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The way Brandon Sizemore figured it, his basketball career had come to a near-perfect, albeit unwanted, ending.

The recent Newport graduate, a scrappy sparkplug on an overachieving team, had helped the Wildcats to an improbable run to the state tournament at Rupp Arena.

But he was 5 feet 9 and the squad’s sixth-leading scorer. His name wasn’t on recruiting watch lists, and college coaches hadn’t come to see his games. “I thought that was it,” Sizemore said. “Then this kind of popped up.”

Sizemore will attend NAIA Georgetown College in the fall on a partial basketball scholarship. He’ll face an uphill climb for varsity playing time on a huge roster that features several former NCAA Division I players.

And he’s not alone. Every year, small colleges add more roster space on more athletic teams to attract more students and more tuition money to their campuses. As a result, high school students have more opportunities than ever to play college sports, sometimes regardless of their skill level. It’s an option for many. But according to experts, students and their parents must enter the small-school recruiting process with open eyes.

According to a recent NCAA study, the association’s member schools are adding nearly 8,000 athletes every year. According to another NCAA study, from 1982 to 2007 the number of Division III athletes increased from 85,521 to 158,621 – a growth rate of 85 percent.

Most of the increase has come at the smallest schools because they have little to lose and much to gain. Division III schools can’t offer athletic scholarships. They field a variety of teams while spending relatively little. Those teams bring exposure – as well as millions of dollars in tuition – to the schools’ typically small, private and expensive liberal arts campuses.

Similarly priced and sized NAIA colleges are in a comparable situation but do offer athletic scholarships.

What small schools find in the recruiting process, according to experts, are students and parents who are willing to go to any lengths for a college athletics experience.

“The parents – even if they’re smart – they’re lambs to slaughter,” said Tom Elias of College Prospects of America. “Kids are emotional. They pick a school because of the color of the uniform or because the coach is nice or the other guys in the cafeteria say it’s a cool school. Meanwhile, the parents are looking at an expense of $20,000 to $40,000 per year for four years. Maybe that school gives your kid $1,000 and you can put in the newspaper that Johnny got a scholarship. But all of a sudden the parents are getting a loan for $19,000 a year.”

Some coaches say that for some seniors, the allure of calling oneself a college athlete – along with the pomp and circumstance that surrounds their decision – directly affects their futures.

Conner athletic director Tom Stellman said as recently as 10 years ago his school would hold one or two “signing ceremonies” a year. They usually were held when a highly recruited Division I athlete signed his or her national letter of intent. Now, he says, Conner averages 40 ceremonies a year. Sometimes the athletes are going to college on scholarship. This time of year, when Division III schools are landing commitments from students, many are not.

“Our policy is supposed to be one group (signing) in the winter and one in the spring,” Stellman said. “But everybody wants their own. We need to do them all at one time, as a team. It used to be more about team, not the individual. It just kind of evolved that way. … It’s out of hand.”

How out of hand? Roster numbers tell the tale.

Lindsey Wilson, an NAIA program in Kentucky, had 33 players on its men’s basketball roster last year. Rio Grande, an NAIA program in Ohio, had 30. By contrast, NCAA Division I schools such as UC, Xavier and Kentucky carry about half that many players.

Brescia, another NAIA school in Kentucky, had a 46-player baseball roster last year. That’s 13 players more than last year’s College World Series champion, LSU.

NCAA Division III football power Mount Union started the 2008 season with 215 players, including an 84-player freshman team. Meanwhile, Division I programs are allowed just 85 total scholarships.

Local Division III schools Thomas More and Mount St. Joseph started their football programs in 1990, partly to increase the schools’ enrollments. After struggling early, both programs have been nationally ranked in recent years and maintained rosters between 90 and 120 players..

Mount St. Joseph coach Rod Huber said building a program is a process – one that places a premium on numbers.

“When we were 0-10, we took anybody who would walk and chew gum,” he said. “… I tell kids all the time, if you really love this game, there’s a Division III program for you. It might not be Mount St. Joseph. But there are places out there, like we were 10 years ago, that are just looking for bodies – anybody who wants to play.”

Even at elite small-college programs, the numbers game is evident.

Harrison graduate Steve Strassell was a standout pitcher at Division II power Tusculum (Tenn.) College. He arrived on campus in 2004 to find a 51-player roster that included 27 pitchers.

“When you’re a senior in high school and you’re being recruited, sometimes you can get a sense for how competitive it’s going to be,” he said. “You have schools come in and say, ‘We really want you, but we’d really like you to walk on and then earn a scholarship.’ You kind of get the feeling that they’re thinking, ‘Hey, worst-case scenario, we have one more body on campus paying tuition.’ ”

To that end, the athletic departments at many smaller schools assign each sport an enrollment goal – a number of roster spots each coach should fill to increase or maintain the size of the student body.

