What College Coaches Look For By David Galehouse - Director of www.varsityedge.com - Student-athlete resource center for high school and college bound athletes and author of The Making of a Student-Athlete: Succeeding in the College Selection, Application, and Athletic Recruiting Process. Portions of this article were provided by Ray Lauenstein, Director of www.athletesadvisor.com Aside from the obvious things a coach will be looking for such as skill in your sport, it’s usually the intangibles that distinguish one player from another. You might be surprised to know what many coaches look for besides your skill as a player: Academic commitment - Yes, you are probably laughing because you know players who couldn't spell their own name and were recruited to play in college. Those are the players that usually don't make it through college and if they do, they aren't very successful after college. In reality, there re many coaches who don't care how good a student you are because they are paid millions of dollars to win. There are other coaches who work at schools that actually take their academics seriously and only recruit the best and brightest academic athletes. These are schools like Harvard, Stanford, Notre Dame, Northwestern and so on. Most coaches won't even bother recruiting you until they know you can at least gain acceptance to their school and the NCAA has minimum requirements that student-athletes must meet before they are allowed to play college athletics. If you are working on your jump shot and failing English, we recommend you work on English, because your jump shot won't matter much if you can't get accepted to college in the first place. Knowledge of the game - There are a lot of good players who don't play smart or don’t know what to do in certain situations, especially at the HS level where many errors are made mentally before the ball or puck is even coming at them because the player didn't know how to react to a situation ahead of time. A smart player can defeat a less experienced player, even with inferior athletic abilities for a lot of reasons. Maybe they know how to set up teammates better, draw in the defense to exploit an opening; they use angles, timing and the game clock to their advantage. While Michael Jordan slowed down, could not jump as high and gained weight in his final two seasons, he could still school guys 20 years younger with his savvy. Knowledge of the game comes from playing and watching! Play as often as you can, experiment with new strategies during scrimmages and pick-up games. Most importantly, think about what you are doing - before, during, and after the game. Smart athletes look ahead and often do things to set up a specific move or play for much later in the game. Know your opponent! A coach loves to see a player who understands what the opponent is trying to do and sees patterns to exploit. If you are a baseball player, do you know what each hitter did in his first at bat? Volleyball players, where does the top server place her serves the most? In lacrosse can you slow the top scorer down by forcing him/her to their weak side? Do you know which side is weak? Athleticism - Some S-A’s are great athletes and ok players, some S-A’s are great players and ok athletes, some are both. It’s easier for a college coach to teach individual skill in a particular sport than it is to teach athleticism. Some S-A’s are naturally fast, can jump high, and are quicker and more agile than other kids. These are traits you were born with and slowly developed over your life. If a coach sees good overall athletic skill, they can always teach that player skills for their sport over time. You can take your athleticism and make it better - genetically you have a cap, but few people ever work hard, long and smart enough to reach it. Those people are one in a million. But we know strength and conditioning coaches who say technique alone can lower a 40-yard dash time by a tenth of a second before any sprint training begins. Yes, athleticism is natural, but conditioning will improve it and sometimes provide the advantage over an athletically superior but poorly conditioned opponent. Why leave it to chance. Andre Agassi the great tennis player, is one of the most gifted athletes to ever play the game. But early in his career he almost threw it all away by not training properly or consistently - it was a mental issue. After a few years he rededicated himself, became one of the top conditioned players on the tour and to this day he wins major tournaments despite being 12-14 years older than many opponents. Speed - This could go under athleticism, but it is the biggest factor that will separate a player from others in most cases. For example; In sports like football, hockey, lacrosse, and even basketball, size makes a difference. These are physical sports and a smaller person is usually at a competitive disadvantage unless they have exceptional abilities in another area, such as speed! Fast athletes can thrive in a big persons sport. Speed comes in many forms, all of which can help you if you have them in abundance. 1. Pure Speed - point A to point B. In football, pure speed makes up for mistakes, shortens the field, stretches the defense, and makes up for a lack of size. In soccer, field hockey, lacrosse, basketball, the first one to a spot has an upper hand, be it a loose ball, position to receive a pass or any other reason, it pays to be first and fastest! 2. Speed with the ball or puck - athletes tend to slow down when they are dribbling, or moving with the puck/ball. How fast you can move while still controlling the ball is competitive speed. Pure speed means nothing if you keep turning the ball over. The only way to improve this is by practicing puck and ball handling drills at full speed. One mistake coaches make is not progressing stick and ball handling skills to full out effort. Players will not just turn it on in a game without having practiced it first. 3. Reaction Speed - this is more of how well you read and react to changes on the field. For example, you have a ton of pure speed, but what good is it if you run to the wrong spot all the time because you lacked anticipation or were always lured out of position? When asked why he was so successful, Wayne Gretzky said, "I skate to where the puck is going, not where it is." Coaches look at all these things to a degree. Pure speed is most coveted because a coach figures you will develop the other two with experience and practice. But if you already have it, speed might be what puts you on a coach’s list over another! Do you get along with others? Attitude counts - If you think being a great player and a jerk will still get you recruited think again, the last thing a coach wants is a kid with an attitude on their team, as it infects the entire team. The coach will be extremely busy watching your demeanor and how you interact with the game, your teammates, other players, officials and your coaches. As former Brandeis assistant baseball coach and current Frozen Ropes hitting instructor Bob Boutin said, "Anyone can be nice to their parents or girlfriend when they go 4/4 with a couple of RBI's. But I want to see them interact when they strikeout 3 times and go 0/4. That is the true test of your personality." Remember, even if you play an individual sport, you will be part of a team and if you are a yeller, sulker or general jerk, you'd better be pretty darn good for a coach to overlook that. A coach has to think of two things: 1. Do I want to coach this player for four years? 2. Given my current team, and the type of team I like to coach - will this player fit in? One college coach told us he went to scout a player but never made it out of the parking lot heading to the field because he saw the player berating a teammate over an error. Scratched! Another went to a "meaningless" summer game and observed a recruit with his shirt off talking to some girls just ten minutes before the game. It would have been much better if this player were dressed and going through pre-game routines. Scratched! You never know who is watching! Every playing opportunity is an opportunity for someone to make a judgment about you! According to one scout, Rod Carew, a Hall-of-Fame baseball player, was discovered in HS by a pro scout who got lost trying to go to another HS field and ended up at Carew’s field by mistake. After a few innings of watching Carew play, the scout called his manager and said, “we gotta sign this guy!” If you lack these qualities above but can score 30 points a game in high school, inevitably some college coaches will recruit you, but not all.
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