When Should I Start The Recruiting Process?

The recruiting process will vary in length for prospective student-athletes, sometimes beginning as early as middle school or as late as an athlete’s senior year of high school. So, when should you start the recruiting process?

Typically, the recruitment process will begin either late in a prospective student-athlete’s sophomore year, or early in their junior year. Remember, this is just the average experience and doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get a jump start on the recruiting process. You can do so by creating your recruiting profile and sending it to certain collegiate coaches for them to look over as well as responding promptly to recruiting questionnaires when you receive them from coaches.

Included below is some additional detailed information regarding when you should start the recruitment process as a prospective student-athlete. We’ll discuss what the recruitment process timeline is like from the perspective of a collegiate coach, as well as cover helpful information on what you can do as a prospective student-athlete to better your chances of being awarded an athletic scholarship.

Coaches Typical Recruitment Timeline

All coaches have their own, tailored recruitment schedule that they generally follow. Detailed below is when and how these schedules are utilized.

Early Recruitment: Early recruitment isn’t something that is all that common, but is often utilized by coaches at the most prestigious programs upon discovering young elite talent. In the typical recruiting time frame, coaches are allowed to seek communication with a prospective student-athlete around the end of their sophomore year or beginning of junior year. But, some prospective student-athletes receive verbal offers as early as middle school. For coaches, offering athletes in this ‘early recruitment’ period is a practice typically reserved for top tier athletes that are highly touted nationwide. Most coaches, if possible, prefer to form a relationship with prospective student-athletes, rather than simply making offers solely based on their athletic ability.

Identifying Recruits: Beyond early recruiting, the first step in the recruitment process from the perspective of coaches, is evaluating prospective student-athletes. This includes sending out both questionnaires and camp invites as a way to generate a pool of prospective recruits. Once coaches have developed an initial pool of prospects, which could be up to thousands athletes, they truly begin the recruitment process. These initial evaluations and questionnaires will provide coaches with some basic information about each of these prospective student-athletes such as their size and weight, allowing for coaches to begin narrowing down their pool of prospects.

Evaluations: After a coach has formulated his or her initial pool of recruits, they begin the evaluation process. With such a wide pool of recruits, coaches begin basic evaluations by looking at prospective student-athlete’s statistics and film. Just a brief look at these will let a coach know whether or not specific athletes are skilled enough for a coach to continue recruiting them. If not, coaches will often remove specific athletes from their pool of potential recruits and evaluate other options.

Communication and Visits: After coaches make their evaluations of prospective student-athletes, they will begin to reach out and communicate with specific prospects and their families. For coaches, the recruiting process extends far beyond simply identifying exceptional talent, as coaches seek to develop a strong relationship with athletes. By doing this, coaches are better able to understand and identify prospective student-athlete’s intangible traits such as character and personality. Following some basic communication, coaches may begin extending invites to both official and unofficial visits.

Extending Offers: After a combination of evaluations and visits, coaches will begin making offers to athletes whom they desire to fill their roster spots. Upon receiving an offer, these athletes will often have a limited amount of time to decide whether or not they want to accept a scholarship offer and join that program.

Coaches typically follow a recruiting timeline somewhat similar to the one presented here. What’s important to remember is that the sooner you fill out recruiting questionnaires and build your own personalized recruiting profiles, the faster you will advance in the recruitment process. Make sure to be proactive.

What Should You Do To Be Recruited

While the recruitment process is ultimately in the hands of collegiate coaches, your effort and input make a huge difference. If you fill out appropriate recruitment materials as well as do your part in reaching out, you most likely won’t go unnoticed. Below are some helpful tips that may eventually land you a scholarship offer.

Get Started Early: As a high school athlete, it’s important to learn about and understand the recruitment process early so that you avoid falling behind. With that being said, be sure that you understand the NCAA’s academic requirements for prospective student-athletes and that you are taking the correct courses. Having a background understanding of how the recruitment process works going into it is extremely beneficial.

Create Recruiting Profiles and Complete Questionnaires: Creating and keeping up with recruiting profiles, even on free websites, is a great way to boost awareness of yourself as an athlete. Additionally, filling out recruiting questionnaires is another great way to get noticed. Be sure to keep up with your email inbox and fill out questionnaires whenever you receive them. Coaches use these quite often, and filling these out is a great way to find your way into a coach’s pool of potential recruits.

Reach Out To Coaches: Unless you are an undisputed top recruit, you get as much out of the recruiting process as you put into it. Coaches phone numbers and emails can often be easily found on school websites and the athletic directory. Utilize these resources and express your interest in a coach’s program via either email or phone. As long as you are willing to put in the effort to get noticed, coaches will often reciprocate your interest.

These are just a few helpful suggestions of ways you can bring awareness to yourself as a prospective student-athlete. While these aren’t the only ways to bring attention to you as a recruit, being proactive in filling out questionnaires and profiles can go a long way. Keep in mind that the more you put into the recruiting process, the more you get out of it.

Things To Keep In Mind

Be Proactive: Being proactive is essential in the recruiting process. For the most part, the responsibility of getting recruited falls much more so on the athlete rather than coach. In rare cases, such as for top recruits, getting recruited is primarily about raw athletic ability. For most athletes, however, much of the recruitment process is done outside of the field or court. Thousands of athletes have the athletic ability to compete at the highest level of collegiate athletics, but only so many get that opportunity.

Maintain Academic and Athletic Achievement: No matter how many recruiting profiles and questionnaires you fill out, the whole reason that you are being recruited boils down to your performance in your sport and in the classroom. Specifically, when discussing your work in the classroom, maintaining a high GPA as a prospective student-athlete can serve as a huge asset. When coaches are recruiting, they look for athletes who pose little risk if they are to join their program. Having a high GPA and establishing to a coaching staff that you are proficient in the classroom means there is one less risk that a coach has to take into account.

Don’t Be Discouraged: One of the most important things you can do within the recruiting process is to avoid getting discouraged. There are hundreds of thousands of high school students who play sports every year, yet don’t move on to compete at the collegiate level. There are plenty of colleges and universities out there that are looking for athletes just like you, but the problem is that it’s on you as a prospective student-athlete to find them. As long as you continue to strive for excellence both in your sport and in the classroom, as well as fill out other materials such as recruiting profiles and questionnaires, you will find an opportunity to compete at the next level in your sport.