The policy has worked at Lindsey Wilson, where athletic director Willis Pooler said enrollment goals and the addition of several sports have raised the number of the school’s athletes from 400 to 700 in the last seven years.

“One of the things that athletics bring to the table from an enrollment standpoint is you’re bringing in students who might not have otherwise looked at your school,” said Pooler. “That’s important. We look at that when we look at what programs we want to offer. We also just started a nursing program. We try to attract students in all kinds of ways.”

Lindsey Wilson uses JV teams to develop varsity players and add enrollment.

“For some students, it’s just participatory,” said Pooler. “For others, it’s a way to get into the varsity lineup. … But we’re not taking people who have no business playing. They’re at least JV-level athletes coming in.”

And when it comes to NAIA programs like Lindsey Wilson, many of the JV players receive athletic scholarships. According to NAIA rules, JV scholarships don’t count against the program’s scholarship limits. So even JV recruits often receive thousands of dollars worth of incentives to continue their careers.

Cooper High School senior Shumekia Overstreet is one of those players. The undersized center, who averaged 2.0 points and 2.9 rebounds for a fledgling program that went 11-16 this past season, recently signed with Midway College. The NAIA school’s annual tuition is $24,000. After grants and academic money and $11,000 in athletic money, she’ll pay about a quarter of regular tuition.

“I was stunned (by the scholarship offer),” said Overstreet’s mother Darla. “… When she first mentioned she wanted to play basketball in college, I said, ‘Ummm, Shumekia, I don’t know.

“But she loves the game. Even if she doesn’t get a lot of playing time, she has a core group of people that she can bond with and turn to. That’s important in college.”

Brandon Sizemore, the Newport grad, will have plenty of teammates to turn to. Georgetown had 33 players on last season’s varsity and JV teams. He said he knows he’s entering the program as a JV player – the JV and varsity practice separately and play different schedules – but he hopes to crack the starting lineup.

Georgetown coach Happy Osborne wouldn’t comment about Sizemore’s future or the inner workings of his program, but it’s obvious Georgetown isn’t the only side benefiting from the arrangement. Sizemore, who landed on Georgetown’s radar after Newport’s athletic director sent out a recruiting questionnaire on his behalf, wanted to go to Georgetown even before Osborne contacted him. He said if he keeps his grades up, after grants and scholarships, he’ll pay only $2,000 of the school’s annual $35,000 tuition.

“Money would have been the only reason why I couldn’t have gone there,” he said. “I’m not the richest. Coach Osborne told me he’d see what he could do, and they came back with a great offer.”

The challenge facing small-college coaches is projecting how high school seniors will develop while giving them a fair assessment. The coaches then must decide how much scholarship money to give the player, or in the case of Division III coaches, whether or not to invite him or her to join the team. At times, it becomes an ethical dilemma.

“There are schools that bring 20 or 25 kids in as freshmen, and then the kids show up and all of a sudden they get cut,” said Mount St. Joseph men’s basketball coach Larry Cox. “The creed I try to tell our coaches: Never recruit anybody who we don’t think can ever be anything more than a JV player after two years.”

The onus, according to high school coaches, should be on the recruits. Many tell players and their parents to research the schools interested in them. Go to their games; ask to see their practices; talk to the players. Compare your skills to theirs.

Ryan Vogel is doing just that. The recent Silver Grove graduate plans on attending Thomas More in the fall. He also would like to play on the Saints’ JV basketball team. So he spent the weeks after his senior season playing in open gyms with Thomas More players to find out if he could compete.

Batavia graduate Justin Lowe said he wished he’d had that same mentality when he enrolled at Thomas More in 2000. Lowe was part of a 15-player freshman class for the Saints basketball team. But he quickly learned why some small schools bring in so many players. He received enough money in grants and academic scholarships that during his freshman season he paid only room and board. By his sophomore year, he was on academic probation. Without the academic scholarships, he owed full tuition. On top of school and basketball, he took a job at CVS before leaving school.

Lowe, now 28, still owes approximately $30,000 in student loans.

“I wanted to stay in school, but there was really nothing else I could do,” he said. “There’s school and there’s sports. But at the end of the day you have to pay your bills. I’m still happy I went there. I just wish I would have had my head on right.”

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Get on the phone and start calling colleges to find out if they are still recruiting. If you are not concerned about a scholarship, but just want to have a chance to play at a high level and earn a scholarship, then most coaches are open to examining the possibility of you becoming a preferred walk-on for the fall semester.

