<p>Hello. My son who is a sophomore has a few As, lots of B+s, and some Bs in all honors and AP courses (2 AP courses so far--the rest honors) at a very competitive private prep school. We don't have any test scores yet, although his PLAN (pre-ACT) test showed potential for a strong ACT score. We'll get him tutoring to make sure. He hopes to play baseball in college, but he won't be a recruited athlete at a D1 school. He's a good player, who should end up with a fairly strong weighted GPA. Our hope would be that his decent grades in tough courses might pique the interest of a baseball coach at a D2 or D3 school. We don't really know where to begin looking, though. We live in the south and preferably, he'd like to be somewhere that won't get tooooo cold. He'd consider just about anything, though. Any thoughts on schools we should look into? I've started to look through the "good schools for B students" threads but they have gotten so long that it's overwhelming. They also don't take athletics into consideration. Thanks for any help you can give.</p>
<p>lenny2,</p>
<p>Thanks for posting and sharing. Your son has very good grades. If he does well on the SAT or ACT he will have many choices. Tell us more about his baseball skills, exposure, and your current recruiting strategy. Why don’t you think he is D1 material? Would he consider playing D1 baseball in the North? Most parents I’ve met (and I’ve met many!) insist their son or daughter is a D1 athlete. </p>
<p>The place you may want to start looking for schools is the College Board or College Navigator Tool to look at schools within his geographic range, and potential majors. From that list, you can also begin to research the baseball programs at d3baseball.com or Boyds World.</p>
<p>Does your son play travel baseball? If so, what does his coach think about potential schools? Where does the coach have connections? Have you had an honest evaluation of your son’s skills outside of travel baseball or high school baseball coach? Once you have a current skill baseline level will you know the appropriate school or range of schools he should pursue…i call that fishing in the right pond.</p>
<p>Hopefully, I’ve given you something to think about. There are other baseball parents on the site that can offer you valuable advice as well. Feel free to PM me, and best of luck going forward. Recruited = passion + skill + exposure + persistence + luck.</p>
<p>Welcome</p>
<p>As a sophomore, it is difficult to predetermine at what level his baseball will plateau. So, if he really wants to play collegiate baseball, its time to both maximize his academics and his baseball.</p>
<p>On the baseball side, pitchers are the most recruited players. A pitcher can indeed pitch at the D1 level if they can command the fastball in the mid 80s; for D3 80mph is fine. For a position player, hitting trumps all else. If you hit, you play.</p>
<p>So, if you haven’t do so, and have the money and he has the time and inclination, get the best instruction possible. Also, getting into top physical condition really helps. This site is dedicated to baseball: [High</a> School Baseball Web](<a href=“http://hsbaseballweb.com/eve/forums]High”>http://hsbaseballweb.com/eve/forums) and is a fountain of information for players and parents.</p>
<p>A top summer showcase - but expensive - is Headfirst’s HonorRoll camp. It is the king of the academically oriented player camps. He should consider attending the camp as a rising junior. Another possible camp is the Stanford camp (expensive but lots of exposure).</p>
<p>Feel free to pm me as the journey has just begun and you can control a lot of the results this early.</p>
<p>
This. Exactly.</p>
<p>Rhodes, Sewanee, and Davidson may be worth a look.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses so far. S is a pretty good right-handed pitcher—he pitches in the high 70s now as a sophomore and is working to get stronger. He is a very hard worker–got the coaches’ award last year for his high school jv team. When he isn’t pitching, he’s usually in center field. He’s just over 6’ and probably won’t get much more height, but maybe. He has been in pitching and batting instruction for many years and continues to take weekly lessons. He’s usually a good batter–gets on base, but no home runs. He is on his high school team and a travel team, but the travel team is not a great one. Both coaches seem to want to help with recruiting, but neither has much experience with it.</p>
<p>We don’t really have a recruiting strategy yet. We do plan to send him to the Headfirst camp next fall as a junior. We’d also like to take him to some college prospect camps, which is why we are trying to figure out where to look. I won’t let him sacrifice academics for baseball, but I’d like to find a place that suits him in both respects.</p>
<p>So, now what?</p>
<p>Fenwaysouth, he’d definitely consider a D1 school up north, but the cold weather would be tough for him. I don’t think he’d be a D1 recruit because he hasn’t yet stood out in any particular way. He’s a fine pitcher, but nothing really special, and a fairly consistent hitter, but no home runs. I don’t mean to sell him short.</p>
