There is no doubt in my mind that I feel having parents and coaches involved
in the athletic recruiting process, regardless of the sport, is vital overall.
Regardless if you are a parent, a coach, or even an athlete reading this, your
coach and parents are an important part of your overall recruiting team that
should be able to help you be evaluated by coaches at the college level.
But I have a major problem when one of the powers mentioned above take too much
control and do everything. It may be the high school coach being overbearing and
handling the entire recruiting process. Or it could also be a parent not even
relaying the interest to the high school coach and handling everything
themselves. In my opinion, it is a huge mistake for either to dominate the
athletic recruiting process.
I recently heard a good example of a high
school coach handling things a little too much. Don’t get me wrong about this
coach. He does do a nice job in getting attention for his athletes and has
helped many land scholarship offers over the years. But this coach also frowns
upon his athletes leaving during the summer to attend camps. For athletes
without scholarships, these camps are vital. I know that he hurt a recent
quarterback recruit because he wanted to keep the team together all summer. The
quarterback skipped camps that could have landed him scholarship offers and he
ended up walking-on somewhere.
Anyways, the story is about a current
recruit who already boasts numerous scholarship offers. One of the schools that
had offered him in a major conference used the spring evaluation period to come
and see him. The coach had extended the offer before his junior season and
wanted to see video of him while at the school. The head coach did all that he
could to not show him the video. Why would anyone do that? It makes no sense but
this is just a good reason why coaches shouldn’t have complete power in the
recruiting process.
A parent can do the same thing. I recently spoke with
a high school coach about a certain player on his team. I was asking him a
variety of questions about his skills, abilities, and then came to his
recruiting. All the coach said is I don’t know, his dad is handling it. If the
high school coach is telling me that, then he is likely telling college coaches
the exact same thing. With this being an All State running back, I am sure the
prep coach had to repeat that story a lot.
When a college coach hears
that the parent is handling the entire recruiting process, that doesn’t bode
well for the recruit. The reason is that most parents who control the entire
process are the ones that are overbearing and can be extremely annoying during
recruiting. They may also be the same ones who push for their son to transfer
when he is not starting early in his career (see Mitch Mustain). This happens
all the time too.
In a perfect world, what I recommend is doing
everything you can to be on the same page with your recruiting team. That
includes the athlete, the parents, and the coaches at the high school. I believe
that the parents should be the leaders of this team. High school coaches just
don’t have the time to be sending out recruiting profiles. They will help you
where they can but be realistic about the burden you are playing on them.
If you can, go in with your family and talk to the high school coach about
the recruiting process, what your goals are, and what level the coaches feel he
can play at in college. The biggest thing hear is to keep the lines of
communication open and help the athlete have his or her best chance of getting a
scholarship offer.