Many college applications are past the due date but athletic programs can still push through applicants in most cases. Make sure you have your tapes and athletic profile ready to go as we outline in our book. This is not the time to keep coaches waiting. Also have transcripts ready and make sure your test scores are in line.

You also need to be prepared to broaden your athletic recruiting goals and realize that this late, your chances of a DI scholarship may be minimal. Open up your recruiting goals to include lower, DI schools, IAA and DII schools. These levels of competition often recruit later than DI, trying to secure players who may have been on top IA recruiting maps early in the season, but after the signing date were left with no place to play.

Coaches are not going to find you this late in the season, you are going to have to find them. Be aggressive, if you find one door to be shut, ask that coach if he or she knows of any colleges that may have needs for your ability. Coaches network constantly and will have no problem referring you to a fellow coach as a favor.

Junior Colleges are also in full recruiting swing now. You can use these schools as a stepping stone to DI competition after two years. If you have the ability and in some cases, the resources, there are many prep schools and post grad schools that specialize in one or more sports that are recruiting hotbeds for DI colleges. You can attend these for 1 or 2 years, depending on a few factors and go through the recruiting process again at a school that will give you tons of tools to succeed in athletics, academics and recruiting.

Current Juniors and even Sophomores can use this time to examine the recruiting classes that colleges just signed to compare the resumes and athletic ability of signed recruits. Do the athletes that were signed have similar stats and accomplishments that you already have or expect to during your upcoming season? If so, make sure you take note and contact these schools with your desire to play there and get your name out there before your competition does and takes the athletic scholarship that you deserve.

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1. Can you play at the next level?

Sounds easy to you, right? Well it can be and we show you how but surprisingly there are really talented high school athletes that don’t get the opportunity to play in college.

Making the step from high school to college requires more than talent. Talent can get you far in high school without a lot of dedication and determination. But in college, having talent is not enough.

2. Pay to Play Recruiting Services will do it for me.

This is a top misconception in college recruiting. These websites and services are everywhere. We know they sound great, just pay us every month, put up a profile and college coaches will be knocking down your door offering scholarships.  We wish it was that easy. Do you really think college coaches sit on the computer looking at profile after profile? Have you ever looked at those online profiles? Every athlete looks the same, you can’t tell the difference between one and the other. Recruiting is about separating yourself from the masses. Become and individual that colleges need to recruit!

Don’t waste your money on these services. They send colleges hundreds of faxes a day. A coach doesn’t have the time or the patience to call these players back and search for a needle in a haystack. These sites do look great, no doubt about that, but we show you how to recruit yourself better, certainly cheaper, and faster!

You can’t depend on anyone else to recruit you except yourself!

3. You don’t have the grades.

There are thousands of talented high school athletes every year whom would have been a scholarship athlete, but could not even pass the NCAA Clearinghouse.

The old days of getting into any college, regardless of grades, if you can play is over. The NCAA has tightened its restrictions and raised the minimum test scores and grades. Individual schools have also raised their minimums for athletes. While it is true if you play sports you can get in with lower G.P.A. and test scores than non-athletes, there are only a few “reserved” or “provisional” acceptance spots ear-marked for athletes. More and more schools are eliminating these every year as pressure builds from the non-athletic community. We take you through the critical steps on what to do year by year in your high school academic career to pass the Clearinghouse with ease.

4. Student Athletes who only want to play at the Division I level.

There is so much focus on DI colleges and universities. Many feel that it is a DI scholarship for them or nothing.

Limiting yourself to DI schools is a sure-fire way to not playing in college. You can walk on in some DI programs but expect to pay full price. Often if an athlete drops a level from what their ego tells them to play, it will open up scholarship money to pay for school. And would you rather be on the bench for 4 years or be a 3-4 year starter?

5. You get a letter from a college coach- What does it really mean?

Too many athletes think a letter is the true beginning of a scholarship offer. It is really up to you to get the scholarship you deserve! Colleges have amasses databases from many different sources, high schools often give this information to college admissions officers who then forward this info to the athletic departments. Most athletic offices have students working in work-study capacities whose job is to compile lists of thousands upon thousands of students.

While it can be a good sign to get a letter from a coach. It is really only the beginning of building a long recruiting relationship with this school. It is up to you what you do with this letter. Most athletes sit back and wait for the coach to start recruiting you from this point, and for 99% it never happens.

If you have found yourself asking these questions or wondering about the same things then you need a recruiting plan that will help you rise above your competition. If you truly want a college athletic scholarship then CLICK HERE to view the recruiting system that has helped thousands of high school athletes like yourself play college sports.