<p>Try to visit various schools during vacations, breaks, etc. to get a feel for the type of school/program he feels would fit. Realize that what may be great now, might evolve to other schools during the process. When you visit the schools, drop by the baseball office and, if the coach is in, have your son introduce himself and speak with the coach. On campus contacts are permitted pretty much most of the year. Have his transcript ready to give the coach.</p>
<p>He will inch closer to his potential HS velocity with conditioning and a great throwing program (because he plays CF also, I assume he’s very athletic). As you are well aware, baseball is a game of incremental improvement and there is no shortcut to that process. He should continue to follow the twin paths of a position player and pitcher until one emerges as dominate. Once one emerges as dominant (if) concentrate the lessons in that area.</p>
<p>Perhaps pick out a school and have him send an email to the coach. Just having him draft the email (which may or may not generate a response) is a big step to developing the sense that he owns the recruiting process. Likewise, fade into the background when he speaks with coaches - after a few “interviews” he will get comfortable with the process.</p>
<p>You can research schools and develop spreadsheets to keep track of various variables (school size, price, league, roster size, etc) which will arise as the process advances.</p>
<p>My S did not really play much travel ball oce he started HS and went to a very small non-athletic school. But, his PC had the connections to have him try out for a regional Scout ball team which put him on the radar. The only camps he did were Headfirst’s (in California as a rising junior and in the East as a rising senior) and Stanford (both years).</p>
<p>The recruiting drive is a marathon (though at times it speeds up - but that is usually later in the process). So, you have plenty of time to find your sea legs and digest the recruiting mountain in small bites.</p>
<p>Florida Tech would be a great fit. Strong academic school with a president passionate about sport programs. I know a student with very similar bio who,did great there both academically and in baseball…just drafted.</p>
<p>You don’t mention whether athletic scholarship money is needed. Thinking of Davidson (a $50,000plus school), a 25% scholarship (the minimum required for baseball) still puts you at $38K per year.</p>
<p>We have a D at Vanderbilt right now, and we are paying full tution. She’ll be graduating and possibly going to graduate school when D is starting college, so we’d love to find someplace for S that won’t totally bankrupt us. We won’t qualify for aid or grants. Although cost certainly is a consideration, it won’t be the deciding factor.</p>
<p>lenny2,</p>
<p>You;ve shared some very important info with us to help you get started:
- Preference for south or closer to home
- Will not sacrifice academics for athletics
- Gravitating toward D3 baseball level
- Plans for HeadFirst & prospect camps
- No overall recruiting strategy yet
- No recruiting help from hs coach or travel coach
- Finances or cost is not the deciding factor</p>
<p>In addition, I think you’ve been given excellent advice by stemit and imafan as well suggestions by poppyseedz and swimkidsdad.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>As stemit suggested, visit schools during vacations and have your son try reaching out to the coaches of the colleges that your son interested in. Rhodes (D3), Sewannee(D3), and Florida Tech(D2) are great starting points. Davidson is a great school however it is D1. My son has a former travel teammate who is a pitcher there. </p>
<p>Use the resources I’ve listed to find similiar schools (hint: same conference) to start that search. Searches such as this start with a big list and you start crossing schools off…that is what we did. I would also start looking & researching schools listed on the HeadFirst site for a potential fit for his academic interests. For example: my oldest son was able to cross off a few HeadFirst schools because they did not offer engineering. The more research you do on the topic the more comfortable your son may begin to feel as well as familiar with the process. There will most likely be rejection and non-communication from the coaches, but he has to step over that and focus on what is most important to him. </p>
<p>He is about 18-24 months before D3 recruiting begins. The most important D3 baseball time will be August-October of his senior year. If he has all his ducks in a row prior to that time, he will be in good shape. So dive into D3 schools, D3 baseball and D3 recruiting. Good luck, and start making that list. </p>
<p>Google these Resources:</p>
<p>1) High School Baseball Web Message Boards - this will give you more information specific to college baseball recruiting
2) College Navigator - Tool to narrow down college search by many variables, exportable to spreadsheet.
