Athletic Recruiting with The Student-Athlete Advisors – College Bound Mentor Podcast #19

Welcome to the College Bound Mentor podcast! Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all.

This is Episode #19 and you’ll hear how to go about athletic recruiting with The Student-Athlete Advisors Katie Andersen & Reid Meyer. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re enjoying the show!

• Episode Summary & Player
• Show Notes
• Learn more about the College Bound Mentor podcast
• Transcript

College Bound Mentor Podcast Episode #19: Athletic Recruiting with The Student-Athlete Advisors

Want to continue your athletic career into college? It can set the stage for the experience of a lifetime – or turn into a nightmare, if you’re not careful. In this episode, we welcome on special guests Katie Andersen & Reid Meyer of The Student-Athlete Advisors. They’re part of the team of experienced consultants, former coaches, and former student-athletes dedicated to providing personalized college prep guidance for student-athletes. Hear how athletic recruiting can affect your college experience, how to find the college that’s right for you, how to proactively reach out to coaches, why it’s important to remember you’re more than just an athlete, and why athletic recruiting is a marathon, not a sprint. This episode covers everything from getting serious about sports to emailing coaches. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

• How does the athletic recruiting process work?
• What steps should you take as an aspiring college athlete?
• How do student-athletes get seen by coaches?
• What should you include in an email to a college coach?
• How do you interpret coach speak?
• What are some keywords to include in an email to a college coach?
• How much does athletic recruiting help in admissions?
• What are some myths & truths about athletic recruiting?

Connect with Katie & Reid on LinkedIn and at TheStudentAthleteAdvisors.com, and Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com.

Check out the episode and show notes below for much more detail.

Show Notes

• Athletic Recruiting with The Student-Athlete Advisors
  • [0:19] Welcome to College Bound Mentor
  • [0:23] Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, Stefanie Forman
  • [0:30] Connect with Katie & Reid on LinkedIn and at TheStudentAthleteAdvisors.com, and Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com
  • [1:08] Were Katie & Reid college athletes?
  • [5:50] How does the athletic recruiting process work?
  • [7:42] What steps should you take as an aspiring college athlete?
  • [16:05] How do student-athletes get seen by coaches?
  • [19:23] What should you include in an email to a college coach?
  • [24:48] What are some keywords to include in an email to a college coach?
  • [26:00] How does athletic recruiting work in the Ivy League?
  • [28:44] How do you interpret coach speak?
  • [35:19] How much does athletic recruiting help in admissions?
  • [43:25] How are NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) and the Transfer Portal impacting college athletics?
  • [46:10] What are some myths & truths about athletic recruiting?
  • [50:19] Connect with Katie & Reid on LinkedIn and at TheStudentAthleteAdvisors.com, and Subscribe to College Bound Mentor on your favorite podcast platform and learn more at CollegeBoundMentor.com
  • Theme Song: “Happy Optimistic Americana” by BDKSonic

What is the College Bound Mentor podcast?

Lisa, Abby, and Stefanie know college. They also know students. With over 30 years combined experience mentoring young people, they’ll show you why understanding yourself is the key to finding the right college. Each episode, hear trends, case studies, and interviews with students who have gone through it all – giving you valuable insight to survive the college application process and beyond. Hosted by Lisa Bleich, Abby Power, and Stefanie Forman, Partners of College Bound Mentor.

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Reid Meyer 0:01
The first thing I think for any kid, the most important thing for any kid is to understand that a coach isn’t just gonna find you. Hey.

Lisa Bleich 0:19
Hey CBMers, welcome back to College Bound Mentor, where we help you survive the college application process and beyond. We’re your co-hosts, Lisa

Abby Power 0:26
Abby, and Stefanie and on today’s

Lisa Bleich 0:29
episode, we’re excited to welcome The Student-Athlete Advisors. The Student-Athlete Advisors is a group of experienced consultants, former coaches and former student athletes dedicated to providing personalized college prep guidance for student athletes on today’s episode, we have Katie Andersen from Dana Point, California, and Reid Meyer from Houston, Texas, formerly of Austin, Texas, Joe Slater and Amy Bryant could not join us today, but they’re based in Sacramento and Atlanta, so we’re super excited to have you on our show, and we’re going to discuss the ins and outs of athletic recruiting and how it can factor into your college experience. Just to kind of get us off the bat, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your own experience. Were you guys college athletes, and how did you get interested in this niche?

Katie Andersen 1:14
I can start. This is Katie Anderson, thank you. And so I started. I played three sports in high school. I was I played volleyball, I played soccer and I ran track. When I got to my junior year of high school, I told my parents I wanted to try to get recruited. I went through the recruiting process for both volleyball and soccer. I was recruited at Brown for volleyball and Duke for soccer. Duke was starting a first women’s soccer team thanks to, you know, Title Nine starting to emerge as well as our basketball team that had done really well. So I chose to go to Duke. I was on their very first women’s team. I, you know, things went really well. My freshman year, played every minute of every game. It was great my sophomore year, you know, the first team was made up of 10 freshmen. My sophomore year, he recruited a whole bunch more freshmen, and now we were, you know, most of the girls who were playing club were no longer really playing much, and I kind of saw my playing time get cut in half. So I saw the writing on the wall, and decided at the end of my sophomore year to say, thank you so much. This has been a great opportunity, but I’d like to move on. So I went on to be a regular student. I went to study abroad in Australia. I came back, I worked for the school newspaper, and I was an RA on a senior Hall. So when I decided to start my business after after college, I worked in high tech in the software industry for many years, lived in the United States and Amsterdam and Norway, and when I came back and we had started a family, I sort of decided I wanted to do something on my own. So I got into college counseling, I got my certificate at UCLA Extension, and decided that I wanted to focus on the student athlete population. So I made everything about what I did. This was probably 12 years ago when I started, and there weren’t many people at that time who were both college counselors and doing athletics recruiting. But over the years, especially in the last few years, I met Reid and Joe and Amy, and they all had really interesting backgrounds and very similar philosophy to my own, and so I asked them to join me in the student athlete advisors. Excellent.