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While there are many intangible factors that go into earning a college athletic scholarship, the whole process can be broken down into 3 easy steps. If you can take charge and master these steps, you will be way ahead of your competition.

1. Game and Highlight Tape

As soon as you have great game film, two to three games, make a tape and send these out to colleges. Once your son or daughter has played a few games in their Senior year, (or Junior year for Spring sports) it is time to package these along with the next two items and get them into the hands of schools that match your recruiting profile.  It is not too early to start in your Junior or Sophomore years if these are varsity games, just be aware of NCAA recruiting rules that may prevent the coach from contacting you to discuss these films.

2. Athletic Recruiting Resume

Make an athletic recruiting resume that highlights your accomplishments, includes your stats and interests. You should approach recruiting the same way you would a job. Also include other sports you play and your stats if you excel in those also. Make sure your contact information along with your coaches and high schools is predominate so they can enter you into their recruiting database and have a resume to look at while they are viewing your game/ highlight film.

3. Official Transcripts

Grades and your academics are more important than ever. We have spoken so much about this in the past but it is something you can control and we hate to see talented athletes who are turned down for college athletic scholarships because they did not take care of business in the classroom. Before a coach can truly recruit you, they will need to see an academic transcript. Get copies from your guidance office to send with your athletic resume and film.

These three steps will put your name and face in front of coaches. Now you must be as aggressive as you are on the field, towards your recruiting. The athlete who works hard during recruiting, calling coaches, promoting themselves, sending out the most athletic recruiting packets, often wins.  Every year less talented athletes beat out those with better stats because they had a plan for their recruiting, followed through and earned the college athletic scholarship. Do you have the drive it takes to take charge of your recruiting process?

CLICK HERE to get the college athletic scholarship recruiting guide that will show you step-by-step how to get recruited and help you beat out the competition.

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Colleges amass huge databases of high school athletes. Athletic departments buy lists from recruiting services, compile rosters and buy mailing lists from camps, and collect athletic questionnaires. When colleges start the recruiting process they will have in some cases 2,000 or more high school athletes on a list for 20 scholarship spots or less. There recruited list is not very targeted early in the recruiting season. Schools cast a wide net hoping not to miss anyone that could be a potential recruit.

If you got a letter early in September, chances are at least 1000 other high school players got that letter as well. Letters and forms of communication change as the recruiting process wears on. You can tell a schools level of interest in you for an athletic scholarship based on the materials and calls you receive from coaches.

An easy way to forget about all of this letter hype is to start contacting colleges now. Use the recruiting plan laid out by us in our book. Letters, phone calls, recruiting packets. Get them in now and make first contact before coaches are swamped and they won’t even be able to remember your name. Those athletes who have the most success at receiving an athletic scholarship, start early, make first contact, and persevere through the competition. Are you that athlete?

CLICK HERE if you are that athlete who has the drive to take charge of their atheltic recruiting, we will show you how to get it done.

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Your high school coach can play an important role in the recruiting process but sometimes we see an over reliance and misunderstanding of how they can actually help you. It is common to believe that the high school coach will take care of the recruiting process for your son or daughter. After all, they have done everything to help their career up to this point, surely they will help your son/daughter get recruited as well.

Making this simple assumption can really hurt your scholarship chances.  The recruiting process is too important to leave in one person’s hands. The best approach is too work together with the high school coach. Communicate with them what you are doing and your goals.

It is now September, an important month in college recruiting. Your high school coach will be getting phone calls every night from college coaches to find out what athletes they have that can play or are potential scholarship candidates. Let your coach know that you want to play in college and to let coaches know if they receive recruiting calls.

Most athletes and parents also believe the high school coach has a Rolodex of college coaches they can call. This is just not true either in most cases. Research has shown the average high school coach only has regular contact with about 5 local colleges. This is just too small of a number to guarantee recruiting success.

You need to be active in your recruiting starting now. Work with your high school coach but do not rely on them as your main source of recruiting information or leads. Your coach can be an asset to your recruiting, but don’t let them become a liability by not being proactive and taking charge of the scholarship search yourself.

If you want to take charge of your athletic recruiting and get a college athletic scholarship, the CLICK HERE.

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The high school soccer season has started and that also means the beginning of the college soccer scholarship recruiting season. If you are a Senior high school student-athlete you should be working on your soccer scholarship recruiting plan now and should be ready to put the plan into action.

