College Athletics & Scholarships
Parent Q&A
Archived Q&A and Reviews
College scholarships for high school athlete
Aug 2012
As a single, working parent, what are the steps my son and I must take to help him get recruited with scholarships by four year colleges, as an excellent football player with at least a 2.0 four year GPA and all requirements except three years of different math courses? He is working on that one. Thanks.
search for ''ncaa clearinghouse'' or ''ncaa eligibility center'' --Don
The folks who pointed you to the NCAA Guide for the College-Bound Student Athlete are right and this will give you basic information; your son should also look at NAIA schools as well and the NAIA just recently established their own eligibility center. I don't know what year your son is, but you should go to the NCAA Eligibility Center and he and you should review that and begin to register at least by junior year. Pat
How to find athletic scholarships?
October 2002
I am a single Mom of a soccer player on the varsity team at BHS, My son is quite good at soccer. How do I start looking for contacts with coaches at college level and researching sports scholarships? I'd appreciate knowing how to get started looking into this? Thanks! ......Anon
I'd like to point you first to the NCAA's website for student-athletes in high school:
The NCAA Student Eligibility and Recruiting main website address: http://www1.ncaa.org/membership/membership_svcs/eligibility-recruiting/index.html
The NCAA Guide for the College-Bound Student-Athlete: http://www.ncaa.org/eligibility/cbsa/
Also, the BHS college counselor, Rory, will have an initial registration form to fill out, pay a fee, and send to the NCAA Clearinghouse. If your son is a junior, there's a college handbook which has been mailed to every BHS junior just this week, and read carefully the section on Sports. The Handbook advises that it's important to create a CV of his career as an athlete and soccer player which should include his birthdate, physical stats, any special athletics awards, GPA (to show he can keep up his grades and be an excellent athlete), tournaments his team has won, current and past coaches as reference, if he's left-footed or right-footed or both, positions he's played. The resume should include a photo of him, if possible, and once he's decided what colleges interest him, he should send out a cover letter with his resume and let the Athletics Dept. in each of the colleges know of his interest. Check out the colleges athletics' websites, see who the coaches are, etc. There's one important caution: if you get seriously injured during the junior and senior year, it can hurt your chances of being recruited, so you should look at colleges that will meet his lifestyle and academic needs as much as his sporting needs (as an example, my friend's son went to a college with a nationally top-5 ranked Div. I soccer program, but had a miserable experience because he was out in the midwest in the middle of nowhere in a Jesuit school, but finally he was able to transfer back to California and now plays soccer, not in a Div. I school, but Div. II, is a starter with more more playing time, and is much happier).
There are college reference books written for specific sports, and you can look at Cody's on Telegraph, or Barnes & Noble for a copy, or check the library. Once you find colleges that have good programs, call them and ask your questions: do you need defense, do you need mid-fielders, how many players on the roster. I know of two really good programs in California -- UC Davis is a Div. II school, moved up from Div. III, has a great soccer program, and may move to Div. I within a couple of years; then there's UCSD which is in the same league with Davis.
Good luck to you and your son. --jahlee
I have spent the last couple of years researching basketball scholarships for my son. The web is a great resource--not only the NCAA site but some other sites as well--including some put up by other parents who have been through the process. (A highschool basketball coach told my son to always remember that 1 in 100 high school players are able to play at the college level in any division.)
At any rate, I have also learned that attaining a scholarship is not impossible--but you need to do a lot of (probably most of) the footwork yourself--highschool coaches don't always have the time to promote their athletes as much as they'd like to (and in some cases as much as they might say they are). In addition to a CV, a videotape of your child playing (especially senior year) is crucial. Also--I don't know if this is true of all sports, but college basketball coaches request the tape of an entire game (in addition to highlights) as anyone can usually cut and paste together a great highlight tape. There is also a private college counselor over in Marin who specializes in helping seek out athletic scholarships, although I don't know much about her. Please let me know if you'd like me to dig up her name and number.
And finally, it took me two years to figure out how the relationship between a college athletic coach and a college admissions department works. And it really varies tremendously depending on the school. In some cases they have a lot of pull (even in Division II schools) and in other cases (particularly Division III schools)my experience was that they had very little. If a Cal coach (Division I) wants an athlete badly enough, they prestamp the college application so that it goes into ''it's own pile''.They do this for potential scholarship recruits as well as for any walk-ons they might want at Cal. I'm sure this varies from college to college though, depending on their sports emphasis. And Division I schools like Cal obviously handle things pretty differently.
My best advice? Find parents whose kids are already in college on an athletic scholarship and pick their brains. Also--talk to parents whose kids have ''walked on'' to a college team. And be realistic about what division your kid has a chance of playing in--if you're targeting the right schools you'll obviously have a much better chance of success. College play really is at a whole different level.
It's very confusing--even more than it seems at first. And if you're like me you'll just begin to understand the whole thing when your first child goes off to college!
First of all I would say it’s your job as a partner to set appropriate limits regarding your child. If she isn’t interested in this you and she are not obligated to participate. Listen to your child! As for dance there are several places around that offer scholarships or very low cost fees. Check out Destiny Art and Shawl Anderson. Also there is a dance intensive kids through Alvin Ailey at UC Berkeley every summer https://calperformances.org/community/aileycamp/
Please let your child have some bodily autonomy and be clear with the godparent that this is not working.
I wish I had a solid resource to share with you. To me, this feels like a rational conversation that shouldn't need a lot of evidence: a kid who is 11 or 12 is still going to do what they're told. But if she's not enjoying this, she's just going to resent it and resent her dad for forcing it on her. And he wants her to keep this up for the next seven years? At some point she's just going to quit. Or injure herself.
NCA Sports has a decent FAQ on scholarships in general: https://www.ncsasports.org/recruiting/how-to-get-recruited/scholarship-facts
But honestly, the conversation I would have with dad is closer to: she is going to excel at things that she loves. And that is a better way to get scholarships, overall.
Track scholarships are extremely hard to come by - most schools actually will have times on the website for consideration that you could look at. Most teams split the money among many kids so it would only be a partial scholarship. It doesn’t sound like the dad is going to listen to much though. I’m not sure who would provide this type of service. I would just be there for the kid as much as you can!
It is great that you are looking out for your goddaughter, and you've received some good advice. To throw in another perspective, I ran cross country and track from junior high to sophomore year in college with pretty good success (state champion (not California), state record holder, ran at multiple Junior Olympic championships, lettered in cross country at Big 10 university). Because I had a full academic scholarship, I didn't receive an athletic scholarship, but many of my friends on the track and cross country teams did. While an athletic scholarship can open doors to colleges that normally might not be attainable for many kids (UCLA, Harvard, etc.) and can provide a way for young people to attend college that might otherwise not be able to afford to, it is actually a stressful position to be in because scholarships can be reduced or taken away for poor performance or sustained injury.
In addition, running is a sport that you really have to be passionate about because it involves sustained pain (middle to long distance running does anyways!). So if your goddaughter doesn't love to run, she won't be a "track star" and needs to be voicing her opinions about what she would rather spend her time doing.