3) Boyd’s World - Listing of D3 schools and their power rankings, everything baseball
4) D3Baseball.com - Listings of D3 schools by conference and geography
5) College Confidential has the best info about colleges and college academics</p>
<p>Good luck and let us know if you need a hand.</p>
<p>Thank you all so much for this guidance. I’ve looked at High School Baseball Web in the past but, frankly, it’s a little intimidating. Much like most of the posters on College Confidential have very academically talented kids, many of the posters on HSBW seem to have extemely talented atheletes (at least, that’s what it sound like). You’ve given us some things to think about and to get started with. We’ll be doing some research.</p>
<p>Fenwaysouth, thanks for the pm! I tried to respond to thank you but your in-box is full.</p>
<p>I would also add Emory. D3 School, top-notch academics, similar to Vanderbilt in many ways.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>lenny2</p>
<p>You can’t be intimidated by a few people here, there or anywhere. Almost all people are helpful, and believe it or not they have something of value to share with you. Some of the best advice you’ll ever receive is right here. The challenge is to educate yourself and ask the right question(s). You’ll see what I mean. This recruting thing has it own language. I often joke that I speak “fluent coach”. The funny thing is most people on this site and others know what I mean. </p>
<p>IMHO both of these message board resources were **extremely helpful and necessary **in my son’s search. We researched athletic recruiting from an academic perspective on CC and used HSBBWeb from a mostly baseball perspecitve. We had to have both sites to get the information we were looking for because it wasn’t in one place, and there were a lot of nuances with the schools we were looking at. IMHO there is a small intersection between the two message boards (academic D1/D3 baseball) and it is up to you to distill that knowledge, share it with your son, and apply it. </p>
<p>I’ve met alot of people from around the country on CC and HSBBWeb that helped us get started, strategize and make some hard decisions. Stemit and I met here a few years ago. Our sons shared a common profile, and goal back in 2009-10. They both achieved that college recruiting goal and their teams play each other 4 times a year in conference play. I fully expect to see stemit with his iPad later this spring charting pitches ;-). Our (stemit’s son and my son) paths to get there were vastly different, but the goal and the result was the same. My point is everybody has the same goal, but nobody can tell you how to get there. Folks can help and guide you, but you and your son have to find your way. Believe it or not the journey is more than half the fun…</p>
<p>You’ll see what I mean. ;-)</p>
<p>Thanks for reminding us to enjoy the journey, fenway. Although it does feel like an enormous task, it will be over before we all know it, and I know I for one will be a little sad.</p>
<p>lenny2,
Listen to Fenway. He is the man for Academic baseball recruiting and make no mistake - your profile is that of an academic recruit. Knowledge is power and he is the man with the knowledge. I hear what you are saying about the HSBBW. It seems like everybody’s kid plays the game the right way, is getting recruited by PAC 10 and SEC schools, is getting drafted… But that is not the case. Obviously, those posters are proud of their kids, but there are many more of us out here with kids who are students and baseball players. My son is looking to parlay baseball as a talent that will help him get into a school that he might not get into otherwise. You are looking in the right place.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. Like you, HVbaseballDad, we’re hoping that baseball might help S get into a school that he might not otherwise. As I said before, we won’t send him to any old school just so that he can play baseball. The academics have to come first.</p>
<p>HVbaseballDad - Thanks for your kind words. Knowledge may be power but our knowledge was acquired through many mistakes, and much trial and error. I have the “scars” to prove it. I had help and guidance from others, and I’m passing it forward to others.</p>
<p>lenny2 - I’ve reread your post and you are quite clear that academics will come first. You need to understand that not everybody thinks that way. You think that way, HVbaseballDad, and I think that way because of the kids we parent. All of us have/had that goal of your son using baseball as a hook to get into a school that he might not ordinarily get into. Most of the schools that fit that profile are D1 Ivy, D1 Patriot, and D3 schools. Coaches are on the hunt for academically eligible kids that my need an Admissions boost and are good baseball players. Coaches will look at many hundreds (even thousands) of kids for every recruiting class (6-12 players per year) depending on their need. Your son has two baseball options here. He can participate in showcases, travel baseball, american legion to continue to work his skills to eventually get a coaches attention. The goal would be to become a recruited athlete with an assigned roster spot. The first thing the academic baseball coach will ask: “How intersted are you in my college?” and “What is your GPA, class rank, and SAT/ACT scores?” If interested, he will want you to keep in touch and let him know of any milestones or changes (SAT/ACT score increase). Your goal is to turn his interest into an offer to help your with Admissions. The other option is he can walk-on to a D3 school tryout and try to win a roster spot. Depending on the D3 school a walk-on may or may not be a good strategy. So, the bottom line is he needs to continue to develop his baseball skills. If he is pitching in the high 70’s, he’ll want to be the low to mid-80s with multiple pitches. If he is a position player, he’ll need speed or a strong bat to win a position or compete for a position. The more baseball skill your son demonstrates the more willing the coach is to use his equity with the Admissions Committee.</p>
<p>Academics. If your son is going to compete for academic admission to an academic school he’ll need to bring up his grades from B+ to A-'s to give himself more choices. Some of these academics schools are unbelievably competitive, and the coach can only help so much. A coach is going to be willing to stick his neck out only as far as your son’s baseball talent will allow him to. Increasing the grades from B+ to A- is the easy answer. Doing it is another matter. With regard to ACTS, I like your idea of getting him help, as that can have a great return on investment. These board scores can make or break an applicant So, one way to look at it is the best way for your son to get the opportunity to play college baseball at an academic school is increase his grades and/or ACTs. The other benefit of exceptional grades is a possible merit scholarship. Good luck.</p>
<p>Please feel free to PM me if you have specific questions. I cleaned out my PM box ;-)</p>