I know I don’t know much about prep school, but I’m not interested in hearing about it. Prep school doesn’t sound good to me.
This from a senior whose season is virtually over and who has no offers. He and his family are spending money on a recruiting video, two recruiting services, an out-of-state all-star game he was “invited” to and are now willing to pay half the cost of college, but he doesn’t want to hear that he could attend a top prep school for free.
More than a few parents and athletes are frustrated by the position the athlete plays for his/her school. They wish they were on a team where the child could play a different position they believe would maximize the players’ talent, development and potential. It’s true at all levels, particularly high school, where most attend the school in their neighborhood.
They often blame the coach, claiming the athlete needs the chance to play the different position in order to develop the skills. But it’s rarely the coach’s fault. Most of the time the athlete is being played at the position because it best matches the athlete’s skill set and the coach’s first responsibility is to field the best team. If the goal is to play a different position the answer is surprisingly simple. You’ve got to give the coach a chance to play your child at the new position. You’ve got to have the skills. If you do, the coach will almost always find a way to play the athlete there, at least some of the time.
The common mistake is thinking that learning the skills will take place in games during the season. If the player doesn’t have the skills, the team isn’t going to sacrifice while the athlete learns, and make mistakes, during the a game. This type of significant learning has to take place during the offseason. It has always been hard, because it takes dedication and sacrifice. It’s even harder now that it seems there is almost no offseason. Still, this is when the athlete has to make it happen. In fact, it’s actually a great opportunity. So few players work on skills and fundamentals these days that those who do stand out more than they used to. Think about that. All athletes are looking for an edge. Here’s a way to improve and get an edge in a very simple way.
If you’re making a video for coaches to see, you want to make it as user-friendly as possible – for the coaches, not for you. You laugh, but too many videos are just an exercise in ego for the maker. You don’t want a coach to stop watching because of video issues before even evaluating your game. Believe me, it happens. Coaches do not have unlimited time. A very poor quality video causes the coach to hit the stop button and you get either no response to your video or a blow-off.
This doesn’t mean you need to pay a service to have it done. The only possible reason to pay to have it done is if you simply can’t be bothered or don’t want to spend the time. Anyone with a smartphone and a YouTube account can make a good video.
Here are a few rules to make the process work better and improve your chances.
Video is a key part of today’s recruiting process. In today’s world anyone with a smartphone and YouTube can have a good video. There’s not excuse for not having one. Coaches are already picking your game apart looking for problems. Don’t give them any unnecessary reasons to add to that list by providing a poor video or none at all. If you’re lucky enough to get them to watch, don’t blow your opportunity.
You’d think by now coaches, players and parents would be a little more savvy. Apparently not. Over the years there has been plenty of documentation of AAU coaches etc. taking advantage of players. Here’s the latest example.
A foreign national whose obvious athletic talent got him into the United States, GP was here on a student visa. Needing to change high schools, he was pimped by his AAU coach, who was more interested in the power that comes with controlling a player of GP’s caliber than finding the best situation for this young man. So the coach refused help and more reputable schools, sending him instead 700 miles and four states away where he would attend school and play for a different team. (The team and the school are not the same. Don’t get me started.)
As part of the deal, and to maintain his legal status, his new team promised to take care of all his student visa paperwork. He played for the team, but the men running it never took care of the paperwork.
It turns out they didn’t because the school they sent him to, by definition, is not approved by the government to issue the necessary paperwork. Most schools in the US could have easily supplied the necessary paperwork. Not this one. The men running the team knew that when they told him they’d get his paperwork done.
They lied, he trusted them, he played. They got what they wanted, a better team. He’s out of options. He’s in the country illegally. Even though he’s been offered scholarships, he can’t accept them. To be eligible to accept them he must get his paperwork reinstated. To do that he must leave the country. Once he leaves he’s unlikely to ever get back in.
You could say GP and his guardian contributed to the problem. There’s no question there’s truth to that. But he’s a teenager in a foreign country. He and his guardian relied on adults. They let him down.
I’m an educator. I believe in education. Why would I care what level of education my son gets as a post-graduate? He’s already a qualifier.
Mother and long-time high school teacher, whose son is a very good student and borderline scholarship level athlete, talking about her decision to choose a place that can barely be called a school over a legitimate school with good academic credentials.
Emmitt Holt (Webster Schroeder HS, Rochester, NY) has very recently been offered by Indiana University for the fall of 2014. That’s right, classes would start for him in just a few weeks. Up ‘till now he’s been committed to attending Vermont Academy for a post-graduate year. Whether he should accept the Indiana offer has been a popular topic of debate among players, high school coaches and college coaches.
