The USA TODAY High School Sports Recruiting Tips are provided by our recruiting partner, Playced.com
Over the past several years we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing some of the top college coaches in the country. Their perspective on college recruiting is invaluable. Here are some of the highlights.
Q: What is your advice to parents of student-athletes going through the recruiting process?
A: I think early on, a parent’s role is to help their student-athlete narrow their focus. Help them to see all angles of the decision-making process. If you have a child that is a great athlete and if they have the opportunity to go on and play in college, there are a lot of things coming at them.
There is so much information that they need to sort out and it can turn into a relatively complex decision. Especially at this level, we are committing girls as early as sophomore year of high school. Quite frankly, asking a teenager to make that decision that early is asking a lot. A parent needs to be engaged in that process to figure out what will make their child the happiest. As a parent, you know your child best and your role should be to help them remember who they are and what’s important to them.
—Kansas State volleyball coach Suzie Fritz
Q: How can a recruit get your attention? How can they get noticed by you and your staff?
A: So much of creating attention for yourself has to do with performance. For us, we pay a lot of attention to what the athletes are doing with their high school team. We truly believe that if a young lady is high quality, a good player and a good kid, we will find them. Like many Division II programs, we have a really firm grasp on knowing the talent in our part of the country.
Regionally speaking, if an athlete in is performing at a high level, especially freshman and sophomore year, it’s a pretty safe bet to say we are going to know about them. Regardless of where you are from, if you can play, someone is going to notice you and word spreads pretty quickly when it comes to talent.
—Lubbock Christian women’s basketball coach Steve Gomez
Q: Not including physical talent, what does the ideal recruit look like to you?
A: A recruit’s GPA means a lot to our staff. We have seen a lot of kids with not-so-great test scores but with high GPA’s do really, really well and we have seen quite a few guys with high test scores and low GPA’s underachieve. I think GPA is a great indicator of a young man’s work ethic and the effort he is willing to give. That usually translates to the basketball court.
We absolutely love multi-sport athletes! Why? They get coached differently. It gives a kid a totally different perspective on another sport and how to think. They have different expectations, teammates and circumstances that might be out of their comfort zone. It teaches them how to fail in a different way and makes them figure out how to fix it. When kids participate in multiple sports, it really completes them as an athlete. Bottom line, we are looking for well-balanced young men with their priorities in line.
—Augustana basketball coach Tom Billeter
