Any NCAA Golf experiences to share?

<p>Hello, </p>

<p>My S is a HS Junior and starting to narrow his list of schools - primarily based on where he can play golf. </p>

<p>His backup plan (should he not end up making millions on the PGA Tour is to be a high school math teacher...and of course golf coach). </p>

<p>He has looked at the Golfweek rankings and selected a few reach, a few safety and five "match" schools. His match schools are based on several factors including: </p>

<p>1) His golf scoring average (plus a bit to account for college courses being more difficult)
2) Schools we can affort (thank goodness we have that conversation out of the way)
3) Schools where his GPA/scores put him in the middle to upper end (except his reach schools)</p>

<p>His plan is to send his resume and swing video to the list of coaches in early October. His resume includes all the tournaments he has played since he was a HS freshman - including summer tournaments etc. </p>

<p>Should we be doing something else at this point. My S believes that many of the coaches are already looking at potential recruits for his graduating year.....is he right. Any advice would be appreciated.</p>

<p>I did not play college golf but am friends with a current D1 coach and have quite a few friends that played various levels of college golf.</p>

<p>For D1 recruiting, your HS stroke and HS tournament results are pretty much irrelevant since the quality of the courses varies so much. These coaches will be looking at his results from Top AJGA tournaments and top state amateur events. If he hasn’t played in many of these, he needs to. Most D1 coaches already know the Juniors that they will be recruiting.</p>

<p>I don’t know much about HS to College golf recruiting, but I came from a golfing hotbed (US Am winners, Western Am winner, etc) that had several players go on to college.</p>

<p>These kids are GREAT players. I’m talking +3 handicaps by the age of 17. Hopefully your son is near that level.</p>

<p>Men’s college golf is a tricky thing. There are few scholarships available at the D1 level (more are available for women’s golf because of title ix). Many of the scholarships are “partial”. That’s almost the best someone could hope for coming out of high school. Only the best High School amateurs in the country get full rides.</p>

<p>I know that many college golf teams have walk-on tryouts. This may be a one day, 18 hole tourney to try to “qualify” your way onto a team.</p>

<p>The best thing for your son to do is to concentrate hard on:

  1. qualifying for his state high school golf tourney (and hopefully winning/finishing high)
  2. qualifying for the state junior (placing high, winning, etc)
  3. qualifying for the US Junior Am
  4. qualifying for the state Am (just qualifying is probably decent, depending on the state).
  5. having a solid AJGA summer season (a win, high finishes, low scoring avg, etc).</p>

<p>He needs to build up a nice resume. After that he should “recruit” the schools he has targeted. He could start now by sending a nice, handwritten letter to the coaches of schools he is interested in. He should also have his H.S. golf coach write a separate letter to those coaches too. </p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

<p>Thank you for your responses - very helpful. </p>

<p>My S did play 3 AJGA tournaments in the summer - highest placing was 12th. Since he hadn’t played AJGA before he had to go through the qualifying process at each tournament and managed to qualify for them all, got into the final round in one. Not an awful showing for his first time out. His low round was a 68 (3 under), his high round was a 77 (6 over). </p>

<p>His high school team also won the state championship in May, he had the highest score for his team and placed 4th overall. His handicap is +2 and he is 17. </p>

<p>We are not counting on a scholarship, and certainly not a full ride. We are hoping he can make one of the D1 schools ranked in 60-120 range by Golfweek. </p>

<p>I hadn’t heard about a handwritten letter to coaches, we’ll add this to our “resume” package. His high school coach is very willing to call/write as he thinks my son is somewhat of a diamond in the rough…one man’s opinion. </p>

<p>The safety schools he has choosen are ranked in the 130-170 range by Golfweek so I am hoping we have a large enough span for him to find a school that fits. </p>

<p>Thanks again for your input. I am a little out of my depth on this process.</p>

<p>There is a section of this discussion board on college recruiting. Look under College Admissions on the main page. It’s listed under Specialty College Admissions.</p>

<p>My nephew is an excellent golfer who went through the recruiting process last year (2010 grad). Because he comes from a non-country club background, he didn’t have the advising that so many really good golfers seem to get. He posted his stats on a recruiting website, and he visited various schools with programs that interested him. I worked at one of these schools, and when I talked to the admissions person who handles athletes, he told me to have my nephew contact the golf coach … the coach wasn’t able to contact my nephew (I don’t know much about that stuff - maybe there is a particular timeframe in which the coach can contact the athlete? Seems like football & basketball might have different rules! :)). What he ended up doing was choosing a school where he could be sure to play - with the best golf program of those schools.</p>

<p>thanks Kelsmom</p>

<p>We are going to send infomation and contact coaches in October (waiting for the swing video to be completed). My son is also not a countryclub kid - hopefully he will catch the eye of one of the coaches. </p>

<p>Thanks again,</p>