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The following article is sponsored by National Scouting Report. Visit NSR’s web site at http://www.nsr-inc.com/
COLLEGE PROSPECTS SHOULD KEEP THEIR OPTIONS OPEN
One of the first questions I ask potential college prospects is: How far are you willing to travel to play college sports?
Many times, those high school athletes respond: “I want to stay close to home.”
Wrong answer.
Right answer: “I’m open-minded.”
Thousands of colleges offer athletic and academic scholarships to high school athletes. By limiting themselves to schools close to home, prospects are ruling out more than 90 percent of the colleges that have a chance to recruit them.
Why do that?
It’s understandable why high school athletes want to play close to home. Their families can watch them play more often, and they could have more opportunities to return home on weekends and school breaks. However, if prospects want the most scholarship offers, resulting in the most scholarship money, they need to keep their options open.
Just like college sports, college recruiting is all about competition. Even if a prospect has no interest in a particular school, he or she should want to receive a scholarship offer from that school. That way the bar is set. Schools in which he or she is really interested likely would have to match or beat that offer.
If a prospect receives just one college offer, he or she has only two choices: take it or leave it. If he or she receives multiple offers, then the prospect has an advantage.
What’s more, if high school athletes don’t keep their options open, how would they know if colleges in other parts of the country have any interest in them? High school athletes on the East Coast could be passing up opportunities at Stanford or Southern Cal. High school athletes in the North could be passing up opportunities at Duke or North Carolina.
Why do that?
Once they receive offers, prospects make the final decision where they want to go. If they keep their options open, they could choose between the best academic schools, best athletic programs, best scholarship offers or schools closest to home.
Who knows? They could have the best of all worlds.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
National Scouting Report, the world’s oldest and largest college recruiting organization, has received hundreds of requests from college coaches seeking 2017-20 prospects on all levels. More than 95 percent of NSR’s qualified prospects receive scholarship offers. To begin the college recruiting process, contact NSR Area Director Gary Silvers, former Executive Sports Editor of the Bucks County Courier Times, at (215) 480-8764 or gsilvers@nsr-inc.com.