Lisa Bleich 3:23
Henry. What about you?

Reid Meyer 3:25
Yeah, hey guys. So yeah, Reid, based down in Texas. Similar college experience, I would say to Katie, slightly different high school experience. I was all baseball all the time. So I grew up in the specialization era where you did one thing, you did it for 12 months out of the year, and if you weren’t doing it for 12 months out of the year, you didn’t care enough. And my first sort of dip into the recruiting process was Stanford, Dartmouth, Harvard. And then they got a hold of my test scores, my transcripts, and then that shifted slightly in the later part of my my recruiting career. So ended up going to Texas Tech University. Here at home, it was a big 12 school. They rob for me money. My eyes went blank. Yes, of course. I’ll do that. About three weeks in, I realized that I got nothing bad to say about Texas Tech University, but for me, it wasn’t the right fit. I was letting baseball in my sport kind of drive a lot of what that decision making process was going to be. And found out very quickly. That’s not necessarily the only life you can stand on when you’re trying to have a college experience. So I ended up going to four schools in three and a half years. Played baseball at the first two, played at Texas Tech University, which was division one big 12, played at Weatherford College, which was a division one Junior College. Burnt myself out pretty effectively after that, and decided to go to UT, Austin as a full time students. So transferred to UT, ended up getting my undergraduate. My master’s there. My master’s focused, actually on youth sport development and public policy, so focusing a lot on sort of that elite youth sport into college transition, and trying to understand why we care so much about that, and why families will spend $40,000 for a $10,000 A return on a scholarship, and why we’ve made that okay, but yeah, that’s kind of my, my sort of relationship with that. I actually started this, started working in this space, sort of the tail end of my master’s program. This was something that was a personal passion of mine. It was something I was trying to figure out for sort of my own personal reasons. And then, you know, would speak with other athletes in that space and realized, similar to what Katie did, of like, anybody who’s bridging the gap between these two things. There’s folks that’ll help you with academics, there’s folks that’ll help you with recruiting, and there’s nobody that really wants to blend those two things together and find the right fit. So started working with with kids in that capacity, obviously found Katie or Katie found me, depends on the story, and the rest is history. So

Lisa Bleich 5:40
it’s interesting that both of you guys started off as recruited athletes and then ultimately didn’t stick with it, which we can talk about a little bit later. But if you could just walk us through the athletic recruiting process, from a big picture standpoint, we know it’s a very complex process, and it differs a little bit between d1 d2 and d3 and can you just walk us through that a little bit,

Reid Meyer 6:01
I think, in the broadest sense, when I try to describe the recruiting process to anybody, whether it be family and webinar or whatever it really is, it’s the process of building a relationship with somebody. I mean, that’s really what it comes down to. I think a lot of people see it as a very transactional operation. And for some sports and for some divisions that that may be a bit more of the case, but for 98% of kids that are going through this process, it is, it’s, it’s almost like a matchmaking, matchmaking process, in the same way that we talk about the college process as a whole, right? So you’re trying to understand coaches philosophies, you’re trying to understand where these schools are, you’re trying to understand how they compete, where they compete, when they compete, and you’re trying to match that with what your expectations are in relationship to the sport that you play. I think a lot of kids have different ideas. Maybe they, you know, most kids come to a lot of us with the expectation of, like, I want to play the biggest, baddest program I can. This is what I’ve done. This is what we do. We train and then over the process of working with them and over the process of them kind of having that self reflection of, you know, what do I really want to get out of my entire college experience? We really help to kind of get you get to the bottom of, what do you really want this to look like? How do you want your sport to really mesh in with your whole college experience? And from there, it’s trying to identify and connect with programs and coaches that align with what that philosophy is. And so to me, it’s it’s sort of that it’s learning how to advocate for yourself, and it’s learning how to build those relationships with people, to understand what your opportunities are in the, I guess, the broadest sense.

Lisa Bleich 7:32
So a division one student, you’re going to start sort of identifying where you are sports wise, if you’re good enough to play like, what are just some of the steps that someone should take if they’re thinking, I want to do d1 I think I want to do d1 what are the steps like, I usually will say, go on if it’s a if it’s a runner, go on to the roster and see what the times are, and see where you stand with that. If you’re a tennis player, what’s your UTR rating, kind of, what are some of the nitty gritty things that someone should think about, if they’re d1 versus d3 and how they can frame if they’re even going to be able to be an athlete, a recruited

