Somewhat informative but somewhat patronizing as others have stated.
Someone needs to pen the all to easy to write corollary “An Open Letter to the College Coach We Must Stop Playing For”
“Honestly think this letter could apply to any high achieving kid, not just athletes.”
It definitely does. I’ve encountered many, many, many competitive STEM kids who are exactly as described in the article. And, yes, typically they find themselves no longer on the top in college and have a huge jealous breakdown. It’s toxic.
Not that the article was particularly compelling, I don’t get what causes people to respond with vitriol. Projection?
I don’t think that the article was patronizing. It’s basically describing a stereotypical scenario of helicopter parents, who have molded the kid so much & done SO much hand holding & butt wiping that the kid simply won’t step up and show initiative for him/herself. Students like this ARE a nightmare for coaches…and professors…and employers, too.
The student in this article, through his or her behavior, demonstrated poor sportsmanship, selfishness, & disrespect. I don’t know of any coach who would truly want a kid like that on his or her team.
And yes, this could most definitely apply to competitive STEM kids.
@tucsonmom, the article wasn’t about a single kid. It was a compilation of many characteristics that the coach has seen over years of recruiting. My problem with the article is that it’s so exaggerated…any individual kid may only be guilty of one or two of these things.
@mjrube94 Exactly, it’s a compilation not meant to be about one single athlete. And thus the intent is not to show that a single kid would be guilty of more than a few of these things, rather it’s to show that any one of these character issues could cause a coach to pause when considering an athlete.
Ugh, while this coach may be correct, I really don’t like her at all. Further, I can say that back when my athlete D began looking at colleges, there was precious little guidance available to students or their parents about the athletic recruiting process with the exception of for football or men’s basketball, which is a different animal altogether from women’s sports or Div. III athletics. There was no template that I ever saw for what to include in an e-mail to a coach. In addition, of the advice I did see back then, there was not a lot of consensus on exactly what to do or say. For example, some people said you should never send a highlight film unless it’s requested. Others suggested sending it with the first e-mail. Which is it? Should the athlete truthfully answer when the coach asks what other schools she’s looking at? When DO you ask about $? I’ve seen kids wait timidly until after they had wasted an OV on a school before they finally asked and learned they’d be getting no scholarship at all.
Secondly, Coach Becky didn’t like the message the kid sent her, but then also didn’t like that the parents took over and helped their athlete. I get that a coach wants to see effort from the student. But does she really think that all the perfectly worded e-mails from students that she received over the years–if there actually were any–were all composed by kids on their own? News flash–just as with everything else in life, some students have the advantage of knowledgeable help and guidance. It could come via a club or high school coach who is willing to help with the process, or it could be a relative with some recruiting experience. And some kids have no one to help. My D spoke with competitors from other teams (eg. on official visits) and many of those girls had high school coaches who made the initial contact with the college coaches for them. D had no such luck. Fortunately, she was capable of handling things on her own with our oversight, but it was NOT a clear or simple process and she probably made some mistakes. However, it was sad to see that other equally talented kids in her conference did not get recruited at all, and should have. Maybe they sent the “wrong” letter?
Third, let’s talk about the kid’s poor sportsmanship. It sure sounds like she might not be an asset in the social department. However again, maybe the coach could have reserved some judgment given that it’s still a child we’re talking about. I can certainly understand that the coach doesn’t want to deal with a problem kid, or have to put in too much work to turn a kid around who needs an attitude adjustment Still, a little mercy would have been nice. Having witnessed firsthand how catty and nasty girls can be when they’re jealous, I can certainly imagine a girls’ team that is not particularly kind or welcoming to the star. A problem of this nature can easily develop due to any favoritism on the part of the high school coach toward the best players. Boy have we seen some of this!. Not for nothing, but just this week at a track meet, I witnessed a cluster of girls surround a teammate and basically encourage her to beat the team’s star in the race they were about to run. Now, how comfortable is that star going to feel around the other girls, knowing they want to see her get beat? Sure, we all love an underdog, but kids can be very blatant and mean about their desire to viciously chop down the tall poppy. Just sayin’!
