In this first part of the article, we will explore the basics of the what you need to know before being recruited. In the second part to come later we will explore the process of recruitment itself.
For most high school athletes, their journey through the adventure of athletics ends during their senior year, often forgoing the pursuit of collegiate sports. For a select few, the sphere of university athletics is just the next chapter. Due to recent interest in exploring the process of recruitment, we will take a glance at the steps between the high school and university realms.
Less than 4% of high school athletes go on to compete at the collegiate level. There is no hard and fast rule for who can or should compete in college, but let’s put the 4% conversion into something tangible for us to consider. In the Louisiana class of 2015 on the boys side, there were 384 senior performances in cross country. Therefore, on average 15 of those seniors will go on to compete in college. Strictly speaking the top 15 times, you would have had to run 16:08 to make our cut off. On the girls side there were 280 senior performances, making the top 4% finish around 11th best performance with a time of 19:25.
Numbers don’t always portray the full situation though. Several of the top seniors in the state will choose to hang up the spikes after high school. Therefore we can conclude that to reach the average of 4%, several seniors will have to come from outside the top performers. These athletes often fill the role of what is called a “walk-on” in college sports, but not necessarily. For those who don’t understand the terminology, you will find two types of athletes (but a wide range within the second type) on any given college program. First you have “walk-on” athletes, or athletes who are allowed to join a team (sometimes via a tryout process) but receive no athletic scholarship money. Walk-ons are actually very common and you should not feel discouraged to opt into the walk-on route if you have adequate means to pay for college otherwise. While walk-ons may not have the full gamut of amenities available to the scholarship athlete, there is no less opportunity to compete and earn a spot on a travel roster. Occasionally walk-ons have an agreement with the coaching staff that if they reach a certain level of ability they can earn a scholarship.
Now it will be important to distinguish the variability of a “scholarship” in college track and field. Only a handful of college sports are head-count sports, or sports that are all or nothing in ters of scholarship assistance. For instance, there are no partial scholarships in football or basketball. You either earn a full ride (full scholarship) or you walk on. Track (and cross country) is not in this situation and coaches are allocated upwards of 12.6 scholarships for men and 18 scholarships for women which they can divide any which way they would like. They can offer 18 women on full scholarships if they so choose, or 36 half-scholarships, or 72 one-fourth scholarships (just to use round numbers, this is not how it actually plays out), etc. A few important notes for this include: cross country scholarships are not separated from track scholarships, thus a cross country scholarship is in turn a track scholarship; a school does not have to meet their full allotment of scholarships and may only choose to use a few of their 12.6 or 18 scholarships if funding is not available; many partial scholarships are called “books” scholarships and only cover the approximate cost of a semester's worth of school books (roughly $500 at many schools); and lastly don’t judge ability to earn a scholarship based on current times for athletes. This last point is to say, don’t look at a cross country team and assume you could be a scholarship athlete at that school just based on that alone. What could be the case is that the entire team you are looking at is filled with walk-ons and books scholarship athletes. One last point to consider is utility in recruitment. Sprinters/jumpers/hurdlers are highly valued by college coaches because you can more readily maximize your scholarships into points at conference when your star athletes can do three to four events in one meet. Rarely do you find a distance runner who has the ability to produce points in more than one event at conference which means the utility of that athlete can be less than another athlete who may not even be at the same level as the distance runner, but can make up for it with multiple events.
Now don’t be too discouraged by the previous paragraphs. As distance runners, we have often been self-motivated and so often are out of the stardom of the newspapers like the major sports. We run for the love of competition and the feeling of being highly fit. I have met quite a few young runners more excited about the prospect of walking on to their favorite university than some who were heading off to a scholarship spot in the fall. If your passion is to improve yourself as a runner, don’t let not having a scholarship dissuade you from your venture.
There is also hope for a spot on a college roster for those with great grades and ACT scores. It is highly valuable for college programs to produce college graduates, something that the NCAA readily follows. The Academic Progress Rate, or APR, is formula for the NCAA to determine if a college program is keeping the student in student-athlete. Programs that fail to keep high academic standards can suffer penalties from the NCAA such as loss of scholarships or worse. Because of this, occasionally a program will allow a student-athlete a scholarship opportunity that may not often be available to other athletes of their caliber if their academic portfolio suggests they are a quality student. This is not by any means a completely common occurrence, but is a potential scholarship opportunity for some students.
Being from Louisiana, your biggest source of college money should come from receiving a TOPS scholarship which can cover between 4-8k in tuition costs at various schools around the state. There are also other scholarships available through organizations like NOTC, etc., that can help the college piggy bank. Don’t forgo every resource you can get your hands on and always be on the lookout for new scholarships available.
How do you know what college is a good fit for you and if you are prepared to compete at the next level? First and foremost, you should never pick a college based solely on sports. Not to say this shouldn’t play a factor, but if you pick a school you are uncomfortable with just because they offered the most money, you may find yourself in a bad situation in a short amount of time. Look for a school you feel comfortable at, as well as one that offers what you are looking for in terms of scholastic prowess. From there, look to see if your ability level matches the ability level of the programs at that school.
College Recruitment: What to Know- Part 2 will come out later this week.