Katie Andersen 8:08
athlete, by sport, those metrics can vary widely. You really need to know, you know what? So we’ll just use some of the sports that you just mentioned there. Tennis, for example, your UTR means a lot. You know who you are as a as an athlete, often is comes down to that one number, which is maybe fortunate or unfortunate, I’m not sure. But you can go into the UTR website, and you can dig around and say, Hey, I think I really want to go to Stanford. And then you look up Stanford, and you see that your UTR is absolutely nowhere near it needs to be, to be on the roster at Stanford. And then you think, okay, maybe I better look a little further down the scale of division one schools, if you’re you know, you have to know what kind of school, what kind of school, meaning academic again, your financial situation. How does that factor into all those things? So if you can define a list of, say, 10 to 20 schools, if you’re doing this research on your own, and then go look up those schools and say, okay, am I good enough to make this team? And I can promise you that if you’re not in at tennis, for example, if you’re not in those top six. So the UTR website will list the top six players on a roster. If your UTR is nowhere near those top six. You’re probably looking in the wrong place. So you need to kind of look further down the list to see which schools are a good fit swimming, cross country and track, time based sports. Same. Same thing applies, right? There are specific websites that you would go to, and I wouldn’t just recommend looking up individual rosters. Go to the you know, track and field. Go to the the College Track and Field database, and look up, you know, the athletes who are running time similar to you, even though you might be in high school again. To get recruited, you want to be in that top group. You don’t want to be at the bottom. The list, coach is not going to be recruiting you and giving you support and admissions. If your times fit at the bottom of a list, you really need to be towards the top of the list for the coach to give you active support in admissions. It will also help you define whether you are you know, a lot of athletes are actually somewhere in between maybe a lower end ranked division one program and a higher ranked Division Three program, right? Lots of times you’re not just one or the other, you’re in between and division two as well. Like, there’s, you know, there’s a lot of kids that are kind of hit that range of schools. So you’ve got to, you know, do your homework on those programs. Swim cloud for swimmers, it is the best tool out there for swimmers to identify are, am I a reasonable fit with this school? They actually have a really cool if you get a membership on swim cloud, they will tell you you can filter in and zero straight in on where your times fit with the current roster at any school in the country. So Team B sports lot harder. So I work with a lot of soccer players, team based. Sports much harder to identify. However, we do have some guidelines. I can tell you that you know, many of those d1 programs are recruiting, so let’s just take women’s soccer. You’ve got Girls Academy and ECNL are the two biggest, most competitive levels of soccer out there. If you are hoping to go for a d1 school and you’re not playing in one of those groups of club teams, you’re not to say that it’s impossible. I never say never, but your chances go down significantly, right if you’re trying to go d1 now, and Division Two is also very, very competitive, and you’re going to find that most kids playing Division Two soccer are probably also playing either Girls Academy or or AC and L. Again, Division Three can kind of be a mix. You might find some low ranked division three teams that are open to recruiting other, you know, players playing at various levels, because there’s lots of levels within, you know, within club the club soccer world. So this is only to just give a couple of specific examples of how hard it can be to zero in on the right athletic fit for a family, and that has to be also be meshed together with the right financial fit, the right academic fit, the right social fit, so that that’s where things get even harder, right when you’re trying to find all of those things in one school, and oftentimes kids do need to compromise. Very few kids get to say, I got everything I wanted in in one school, right? Oftentimes, there is a compromise there. Like you say,

Reid Meyer 12:33
we have sort of qualitative and quantitative sports, right? The quantitative sports, I would argue, are a little bit easier to zero in on only because the numbers are there. We can see what kids are running, we can see how kids are swimming. We can see those things and we can compare. Which is great team sports is where you get a little bit more of that nuance. And I think couple things sort of maybe even on the coaching side, to add to what Katie already said, which was great is having honest interactions with the coaches that you’re working with, those folks, if you’re playing for teams that are competing in spaces that have kids that are being recruited, you can have an honest conversation with a coach, and a coach should have the ethical consideration to give you honest feedback. Here’s where I see you, here’s where you can improve. Here’s where you know your strengths are, and give you kind of an assessment of where that is, and then knowing on the back end that, because we define these sort of team sports as qualitative. A lot of that has to do with the fact that those coaches are determining what their priorities are. What roster needs do they have on a year to year basis? What do they want? And I know for baseball, especially like you think you look at different positions, I was a pitcher. Some people want guys to throw fast. Some people want guys to throw strikes 60% of the time. Some people want folks that have really great pick off moves. Some people want folks that can do a hit. Like, it’s the same thing as, you know, we equate it to speed dating a lot of the time, like, you can be a great catch and a wonderful person, but if the person across the table only likes red hats and you’re blonde, we’re at a crossroads here, and that just is what it is. So it doesn’t really even sometimes have anything to do with your ability or your quality, but it just has to do with is this the right fit? And so I think one of the things that we talk to a lot of our kids about is like, we’re going to help you identify what those best possible options are, but then you have to have sort of the guts and the gusto to put yourself out there and allow yourself to be evaluated by these coaches, to know what the opportunities really are. And that, to me, is where the rubber meets the road is. You never know what a coach thinks, unless you are the one to put yourself in front of that coach. I’m

Katie Andersen 14:25
so glad that Reid brought up this issue of what a coach thinks, what a coach’s goals are for their team is so critical to this process. I’ve got plenty of kids who come from top ranked soccer teams, right? They’re playing at a very high level. They’ve got the resume, and they still don’t get recruited by the schools that they want. And a lot of that goes back to what the coaches priorities were. Does this kid play a style of soccer that fits with the the style of soccer that the coach is looking for? What are their recruiting recruiting needs for that class? Class. We haven’t talked about the transfer portal yet, but you know, the transfer portal is throwing a giant wrench into recruiting plans, and so coaches are. I just went to the Final Four for women’s soccer back in North Carolina, and listening to the number of kids that were recruited through the transfer portal who are now playing in these in the top four teams in the country, it was kind of crazy. The UNC women’s soccer team had a lot of transfer students on it. Part of that was, you know, a problem that happened in the last year or so. But yeah, the transfer portal throws a giant wrench for the kids who are in high school trying to get recruited in as first year students, and then they’re pulling in seniors and graduate students off of other teens, right? And there’s no way to anticipate those things. So as a student athlete going through this process, you have to just put your best self out there and hope that you are the right match for the person sitting across the table and the speed dating, it’s just,

Lisa Bleich 15:54
I mean, it’s just like college, it’s the same idea, right? You know, it’s like whatever the institutional priority are, and you don’t know what’s going on behind that. And so it’s really hard to make that decision. That decision, yeah, how

