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How do
you know if you are good enough to apply for athletic scholarships?
It is probably one of the most important things an athlete needs to figure out when they start
the process before they start. You want to use some of the resources that you have available
to you, so your high school coaches, your club coaches, and ask them for their opinion
on your level of play and your ability. A really key thing with that is to be realistic
about it. We find that most of our clients, most of the kids we work with, have an inflated
self-opinion. Sometimes it is a good thing in athletics because you want to think you
can do it, but in the college recruiting process having that inflated self-opinion is one thing
that can really set you back if you are not targeting the right level schools.
So ask the people that know, compare yourself with the other athletes. One thing we always
recommend our clients to do is to go watch Division 1 games, Division 2 games, Division
3 games, and NEI games in your sport. A lot of kids never do that. They watch the game
on ESPN, which is a high level Division 1 game. Then they just assume what Division
3 is like and they have never actually gone and watched the game.
The other side to that is a lot people think they are not good enough to play in college
because they have never seen the different levels. They just watch what is on ESPN and
say, �Well college is for the ridiculously good athletes and I can�t play in college.�
For a lot of those kids, they can. It is just a matter of finding the right school, the
right location, the right level of play for them. There are opportunities out there for
almost every kid if they are willing to work hard throughout the high school recruit process.
Usually they can find a good place for them, if they are passionate about wanting to play
in college. Most college athletes were really good in
high school. They were all conference or they were all state or they were the team MVP or
the team leading scorer. When I was a college coach, one of my favorite quotes to say to
potential recruits was, when they tell me how many points they scored, every team had
a lead scorer. Think of the worst team you played, the worst basketball team out there
in the country, somebody is leading that team in scoring. It is not just about that. It
is about all the little things that make up the difference between a high school athlete
and a college athlete. When I say work hard, it�s developing a college level game that
means strength and conditioning, nutrition, the little things, the understanding of the
game, being a leader, all the things that make a college athlete separate from the run
of the mill high school athlete. A lot of times if a kid is an average high
school player but they have all those attributes, they have all those things; they are going
to turn out to be a really good or good college player. Another one of my favorite things
I like to say when I was recruiting high school kids, �I don�t care how good you are at
17. I care about how good you are going to be at 21.� A lot of times those little things
are what make somebody a really good 21-year old. That is what college coaches are looking
for. Sometimes in high school you can get away
with being a, �because you are a good athlete,� or because you are physically superior. You
can get away with being pretty good. When you get to college and everybody is a good
athlete, it is something like the mental toughness that is going to take that athlete and put
them over the top. They may get by with poor fundamental habits or poor mental habits in
high school, but to be a college athlete they�ll need to be keen mentally, as well as physically
and nutrition and so on. That is of upmost importance when college coaches are looking
at high school kids to recruit. They want to know they are getting a mentally strong
kid, because that kid is going to get a lot better.