On the surface, the IU offer changes everything. Indiana is historically big-time, as big as it gets. And Emmitt has no other offers close to this level. (Low to mid A-10 offers were his highest). It’s hard to overstate the power of the feeling that comes with an offer like this. Even adult observers, after discussing the situation objectively, shake their heads and admit they could not think straight if it happened to them. And they’re not 18 years old.
The initial reaction of many is he has to take it. It’s IU. How do you say no? It’s not as obvious as it might seem.
Reasons to take the offer:
Reasons to turn down the offer:
What are the risks of saying no to the offer? Some say injury is one. That concern gets overvalued for several reasons. First, it was addressed and accepted when prep school was chosen over scholarships. Second, statistically that risk is much smaller than some others, such as not surviving college academically and socially. Finally, the power of good prep schools and medical science these days is such that even a significant injury can have little to no effect on recruitment.
Let’s remember for a minute, this is only a debate because Emmitt made what to many was a surprising decision to choose prep school over college scholarships in the first place. Any good thought process would review his original reasons in light of the recent offer. They were:
Contrary to initial reactions, it’s clear the IU offer changes almost nothing.
With all the excitement and discussion, it might be easy to forget this isn’t just about Emmitt Holt. Vermont Academy made an educational, athletic and financial commitment to him and is counting on him. He was awarded a spot that other kids and parents would have given a great deal to have. Leaving now would be unfair to the school and those other athletes he was chosen over, and he knew that when he made the commitment.
There’s no question this is a tough decision. Logic is great, but emotion will, and should, play a part. The idea is to make sure the thinking is as logical as possible and no significant facts are missed. This is all about minimizing risk and putting the athlete in a position to succeed, not a position to fail. Although it happens regularly, playing for the exception is a trap.
The percentage of scholarship-level basketball players worldwide is very small. Most of those will not be recruited by the big-time D1 conferences, or will be D2 recruits. Players looking for the highest rated educational institutions at the scholarship level are often unaware of what is a relatively small list of choices. Excluding the power conferences, here is the list:
Division 1
It’s a given that the Ivy League and Patriot League are the two leagues with the best academic ranking.
Here are the remainder of the schools, outside the power conferences, based on rankings used in the Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges.
The total is approximately 44 (the case can be made for adding or subtracting one or two) out of about 268, or 16%.
Division 2
Finding an education at the Division 2 level with the same ranking is very challenging. Here’s the short list:
I returned recently from a major east coast summer basketball camp where I had a lengthy discussion about the recruiting process with the mother of a talented junior. Her son is a good student who already holds offers from D1 schools, none of them big-time. A single mom with two kids who never went to college and never played sports, she told me she has little awareness of colleges or basketball programs. Working two jobs (they are a low income family) leaves her precious little time to deal with the recruiting process. I told her I’d had a conversation at the camp with a coach who said she was not returning his calls. She acknowledged that was a problem and said she feels overwhelmed by all the attention. “There are so many schools”, she said, “how do I handle this”?
The answer is simple, although a surprisingly large number of families never figure it out. Start with the schools offering the most highly rated educations. (See separate blog showing list). This quickly shrinks the list while having the added benefit of keeping priorities straight, often next to impossible in this process, even for those who are good at it. Focusing on the top-rated academic schools cuts the number of possible schools from approximately 265 (outside the big-time basketball conferences) to about 45, while maintaining priorities. For most, only about half of those 45 will actually show recruiting interest. Now the list is manageable and efficient, goals are intact and focus is tight. The chance of success has increased greatly.
I received a call from a family whom I had been recommended to by a previous client. By the time they contacted me, they had already communicated with some prep schools. They also were getting help from one of their child’s coaches, as well as a friend who had been through the process before. As a result, they felt they had a good list of schools and decided they didn’t need my help at that time. They did leave the door open to hiring me later, in the event they needed help with the financial part of the process.
When they called me a few months later, their son had been rejected at the school that was their first choice. They were stunned. They shared with me that they had come to realize that, having no experience at this, they had misinterpreted the feedback they had been getting from the coach at that school and had overvalued the help they’d been receiving from friends and others. Compounding the problem, they assumed they were going to get into their first choice and made little effort with the other two schools they had considered. They were upset and looking for answers.