Speaker 1 16:04
do kids get seen by coaches? And this could be kind of, we’ll use soccer as an example. So these are the students, or, like, what Reid you were saying 12 months a year, the kids who are playing on those club teams who know what they’re doing, and then also, like maybe the soccer player who’s the goalie on a top nationally ranked team, but as a three sport athlete maybe isn’t paying as much attention to the recruiting process too. So how do all these different students get seen by coaches, and how can they be proactive in this process? The first

Reid Meyer 16:37
thing I think, for any kid, the most important thing for any kid is to understand that a coach isn’t just going to find you, or you can never assume that a coach is going to find you. You can be the best player on your team. You can be the best player in your city. You can be the best player in your region. There are 2 million high school kids that graduate that are playing in high school sports right now. Now that’s across multiple sports, obviously, but there’s a lot of people, and we are now a global society. Everybody can get online and they can see 78 lists of 42 different people in three different regions, of eight different I mean, I’m exhausted just saying those words to you. So coaches coach because they love to coach. They they don’t want to go sit in front of a computer. Maybe they have somebody that they’ve hired, if they have the budget for it all three schools, they can afford it, to do the analytics on it and break it down and all that kind of stuff. But really, what it comes down to is coaches know they have needs. They want to coach, they want to be on the field, the rank, wherever they are, and you have to be the one to put yourself in front of them. So you have to be the one to create opportunities for yourself. And there’s a lot of companies and organizations right now that will charge you lots of money to put you on lists and put you on platforms and push you out to schools, and once again, that goes to a spam folder for a coach that gets deleted. I mean, Katie, you might know of one. I’ve yet to find one of those platforms that is useful to any capacity with those coaches, because, again, you know, their motivation is a numbers game, and that’s just more people getting funneled into the inboxes of these coaches that they have a spam blocker for. They’re not, they’re not going to worry about any of that. So what kids can do is they can create materials for themselves, whether that be a, you know, personalized profile page and a PDF form. You know, I like to tell my kids a lot to use a Twitter account because it’s free and it’s easy and you have all the base information you need with videos and bios and links and all that kind of stuff. Some teams use Instagram, I know is another one that’s getting more and more popular. Yes, remember the people the coaches are usually like, 3540 plus. And so they picked their social media account 2010, years ago, and then they stuck with it because it’s easy and they know it. You know, video components, having video available, and then, and then, directly contacting those coaches, right? The biggest thing is emailing those coaches, connecting with them as directly as possible, as the individual not doing it, not mom and dad sending it, not a representative sending it, not putting it through a profile that looks pretty and all. They don’t need pretty they need you. And they need to see what you can do, and they need to understand what value you can bring to the team and understand that you are eligible academically to do whatever it is you’re telling them you’re doing. And they need to be able to see video and see what you look like in that space and in that sport. Direct to consumer, DTC, direct to consumer, direct to coach. On on this what is the number one thing, well,

Stefanie Forman 19:21
so what’s in that email? Like, how’s, what should they put in that email? So I

Katie Andersen 19:26
like to start, I have, I give kids a general template that is really just helping them guide, you know, writing a very simple summary, you know, I am. My name is. I play the sport I am, you know, putting in some academic information, what high school do you go to? Where are you located, what position do you play? Club team, what club team do you play for? Again, any numbers, any like your roster number associated with that, and when are you graduating, GPA, test scores, all of that information. Can be written very concisely in like two sentences. Coaches don’t read they scan. So I really tell kids to keep it sweet and keep it short. You do not need to give them a giant, long resume. Your subject line on that is also critical, putting critical factors in that subject line so that a coach knows that you are academically qualified, athletically qualified, possibly even financially qualified, depending, depending on your scenario to be even you know like putting yourself out there to those types of schools after that first initial introduction, then you want to just go with a resume style bullet point list of athletic accomplishments, and again, top five, maybe athletic accomplishments in terms of what it is you’ve done in a time based sport. You’re going to want to list your maybe top three PRs, you know, your personal best efforts on on for a time based sport, for a team based sport, you’re you’re going to definitely want to highlight what team you played for, if you’ve won any big tournaments, if you know how you are ranked nationally or regionally. Again, your position, you play any stats related to that position. Those are all critical details for my higher academic kids who are really going after those super high academic schools? Make sure you give them the profile with all the data points you can to say I am academically qualified. I had a kid the other day who had already taken calc BC as a sophomore and got fives on his AP exams. You have he hasn’t even taken, or actually he did take the SAT, and he got a near perfect score, right? So he’s got his GPA weighted and unweighted. He’s got his test scores. He’s got AP scores, even though APS aren’t really considered at most places for admissions. Again, it’s just another number that says I’m I’m okay, you know, I’m coming to your school. Most coaches aren’t necessarily going to care about your activities list, sort of, you know, extracurricular accomplishments. But if you are a multi sport athlete, and you’re looking at Division three schools where your multi sport you know athletics might be even a possibility, that you may be able to play two sports, some of those details, especially if you’ve had great accomplishments, there are just more you know information that a coach can see your athleticism and and your commitment And the kind of stuff that you’ve been doing, obviously your video is critical putting a hyperlink to video. Now that video could be in your Instagram or Twitter account, or it could also be on YouTube. Those are the sort of the favorites that I like to you know, I like YouTube because you can upload longer video there. Sometimes coaches may want to see full game footage. And so if you’ve got everything on a YouTube account, you could have short, little three to five minute highlight films, but you can also have full game footage all in one place. The the social media accounts tend to crop the you know you’re you’re limited on the amount of time you’ve got for video there. Obviously you’re going to hyperlink to in that email to any social media accounts you would hope that the coaches would follow. And if you want to say something about what it is you’d like to study, or, you know, why? Again, personalizing, give a little bit of information about why you chose that school. Why? How does that school fit your goals? You know, if you can write something that’s a little bit personal to that to each coach. I think that’s always really helpful. You know, an introduction email might look a little different from I’m getting ready to come to a tournament email, but if you’re going to attend, say, a big showcase tournament, obviously you’re going to want to just highlight again, I’m at, you know, put the showcase tournament name in the subject line, and then make sure that you’ve got the details around what fields you’re going to be on, or courts you’re going to be on, or, you know, depending on the sport time location, who you’re playing against. Again, coaches usually in that week or two prior to a big tournament where they’re going to be going to show up to evaluate kids, making it very easy for them to see, you know, where, what field you’re going to be on. And if they’re already looking at kids who are going to be at that game, you know, every kid who’s, you know, potential good fit for their program, they’ll, you know, if they’ve heard from 10 of the kids on these teams who are trying to get recruited, you know, the likelihood that they’ll show up on your sideline versus somebody else’s sideline is at least goes up. You know, you really want to make it bullet pointy as much as possible. Don’t rely right big, long paragraphs. Oftentimes, coaches will have filters and things on their email accounts that are scanning for keywords, so try to put as many of those keywords in your email as possible, so that you know their email filters are picking up on that stuff and maybe giving priority to your email over somebody else’s email.

