this, of this process, and give you some resources to further investigate, either within your sport or, you know, the types of schools you might be interested in, and give you a good, solid place to start. Speaker 1 55:41 Awesome. Thanks for that, and I really appreciate all of that you've shared so far. I'm curious if there's one last thing you'd like for families to keep in mind as they go through this process. What would that be? I Speaker 2 55:53 think probably one of the most important things is just to understand that this can be a long process and a long road, and to not give up. I get a lot of families that start down this road in that second semester of sophomore year, and sort of by through the end of junior year, they start to get frustrated because maybe they haven't heard from the coaches that they were hoping to hear from, or they had the recruiting isn't progressing as fast as they would like, and they feel like giving up. And I, I think that if you're if a student athletes priority is to try to play college athletics, then don't give up on the process, because a lot can shift, and a lot can happen during a student athlete senior year. You know, as as student athletes, other recruits start to make decisions. Coaches are found with all the kids they thought they were recruiting are now committed somewhere else, and they still need to find new student athletes. When December hits and early decision, early action, answers come back, and all of a sudden, coaches realize that the kids they thought were getting in their school that they had, you know, kind of done pre reads on for some reason, you know, somebody didn't get in. So now they bought a roster spot, and I've had this happen to my kids, or there's an injury that happens, and, you know, all of a sudden a coach might be looking for another player. So just don't give up on this process. That is really, really important. And I think the other thing that really to keep in mind is to make sure that at the end of the day, you make decisions that are going to make you a happy student on whatever campus you end up on, a lot can happen. Like I said, injuries, right? You get there, you get injured. Or even my own story where, you know, I got there, and it kind of didn't, you know, work out the way I wanted midway through. And so I thankfully was in a position to be able to make the choice to stop playing. And I was still, I stayed. I was a happy student. I finished. Everything was good, right? So making making smart decisions that are financially sound for you and are the right social and academic fit, in addition to athletic fit, will hopefully ensure that you have a great four year experience on a on a college campus no matter what. Katie, thanks so much for your time. Thank you so much. It's been a great call. Thanks. Speaker 1 58:08 Thanks friends for listening. As ever, you'll find the resources we discussed in the show notes, including a link to Katie's blog, the NCAA guide for the college bound student athlete and more awesome free resources. Thanks much, y'all and stay curious. You. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