We talked about applying to other schools, but by this time most other schools had filled their spots and handed out their financial aid. Schools that would have been good options a few months prior no longer were. In addition, they told me after what they’d already been through in this process they didn’t have the emotional energy to start over with new schools. Consequently, this family was forced to choose from a very limited list of schools, most of which they wouldn’t have otherwise found acceptable, and/or, lacking options and leverage, pay $5,000 – $15,000 more than they would have.
Almost all players opt to play AAU these days, mostly because they feel they will be left behind if they don’t. It’s certainly a lot of fun, a rite of passage and should at least be experienced by all. But it has its drawbacks, too, and for many the decision deserves more scrutiny.
Here’s a short summary of four of the players and their AAU decisions. All were seniors who decided to do a PG year instead of going right to college. That gave each the option of playing AAU ball for another year. They made different decisions about AAU for different reasons, with varying results.
Gerry:
Gerry was a talented kid with D1 physical gifts playing for a very small high school. Even though he led them to the state championship, he received no D1 recruiting interest. He couldn’t even get the local D2 school to offer him after attending their camp. He had not played AAU ball until he decided to play in the spring of his senior year. After a handful of AAU tournaments Gerry had 16 D1 offers, most of them from mid-level D1 schools. A textbook case for AAU and its benefits.
Edward:
With multiple D1 offers on the table, he bucked conventional thinking and made the enlightened choice of a PG year before college. Once he started playing AAU he got caught-up in the hype and the solid thinking stopped. Instead of continuing to listen to the people with the right credentials, he started listening to people with questionable motives and even less credibility. The result was a downward spiral of bad decisions, two of which stand out.
First, in order to play AAU he missed one to two days of school per week (playing out-of-town games for an out-of-town team) even though, as a weak student, he could ill afford to shift his focus or miss any school at all. His mother rationalized it by saying they had spoken with his teachers and made the necessary arrangements. While that’s more of an effort than some make, it’s hardly a substitute for being in class. Not only does it send the wrong signal, it opens the door to more and poorer thinking in the future – and it did. Ironically, he got next to nothing out of AAU. AAU needed him more than he needed it, even though he didn’t know it. Missing school on a regular basis was too great a sacrifice for too little gain.
Second, he made an historically bad prep school selection that left objective observers shaking their heads in disbelief. After exploring many schools, he had two choices. One was a rare combination of very good basketball and a world-class academic environment. It’s a life-changing place so sought after that it rejects many very good student-athletes whose parents would willingly pay the $54,000 a year to send their child there, and it would have cost Edward’s mom $0. He opted instead for a school offering slightly better basketball (although not enough to make a difference) and precious little else, and agreed to pay some money to do it.
In short, once he and his mom started listening to the wrong people and lost sight of their priorities the path quickly changed from one pointed towards success to one with a better chance of failure. The D1 coaches noticed, too, and some, particularly the more trustworthy ones from the better academic schools, became leery of recruiting him because of all the negative signals he and his mom were sending.
Cameron:
By most accounts, a D1 athlete who needed the skills to match his physical gifts. Statistically, he had a very good senior year, but played out of position (in the eyes of D1 coaches) and against weak competition. While he clearly could have benefitted from some exposure, what he needed more was skill improvement. But that’s not nearly as much fun and takes more self-discipline. He chose to play a full AAU schedule which, despite his claims to the contrary, significantly limited the time spent on skill work. Consequently, his game did not improve. In the end, he got the exposure, but it was not enough. Without the skills, he was not worthy of a scholarship. Instead of benefitting from exposure, he was simply exposed.
Steven:
Had a poor senior season on a very talented high school team. Still, with his height, skills and athletic ability he had scholarship potential.
Getting no interest from scholarship-level schools, it would have been easy to feel like AAU was his second chance. Instead, he kept his poise, put peer pressure and his ego aside, and decided against playing AAU. He spent his time working on his game and skills with a local college coach. He also played in controlled scrimmages with top local HS, D3, D2, D1 and professional players on certain days, and worked on his body and conditioning on others.
As the months went by, his fundamentals and his overall game improved steadily. Having made some sacrifices, he came into the summer motivated. His attitude, perspective, goals and priorities were all what they needed to be in order to have the best shot at maximizing his personal development. Perhaps most importantly, he established positive and proper expectations heading into prep school, giving himself the best chance of continued improvement and success on and off the court.
The bottom line: AAU has its place. For some it’s absolutely the right move. However, most players and parents, not knowing any better, are overvaluing exposure and undervaluing skills and skill development as they try to stand out in today’s recruiting landscape.