Lisa Bleich 24:43
Interesting. What are some keywords like, what might be an example of a keyword that somebody Well, again,

Katie Andersen 24:49
it depends on the sport. Depends on, you know, if you’re going to a big tournament like soccer, for example, right there, there may be multiple soccer tournaments happening at the same time across the country, so make sure. Make it clear which tournament you’re going to be at, what your club team name is. Again, if you’re all state, this, all region, that, all league, something or other, you play for your national team. You are play ODP, Olympic development, pro, you know, like there are so many of those kind of term terms in each sport that you would definitely want to highlight and make visible in an email that’s and sometimes I’ll even have kids bold certain keywords in their email, just again to make them pop a little more off the page, because, again, coaches are scanning. They’re not reading. So you know, definitely making those things pop off of a page can be helpful.

Lisa Bleich 25:39
So smart, so smart. Before COVID, there was something I want, I think, was the academic index right for IVs. What happened to that is that still a thing like since testing is now they’re requiring it again. Has that will you think will go back to having the academic index like it was before, or used to be two thirds test scores and 1/3 transcript?

Katie Andersen 26:01
From what I heard. I just recently spoke with a former Ivy League coach who said that the the index is still a thing, how it’s being utilized. I think it’s always been a bit of a mystery. Every article I’ve ever read about it has never they’ve it’s all been sort of hearsay. I don’t know that anybody has super clear understanding of exactly how it’s being utilized. But yes, there are, and it’s not just grades and test scores. I think there are other factors that get meshed in there as well, like whether you know where a student is in, that you know how they’re ranked within their high school, whether they’re in a rural location or not rural location. You know, I’ve heard that there are, there are many different factors that an Ivy League school might consider. But I, again, I always just tell families that there is this index, rather, to be careful about the language I choose with families because, because there is no, you know, again, it’s not a published document that says this is exactly how we do things. I try to say that there is this ivy league academic index that exists, and you as a potential prospective student athlete will be evaluated on we know at least these factors, but there may be other factors. And I have had kids go through this process with the ivys, and they’re getting recruited, and the coaches are really proactive, and then all of a sudden it’s like ghost town on communication. And part of it is like, yes, you’re academically qualified, yes, you’re athletically qualified. But there’s some other thing here in this index number that coaches are having to manage, not only within their own team but across their entire college athletics program that may be affecting it, and you will never know about what that is, because coaches will never tell you, right? These are all internal discussions that are happening in the back room. You know, I just kind of warn families that there’s a lot that can happen with the IVs that you may not, may not make sense, and you will probably never know if you were affected by that, if your recruiting efforts were affected by it,

Reid Meyer 28:03
what I tell families is, like it exists. You can’t do anything about it in the same I mean, you can control your grades, you can control your test scores, you can control the kind of person you are, but if they want you there, that index will probably work. And if they don’t want you there more than somebody else, something will go wrong with the index, and so you just, you’re, you’re beholden to this phantom thing.

Lisa Bleich 28:25
One of the things you mentioned about was the idea that the coaches won’t tell you, but there is a lot of what I would say, coach speak, you know, in terms of, if I’m supporting your application, you can play if you get in on your own. Can you walk us through a little bit of the coach speak and how families can interpret some of the responses they may or may not get back from coaches when

