{"id":8041,"date":"2015-10-01T17:29:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T22:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/?p=8041"},"modified":"2015-10-02T14:37:51","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T19:37:51","slug":"four-forces-holding-back-families-in-recruiting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/four-forces-holding-back-families-in-recruiting\/","title":{"rendered":"Four forces holding back families in recruiting"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gil<\/a>
Gil Barkey lives in Denver and helps families navigate the recruiting process.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Families of high school athletes wanting to take their game to the college level are in a quandary.\u00a0 How do they make\u00a0a dream materialize?\u00a0 It’s an unenviable position.<\/p>\n

Once they make their problem public, however, all sorts of help pops up, mostly from sources which have no clue how recruiting works.\u00a0 That, of course, adds more angst to the already perplexing conundrum.<\/p>\n

I have consistently found that when parents and prospects\u00a0in concert\u00a0make the commitment to pursue a college athletic scholarship, they can count on four forces which can potentially hold them back from making the dream a reality.<\/p>\n

Force 1:\u00a0 First are the preconceived notions of how college recruiting actually happens.\u00a0 These notions are muddled, to say the least.\u00a0 There is little, if any, clarity — no real, dependable\u00a0blueprint to follow.\u00a0 Picture being asked to walk out on a balcony that has no rails, with no hint of what’s out there, and wearing a blindfold.\u00a0 It would be\u00a0an extremely scary proposition.<\/p>\n

We asked National Scouting Report’s Gil Barkey,<\/strong><\/a> who scouts the Denver, Colo. area, what the main problem is working with parents of high school athletes.\u00a0 Without hesitation, he said: “It’s the presumptuousness (of parents) thinking they know the process.”\u00a0 He pointed out that he’s always surprised at the number of high school, travel and club coaches who hire him to connect their own children with colleges.<\/p>\n

Ask any family that has gone through it with their child.\u00a0 Unless their first or second kid is a top-level prospect, which is rare, they will tell you that what they thought would happen and what really\u00a0occurred\u00a0were nowhere close to one another.\u00a0 They would say that in recruiting there\u00a0is no certainty involved.<\/p>\n

Result?\u00a0 No progress.<\/p>\n

Force 2:\u00a0 There’s no other way to characterize it but to say bad advice.\u00a0 So, imagine your car\u00a0breaks down and you call your accountant for advice.\u00a0 Does that make sense?\u00a0 No,\u00a0of course not, but that is what people\u00a0typically do when entering the recruiting landscape. They\u00a0listen to people who are ill-prepared to give them spot-on counseling.\u00a0 Even\u00a0if\u00a0those same people\u00a0are closely involved in youth, club, travel or high school athletics, their\u00a0knowledge\u00a0is tied to supposition, not facts.<\/p>\n

College coaches don’t talk to high school coaches and they only give club and travel coaches the time of day out of courtesy.\u00a0 It’s true.\u00a0 Most every parent we’ve talked with says that, going into the process, they were astounded at the lack of communicating that happened between their athletes’ coaches and their peers a mere one step up.<\/p>\n

\"High<\/a>
High school scout Robby Wilson has a long list of college coaching connections.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What would a good high school sports scout say about this?\u00a0 Robby Wilson<\/strong> <\/a>is a high school scout in Arkansas who works primarily in softball.\u00a0 We accepted his invitation to sit\u00a0in on a conference call he was leading with a large group of other scouts from across America.\u00a0 At one point, he said, “No travel coach or parent comes close to having the network of college coach connections and depth of trust we do.”<\/p>\n

Result?\u00a0 No progress.<\/p>\n

Force 3:\u00a0 Time.\u00a0 How much\u00a0can a family\u00a0really do to affect their athlete’s recruitment in the time\u00a0allowed?\u00a0\u00a0An hour a day?\u00a0 Five hours a week?\u00a0 A few hours a month perhaps?\u00a0 Finding\u00a0out how to connect with\u00a0a handful of coaches alone is daunting, much\u00a0less the 50, 100, 500 or more their kid\u00a0realistically needs to reach\u00a0to find\u00a0a few genuinely interested.\u00a0 Add to that the coach having to start the evaluation process,\u00a0followed by\u00a0developing\u00a0relationships with the families, visiting\u00a0various campuses and\u00a0then securing multiple offers.\u00a0 There’s no wonder that so many good high school athletes never play college sports.\u00a0 They simply blow their chance.<\/p>\n

Three years\u00a0can seem like six months in recruiting for a family.\u00a0 Before they can take a deep breath, the time it takes to do all these necessary things has passed leaving their athlete out in the cold and without any offers.<\/p>\n

Result?\u00a0 No progress.<\/p>\n

Force 4:\u00a0 Overconfidence is the bane of most families.\u00a0 We often hear parents say, “We’re being recruited already,” when actually they aren’t.\u00a0 Not even close.\u00a0 And they think that because they have gotten a few recruiting letters or have a friend who has a friend who is a college coach that they are in the clear.\u00a0 Not so.<\/p>\n

Nothing can be taken for granted in college recruiting.\u00a0 A missed phone call here.\u00a0 An overlooked text there.\u00a0 A\u00a0discounted email.\u00a0\u00a0A new prospect\u00a0jumps to the top of a\u00a0coach’s\u00a0recruiting board.\u00a0 Then there’s the unexpected injury or lower-than-anticipated ACT score.\u00a0 You name it and it can happen.<\/p>\n

Being overconfident makes people near-sighted.\u00a0 They cannot see in the distance.\u00a0 Viable options are too often ignored.\u00a0 Legitimate interest by a coach is pushed aside.\u00a0 All these things can spell doom for a prospect.<\/p>\n

Result?\u00a0 No progress.<\/p>\n

Parents have the responsibility to put their child in the best possible position.\u00a0 Yet, they frequently do\u00a0not because they are held back by the Four Forces.\u00a0 It doesn’t have to be that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Families of high school athletes wanting to take their game to the college level are in a quandary.\u00a0 How do they make\u00a0a dream materialize?\u00a0 It’s an unenviable position. Once they make their problem public, however, all sorts of help pops up, mostly from sources which have no clue how recruiting works.\u00a0 That, of course, adds … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[172,31,32,246,56,155,222,79,245],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8041"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8050,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8041\/revisions\/8050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsr-inc.com\/scouting-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}