(Every event below is a composite of what actually happened to my child during my son’s junior year. He ended up at a great school and has so far played a successful two years, but I’ll never forget the recruiting journey.)
An Open Letter to the Prospective Coach For Whom I Will Not Be Playing,
I just received your text, “Hey, What’s up? This is Coach X, from University of Y.” I have no idea how you got my phone number. I also have no idea how to respond to you, because I was taught to be respectful and professional in my communications. Are you seriously an adult or did you pass your phone on to your players in the middle of a frat party? And did you really just start following me on Instagram? I’m also a little confused by your text (and also yesterday’s three tweets) because even though you started our communications Sept 1 and had been emailing me once a week all year, three months ago you stopped returning my emails. Total radio silence. But now this text out of the blue? In your immortal words, “Hey, What’s up?” You’re a f-ing mess.
Oh, wait–I know what’s up! It’s mid May! Did all the recruits you really wanted flub the SAT/ACTs? Again? Bummer. Too bad you put me off from your school and your program for those long, silent months. Also, I was pretty put off by the scores you told my teammates they needed to get into your Ivy. Seriously? A 25 ACT? Makes me wonder how that’s gonna work out for my friend. Guess it’ll work for you, though, at least, until he’s kicked out on academic probation. But you’ll have gotten your wins by then, right? Haha.
Also, I’m so sorry I can’t come to your $400 two-day camp next month. Please stop asking with those “personal” emails pretending that most of your recruiting happens at your camp. My camp budget this year is only $5,000 (budgeted out of my folks’ 2nd mortgage fund), and since hotels and flights or even lunch aren’t included in your camp and you only have one other lousy coach coming from Wup-wup U (division II), it makes your camp impossible. Too bad, as I think I really would be a great fit for your team and your school. Also, talking money, I really enjoyed touring your campus back in October. I appreciated your time and attention. My mom, however, is still a little miffed you waited two weeks to approve the date, making the airline tickets go up $400 each by the time we could buy them. But then, both mom and I thought at the time that a second “home improvement” loan was worth the risk.
God, we were idiots.
Also, just a tip, I do wish you hadn’t let her overhear you calling the girls we passed on campus “super hot.”
Anyway, thanks so much for your text and your on-and-off interest in me that’s so far cost me thousands of dollars that my parents really don’t have. I truly love my sport. It’s my passion, the one thing that keeps me sane. It means more to me than you could ever know. This is why, even though you are “Division I” (haha) and a successful coach, I’m taking my talents elsewhere, where the coaches behave as adults and communicate in a professional, timely, and coherent manner.
Yours,
Student Athlete
@zobroward wrote : but in my “world” frats and athletics would not be a part of college.
They don’t have to be. Choose schools where sports and Greeks aren’t presents. It will really limit your lists, but it is a choice you have.
twoinanddone,
you are correct. but in my “world” college should be about intellectual pursuits . I do not think others should be forced to live in my world…
I know I am but one snowflake and I do not decide for everyone what college should be about.
I honestly never understand why some people are so opposed to schools offering any course or activity, including sports. I would never expect a school not to offer music or engineering just because I never stepped foot in those buildings while I was in college (or for that matter dance, theater, geology…). I did go to football games, but only watched a handful of other sports games during my time in college. I enjoyed several things like speakers who visited the school, but I’m sure there were students who never went to a debate, rock concert (come on, it was Billy Joel for $4!), to the trivia bowl (big event that lasted for a week), to any sports or fine arts performances. I think the school was better for having those things, even if I didn’t participate.
I can’t imagine anything more boring than a school that is just ‘intellectual pursuits’ as defined by a person or persons who is not ME! What if that deciding person thought something you wanted to study wasn’t intellectual enough to include? That nursing wasn’t intellectual but just a trade school type subject, or dance wasn’t intellectual but physical? I really wanted it all in college, the marching band, the business school I couldn’t take a class in because it was restricted to majors, the engineers building secret things in their labs. And the sports teams and fraternities.