Katie Andersen 28:50
it comes to communicate, initial communication with coaches, when you’re reaching out on email, I lots of times when coaches write back to student athletes, you’re probably going to get a Couple of various different response and I’ll just group them into three different categories. The first category is the pretty, genuinely interested coach who writes back to you with a personal response. Dear, you know, Joe athlete, thank you for reaching out to us. You look like an interesting prospect we are interested in. You know, we’ll be coming to watch you at your next event tournament, whatever that is. We’d really like you. We would like to see you playing at one of our ID camps, because we feel that you could be a strong, you know, strong, a strong candidate. And would, you know, possibly even, would you be interested in? We’d like to talk to you on the phone, right? Some of combination of those things you hear from a coach is a coach who is genuinely interested, a coach who is mildly interested is, thanks so much for reaching out to us. We’ll put you on our watch list. Or please send us updates when you’ve got more information. About your next PR, or you have a time drop, or, you know, whatever that is, we know we’ll, we’ll be at the tournament. We’re not really, you know, we we’ve got a lot of things, you know, things that we’re juggling. Well, you know, good luck, right? That’s like, that’s the medium response. And then the non response is either no response at all, or thanks for contacting us. Please fill out our recruiting form that is a, you know, something that they can say back to you without making any personal effort to respond to you and and show, you know, meaningful interaction towards recruiting. So that’s just all on the, you know, initial sort of, you know, back and forth communication when you’re just starting the process, but then when you get into the further recruiting discussions, especially if you’re being offered offered a spot, and then you start hearing things like, I can support your application and admissions. Well, at a division one school, that might mean something a little different than it does at a division three school, because of just the way that those you know applications work. I recently had a family whose kid was talking to Cal Tech and MIT and the coaches there were very clear. I am happy to run it, you know, I’m super happy to give a pre read to our admissions department and then, and then, if that comes back positive, that’s a good sign for you, but my hands are tied when you know you have to get into our school on your own. And admissions tool said to me that you have a strong application, but that’s not a guarantee of anything. And when you get in contact, me back and we’ll you know, right? So there’s a lot of that reading in between the lines. What does support mean between those very you know, Division One, division two and division three can mean different things. Again, going back to what Reid said earlier, you put your best self out there. You cannot worry about what a coach does or doesn’t do. You know, in the back room you always have an insurance policy, because coaches get fired. Coaches change jobs you get in, you know, you get injured. There are so many things out there that can happen in this process that your only recourse to get through all this, coach, speak, and not putting all of your eggs in one basket, is to make sure that you have your own insurance policy, which is to approach a wide list of schools. You know, until the contract is signed, nothing is done, right? So, you know, always apply. You know, consider a couple of academic only schools where you’re not being recruited, where you can put in applications and make sure that you’re following the rules, right? We don’t want to be, you know, committing to an ED application as an athlete and then thinking that that doesn’t apply to these other schools, right? Like you need to follow the rules, but there’s always, I always say that your own insurance policy is important. I

Reid Meyer 32:46
would just add two caveats to the reach out process. I think when it comes to the responses for coaches, one thing to keep in mind is coaches are bound currently by the NCAA on when and how they can respond to you in certain capacities, which is why, like Katie and myself love to work with kids in that second semester sophomore year, because really, until for the vast majority of schools, until June 15 before junior year, the best coaches can really give you is like a generic email back inviting you to some broad camp, or filling out what you know you may get that questionnaire, that generic questionnaire email on June 10 before your junior year, and then they want to talk to you on the phone on June 16, because that’s all they could send you 10 days ago. That’s something to consider, from a timing perspective, is really you can start having for division one and division two, there’s a very specific timeline that you got to stick to on that. Division Three, for NCAA, has got a wider range on when they can discuss really anything when it comes to that. The other thing to consider is that when it comes to the reach out process for the vast majority of kids, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, which is why we start this early and try to establish those relationships early. And I think specifically for kids that are Gen Z, Gen alpha, like have grown up with phones. Like, the idea of double texting somebody is just the most anxiety ridden thing, if they just think like everyone hates me and no one ever wants to respond to me, and convincing a kid they’re like, no, no. Like, this is how this work. Like I have coaches all the time that will respond to my kids and say, Listen, I waited until you reached out to me three times, four times, to know you actually wanted to be here and you weren’t just sending a blast email to 100 coaches to see who would respond. And that never happens. If the kid convinces themselves that, Oh, I must not be good enough. It would be ridiculous for me to follow up with this coach until you hear a no, or until you’re really getting back the I think what adults can probably better interpret between the lines of, just like filling the gap email and not really, you know, substantive one, then it’s not a no till to know. And then let’s keep pursuing. Let’s see what the options are. Make them tell you that this isn’t going to work. Otherwise, let’s, let’s keep the follow ups coming.

Lisa Bleich 34:48
And also it changes. I mean, I’ve seen that with our clients, where, you know, a coach may not be interested, but then somebody that they thought they were going to get drops out, and so then all of a sudden they reach back out to the students. That maybe was here, but they moved up the list so it is, as you say, Never over till it’s over.

Abby Power 35:06
Do you have a sense? I mean, I’m imagining it varies a lot between division three and division one and among sports. But exactly how much does athletic recruiting help in admissions. I’ve had clients who were seeing sort of medium attention from coaches, and they’ve gotten the message, if you get in on your own, you can play for me things like that at that point, are the coaches putting in a good word? Do you think I don’t

Reid Meyer 35:39
want this to become the theme of the of the podcast today, but this is another one of those like it kind of depends on the on the institution. The broad sense is that most coaches have what we would call supports, flags, whatever you want to sort of call them, to be able to go to the admissions office and say, Hey, this person’s in the wheelhouse. It would be awesome if they were to get into the school, because we really need a goalie. And this person is really, you know, they have some flexibility to do that. The level of flexibility and the number of support items that a coach has varies by sport. It varies by year. It varies by school. What you’re finding is sort of this fluid process of these coaches trying to understand how much leeway they have with the admissions office, within their recruiting board, and then as they get closer to that application period, understanding, okay, here’s what the school is going to let me kind of have from a support structure. Here’s what my flexibility is within these kids. I now need to go back to my recruiting board, understand who my top kids are, understand who I think is most likely to need my help and who is most likely to get in on their own merits, and then sort of balance this board of, how do I maximize the number of recruits that I can get to be options for me with sort of the chess pieces that I have in this space. And some schools are very, sort of concrete about it. They have very good relationships with their admissions offices. You know, Southwestern University is one that comes to mind for me only because we’ve spoke to them like they talk all the time, and they know what those numbers are. Some other places it sounds like, you know, Caltech and some of those other spots, it’s like they’re gonna tell me what the options are here, and then I’m gonna be able to sort of work with what I have at that point. It’s really hard to say whether or not they were playing the long con the whole time. And they were always gonna tell them to, you know, get it on their own mirrors and see what happened. Or if, hey, we thought we had three of these flags, something didn’t go right, or somebody else asked for one to take over. And where the, you know, somebody else asked for an additional one, and we lost it on our side, because we had a kid three years ago that had a 2.6 GPA instead of a 3.5 GPA. That’s all kind of the stuff that happens in the background that you don’t really know about until it comes time to put pen to paper. Katie, have you had different experiences with that? Similar experiences with that?