1. Complete your athletic and personal profile.
2. Make  sure you have someone you trust or your soccer team is going to be filming your soccer matches and you will have immediate access to a copy.
3. Start contacting college soccer coaches.
4. Make plans to visit schools and meet with coaches.
5. Register with the NCAA Clearinghouse if you haven’t already. Review your grades and classes with your guidance counselor to make sure you are taking all required courses this fall.

The path to a college soccer scholarship can be long and hard. But trust us, it will go by fast. The soccer players that end up with the scholarship are the one’s who took time during the recruiting process to plan out a solid course of action. They have done their research, know what schools match their abilities, set realistic expectations and goals and communicate with college coaches the right way.

If you have already started, great! Keep the momentum going all fall and don’t quit until you get the soccer scholarship you deserve. If you haven’t taken any action yet, start today, don’t wait because your competition already started. You are competing against thousands of other high school seniors for the same scholarship spot. Don’t be left home next fall.

CLICK HERE to view the recruiting system that has helped out hundreds of other soccer players like yourself who want a college soccer scholarship.

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If you want to play college football, you need to start taking action now. We are not talking about waiting for college coaches to start calling you. Gone  are the days when you can have a great game and expect phone calls on Monday. You need to get your athletic profile and game film in front of coaches.

Everyone has started their pre-season practices and the first games are weeks away.  Get your athletic profile done now and complete your personal assessment to narrow down at least 50 colleges that you feel are a good fit to earn a football scholarship from.

Make sure you have someone, a family member, friend, your coaches, etc…filming the games and you can get your own copy the day after the game. This is a crucial step that many players neglect to take care of. Coaches are going to be flooded with game tapes in October. Why wait? Beat out the competition and get film into college football coaches hands in September.

While the college season is also in full swing, football coaches devote as much or more time to recruiting than their actual season. Recruiting is the lifeblood of a college team and a coaches career. Make it easy on coaches. Use the steps we outline to make their job easy and show them you are the football player that deserves the college football scholarship.

CLICK HERE to view the step-by-step recruiting guide that shows you how to play college football. Don’t wait any longer, your competition has already started…have you?

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Checklist for Seniors:

1. Register with the NCAA Clearinghouse if you have not done so already.
2. Finish your personal assessment and narrow school choices down.
3. Finish recruiting strategy plan.
4. Complete athletic resume and start making highlight tapes.
5. Communicate with high school coach.
6. Register to take SAT or ACT’s.
7. Have a great Senior athletic season.

You only get one chance to go through your senior athletic recruiting. You should be doing everything possible to make sure it is a success. Remember it is often not the most talented athlete that gets the college athletic scholarship, but the athlete who prepares their self for college recruiting the most and follows a proven system.

Learn how to do athletic recruiting the right way and beat out your competition. CLICK HERE

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Basketball scholarships get a lot of press. Players are begin discovered earlier and earlier into their high school and some in junior high. It may seem that if you are not discovered then, you can’t get a basketball scholarship. The media really skews the perception of what it takes to get recruited for basketball.

There are over 7,100 scholarships available for men in the NCAA and 9,200 for women. There are also NAIA and NJCAA scholarships. The media attention is only focused on the top 5% of high school basketball players which are considered “Blue Chip.”

If you are not in the top 5% of the country in basketball, don’t worry, you can earn a scholarship to play college basketball if you have some talent, room for improvement, and the drive to commit yourself to a long recruiting process.

Coaches look for 5 main traits in basketball recruits:

1. Maturity- How do you carry yourself on and off the court? Do you complain to coaches and refs at every bad play? Or do you keep your head high, show composure and act like an adult on and off the court?
2. Team Player- College basketball is very different than high school. You may not be the star anymore when you get to college. Are you willing to do what it takes to help the team more than yourself?
3. “Coachability”- Do you show room for improvement and are you willing to do what the coach says to improve your game?
4. Willingness- Are you willing to put the team above your personal goals? College coaches want to to win and will ask you to do whatever it takes to help the team. Are you willing to play multiple positions? Be a practice player? Sacrifice your stats for team wins?
5. Academics- Players who do better in the classroom as easier to coach, cause less problems off the court and are better able to handle the pressures of the college game.

Basketball is a headcount sport in the NCAA. Scholarships are awarded on a full ride basis. For men in NCAA DI there are 13 scholarships per team. DII has 10. For women in DI there are 15 and 10 scholarship in DII. This may not sound like a lot but considering there are hundreds of teams in both DI and DII, you can find a college that will award you a basketball scholarship.

Follow a recruiting system that shows coaches you are the recruit for them. Be willing and able to commit months to the recruiting process and show coaches who you are as a person and player and you will earn a basketball scholarship to play in college.

CLICK HERE if you have the ability and mental drive to get a college basketball scholarship.

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