This is great. For anyone who has been around competitive sports and seen the students who act this way without correction, that is painful. Seeing a good team damaged by this type of player is bad too. It is a cancer that ruins what the coach is trying to do. My daughter plays in college and there is wisdom in this that any athlete, even ones with character, can learn from.
A very good article indeed. I found this sentence the most interesting: “Unfortunately, the highlight film you left us with that was edited to perfection to omit mistakes was unhelpful.”
These videos (which used to have a great deal of value and now are essentially useless) are supposed to show off your abilities and be real––not professionally edited or cherry picked to only find your top moments. My basic golf video, recorded on my phone, showed my golf swing in a variety of settings. Each time, my swing/technique was the same, but the outcome was different (occasionally, I missed the putt or didn’t hit it dead straight). One coach commented that he liked my video because it focused on my golfing ability––not my video editing ability.
Maybe this coach should have had a personal conversation with each of these students and told them why she would not be recruiting them. This passive-aggressive open letter is negative and self-serving. If she were really interested in helping young people rather than venting personal grievances, she would have written a list of tips or do’s for the kids. I am not defending the unseemly behavior discussed in her letter, but a bitter coach is just as much of a poison to a team as a selfish player.
I read this as a composite letter, fictional, to demonstrate a point about the kind of athlete and person coaches are looking for. Like any other “click bait,” it is designed to be provocative, but still demonstrate something worthwhile.
This certainly resonates with us, as my kid has grown up with players with great natural athleticism, whose parents protested them having to play with “ordinary” players because the skill level would bring them down, etc. Those kids sat on their laurels, so to speak, didn’t put in the hard work to develop their potential, were poor influences on the team, and – surprise surprise – are not continuing with their sport in college. Meanwhile, we know a bunch of kids who loved the game, studied the game, worked hard year round, and developed into great team players who coaches want on their teams, both as athletes and people.
In terms of D3 recruiting, maybe the online resources have changed in the past few years, but we dug through a number of sites and found lots of detail about what to put in an athletic resume, what goes into the intro email, what a highlight video might look like. And ours was pretty ugly and basic, updated as the season progressed – coaches at every camp my kid attended and at every parent session on recruiting said – “skip the flashy graphics and music, just let us see the flow of play, and make it easy for us to see which is the athlete we are supposed to be following.” As for the continuing email communication, we remind our kid about following up etc., and tried to help him develop an appropriate tone, but the last 6 months of the process was basically phone calls and that he was doing on his own. Not much we could do, no matter how much I wanted to land the helicopter closer to hear what was going on.
I wanted to add – when I read through the full article again, the coach uses the letter as a way to challenge college coaches to “take back” their profession by focusing not only on talent but on character and team work.
Coaches will not ‘take back’ the recruiting unless forced to do it. Early recruiting is a big deal right now. Something like 90% of the coaches in my daughter’s sport support a change to the rules moving the commitment date to Junior year, but no one will do it until the rule is changed. No one will give up an early recruit, even though the coach knows it is for the good of the game, because another coach (even one of the 90% who agree) will scoop up the player as an early recruit.
Still bothers me that the coach criticizes for a highlight film. If you want game film, ask for game film. A highlight film is going to be highlights.
The vast majority of high school athletes are not getting recruited to play at the college level.
In all the years that we’ve had 3 kids involved in a some combination of baseball, basketball, lacrosse, soccer or track, we have never once seen a coach refuse to play a talented kid with a bad attitude or selfish behavior. We’ve seen plenty coaches threaten to do so, and sure, for show some might bench the kid for the first minute of the game (so they can say he didn’t start), but then they’d play the kid just like always.
^So true! It’s can be entertaining to see how long before that kid being sat on the bench stays there once the team gets scored on by an opponent. It never takes long. 