Katie Andersen 37:59
I think very much the same, you know, you depending on how long a coach has been at the school and the relationship they have with their admissions department, those things are going to vary. I’ve had student athletes who were told by a coach I’m flagging, you know, you’re getting my support and admissions. And then the coach called the Student Athlete the day before the application was due to say, You know what, I’ve got another kid that I’m recruiting who needs my support more than you. And my admissions department told me it was all good, you you can get in on your own, your your application looks rock solid. And then it turns out that the kid that he supported got in, and my student athlete got deferred to the regular round. These are the things that happen. And thankfully, the coach was at least upfront about it, and called my kid beforehand so that they’re mentally I mean, she called me immediately to say, What do I do about this? I’m like, There’s nothing you can do about this, but that coach just at least told you, because he didn’t have to, right? He could have just let it go and see what happens, and then whoop. But these are the kind of things that if student athletes are aware, then they can prepare themselves for what might happen next. Now, in this particular kids instance, when she heard that, she was deferred and then she didn’t get rejected, right? She just got put into the regular round, she wasn’t willing to sit around and wait until March to find out what was going to happen. So she now being released from her early decision contract, went and found a whole bunch of more schools that she had already contacted prior to this who were interested in her, but because she had committed somewhere, you know now she got more opportunities and she ended up at another really highly selective, amazing division three school on an early decision round two application. So again, being aware of the deadlines, being aware of the fact that usually around December 15. I mean, it’s funny that we’re having this conversation on December 16, but many kids of the last couple days. Has just heard that they were either got in or didn’t get in or got deferred from their early decision or early action applications. Coaches who may have been surprised by their admissions departments may be left with a, oh, now I have a hole on my roster. I wasn’t planning to have so student athletes, you know, knowing that timing, being proactive, reaching out and say, I’m an uncommitted senior, I’m able to be recruited, you know, and do being proactive, and in that right now, could help open a few more doors before the next round of applications are due. Everything

Abby Power 40:34
you’re making, saying makes a ton of sense. And when I think of different kids that I’ve worked with, that answers a lot of questions that you know have been happening behind the scenes, but it really is interesting to think about all of the different agendas and incentives that the coaches have. And then your point, I think reed that it really depends on the relationship with the admissions office. So I think what you’re saying is it’s very unpredictable. I think that’s a fair way to

Lisa Bleich 41:03
like everything in college admissions. Everything is unpredictable. I mean, it would be nice if we could predict it.

Reid Meyer 41:08
I think we forget a lot of times. This is the first time the kids are going from you’re playing with your high school, you’re playing with your club, whatever it might be. You know, this is sort of a supplement to what is going on in your life when you go into the college space. These coaches now their livelihoods depend on picking the right kids. Quote, unquote, they get to their families. Get to stay where they are. Their kids get to stay in their school. They don’t get to be questioned and maligned in their small town or big city, depending on you know where they are and what’s going on. So the stakes for the people involved are much higher, and at the end of the day, that coach is going to pick their family over a random recruit or somebody they don’t know that well any day of the week. And so I think a lot of people want to take it personally or assume that, like we have this great conversation, how is this not going well? It’s because this person literally had to make a business decision and something you’ve always interpreted as a passion up until this point. So that transition period sometimes can be tough for families and kids to really get good with in all honesty,

Katie Andersen 42:04
yeah, I try to remind families to put themselves in the coach’s shoes, because they don’t right. They’re very much in their own perspective, and they when the minute you tell them, Okay, I want you to flip this around and put yourself in that coach’s shoes. They’ve got 10 kids. They’ve got 20 kids that they’re trying to narrow down the choices on, and they don’t know, like there’s a lot of chess pieces that they’re trying to work as well. And, like you said, in keeping their own jobs and making sure they recruit the best teams. But I find that getting those families to kind of flip things around a little bit. It’s like when we when we do mock admissions committees to help students and families understand what it feels like to be the one in the room making the decisions on the other side of the table. I think those are, you know, those are important exercises when families feel that they don’t always understand how what that feels like.

Speaker 1 42:55
I think I didn’t realize until doing this, I didn’t realize how unpredictable it was, and when a student was committed to a team. I thought that was it. And then, I mean, yeah, and then decision day comes, and yeah, so I feel for you guys. Lisa shared, she went to Harvard Business School, and she shared an article from her alum magazine that many of their basketball players were transferring to deal in schools that offered scholarships or the ability to make money through NIL, so have you seen this as a trend at all? And you know, how is this impacting transfer students? I

