Don’t Lose Your Scholarship in The Recruiting Shuffle
As a potential college recruit, you must proactively call and e-mail college coaches to get recruited. Making the initial contact with coaches is one of the most important steps of the recruiting process, but if you are unable to stay organized throughout, your efforts may go to waste. Sending your resume to coaches and getting an e-mail response is a great first step, but you will have to continue to update coaches to keep them interested in you. Too often, recruits are crossed off coaches’ recruiting lists because the athlete does not stay in touch with the coach. Don’t miss out on any potential scholarship opportunities by becoming unorganized.
How to Stay Organized
The chart below is designed to keep you on track. You can create this chart in a Word document and save it to the desktop of your computer. That way, you will have easy access to it, and you can update it as soon as you have communicated with a coach.
Start using this chart as soon as you begin calling or e-mailing coaches. The first thing you will need to do on the chart is fill out the coach’s name, school (you can also add the division level if necessary), and the location of the school. By doing this, you will have easy access to a list of all the schools you’ve contacted.
The next step is to research the potential majors and the cost of attending each school. It is difficult to get a full-ride scholarship for most NCAA sports, so knowing the costs of attending will help you determine if a scholarship offer is large enough for you to attend that school.
Each time you contact a coach, whether he or she responds or not, you should update your chart. If you send them an e-mail, then mark down that you have to follow up with another e-mail or a phone call in about a week if they do not respond. If they do respond and they want you to keep them updated, mark that down as well. You can also make notes in this section of the things a coach has asked you to give them. This may include transcripts, standardized test scores, highlight videos, or playing schedules.
The last section on the chart is for your application status. You can initially use this section as a way to keep track of the things you still need to do to get accepted into the university. They may include taking a standardized test, writing an essay, filling out the application, or getting letters of recommendation from your teachers. Once you have completed the application, you can fill in the date it was submitted and when you expect to hear back from the school.
If you still have questions about how to stay organized, just ask us in the comments section or on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+!
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