Reid Meyer 43:38
think it’s impacting a lot of 18 to 20 year olds perception on what this is, and depending on who their community of influence is, it can have different effects on different folks. I personally have not looked at the numbers in the Ivy League as compared to other places, or what those transfers look like, I think, more often than not, overall in the Ivy League and similar to like the Patriot League and NESCAC and some places like that. A lot of times those kids kind of know who they are and what they want to do long term. And that tends to lower some of those things like transfer rates and things like that. But for higher revenue sports, football, basketball being the two big ones right now, sometimes baseball, depending on the program, I can see where they would have friends that were in their community, or folks they played au basketball with, or in different leagues with, where they want to go, and they want to sort of test the market, if you will, in certain places. And I think for some of those kids, depending on what the financial situation looks like at a Harvard or or a higher sort of financially obligatory school, you know, depending on what the family situation is, what they’re paying versus what they’re being told they can be be paid at a particular school, that for an 18 to 19 year old might look really appealing in that moment, in that space. And I think a lot of it stems from just a lack of education around what, what n i L or name, image and likeness really is, and the life. Time value of what your nil can do for you as a sort of no name basketball or football player in college, versus somebody who’s walking out with a Harvard degree, insert school here, from wherever. Less so is that a conversation that happens, versus, here’s the piece of paper PDF in front of you that says you can make $2,000 a month and we’ll pay for your books. That feels a lot better in the moment. And so I wouldn’t be surprised if that was something that was happening, and I think a lot of that stems more from a lack of education between those two things than than something that maybe hopefully be kind of a long term trend. Well, the

Lisa Bleich 45:36
article was actually saying they were transferring to Stanford. I mean, it wasn’t like they were going to lesser schools, so they’re going to a Stanford or do,

Reid Meyer 45:45
yeah? So that’s probably, that’s TV, that’s different, that’s more competitive conferences. That makes a lot more sense. Yeah, that, that, to me, makes a lot more sense,

Lisa Bleich 45:52
right? Which is, it also makes you wonder if there’s an opportunity for if you know, a lot of basketball players are leaving Harvard after their first year, maybe then there’s people who want to, want to transfer into the basketball team. You never know, because, as you said, that transfer portal is moving yet we always like to end with kind of like, what are some Myths and Truths About athletic recruiting? So if you want to just give us some some Myths and Truths,

Katie Andersen 46:15
Reed alluded to this earlier, that kids think that coaches will find them and they don’t need to be proactive. But the truth is, student athletes need to be very proactive in order to be in the driver’s seat for the any, any of the things you’re you’re actually in control of in this process, you need to sit down and have an honest conversation with your family and with your coaches and find out where you are most likely going to be a good fit. And you need to be proactive in your you know, reach out to college coaches and again, repeating what Reid said about multiple times, right? This is not a one time email, and then it’s either happening or it’s not. You have to be proactive in this process over and over and over again to show that you are persistent and you’re serious about wanting to play. Now that doesn’t guarantee anything, but it means that you’ve given it your best shot and you’ve done all the right things. So I think that’s sort of one of my the biggest myths in terms of being proactive. And then I think also just getting a gage on being what does it mean to be realistic and that you can’t just pick your 10 favorite schools and write, you know, write to them and then if it doesn’t work, give up on the process. And that happens to a lot of families. I say, you know, they come to me and they say, Well, if I can’t get into these 10 schools and I don’t want to be an athlete, and that’s your choice. That is absolutely your choice. But if you really want to be an athlete in college, you need to cast a wide net over a range of schools at a range of athletic talent, also, you know, a range of academics and possibly, you know, and being realistic with the financial piece as well, to make sure that you and location and size as well. I have kids from Southern California who say I don’t want to go to school further than an hour’s drive from my house. Okay, that range, you just took a whole entire country and shrunk it down a very small number of schools. But if that’s what you want, then that’s fine. But you know, again, taking taking a little broader approach, casting that wide net early, is going to help you understand who’s interested in recruiting you back and hopefully end up with, you know, a positive result on the other side.

Reid Meyer 48:26
Oh, I’ll do my favorite one, because I’m the poster child for do as I say, and not as I did on this one, as athletes and being in that community, it’s really easy to feel like that defines your entire being. I am a baseball player. I’m not someone who plays baseball right? And when it comes to picking a college and when it comes to this process, you have to fight the urge to assume that your sport is going to take care of all of your college needs. It’s really easy to get caught up in the recruiting process and think, Well, I’ll make this work, because I have an opportunity to play my sport. This is all I want to do. This is my passion. This is what I love. I’ll figure out the academics. I’ll figure out the fact that I’m in the middle of Iowa even though I want to live next to water. I’ll figure out the fact that I want to be a physical therapist, but they don’t even offer kinesiology or biology at this program, all these things that you can sort of ho hum yourself into accepting, because this athletic thing is so celebrated in that community, and it’s such an expectation that if you have an opportunity to play, it’d be ridiculous not to that’s not how that works. You can’t build a table with one leg and then expect it to just stand and be okay. And so when you pick these schools, you cannot assume that playing your sport or being in your sport is going to satisfy your whole college experience, and when you’re on the other side of it, and your spouse doesn’t even know you played baseball, and no one who’s hiring you ask you what your era was in college, and nobody who’s friends with you cares that you played for a Big 12 team. It’s easy to understand that, but when you’re 1617, years old, and that’s what your entire. Circle is involved in that’s tough. So that would be my my biggest myth is that is a piece of who you are. It is not all of who you are, and your college decision needs to be commiser to that.

Abby Power 50:10
That makes so much sense.

Lisa Bleich 50:13
Yeah, such great advice. Such great advice. Well, thank you guys so much for being part of our podcast. I really appreciate it. We all really appreciate it. It was such great information, and we will make sure that we have links to your website so people want to reach out to you or get contact for you. We’ll make sure that we have that on our website. Thank you. Thank you so much, Katie and Reid for being part of our podcast. Thank you, CBMers for tuning in for the episode. To catch more episodes of College Bound Mentor, make sure to Follow or Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and tell a fellow parent or student about this podcast. To learn more, visit CollegeBoundMentor.com Until next time, you got this!