How to match track& field atheletes with the right schools

Athletic Recruits
1

What’s the best way to start applying for division 1 colleges that are right for your child?

2

You might get better results by posting in the Athletic Recruits sub-forum (it’s under Admissions).

3

That’s going to depend on a few things. What year in school is he/she? How strong are his academics/athletics? What’s the priority, best possible academics or best possible coaching/competition?

4

In terms of the athletic performance standards piece, you can look at marks for athletes in your child’s event(s) at the conference championships and for athletes currently on the team, bearing in mind that some on the team are walk-ons who may not have had the marks to be recruited. Some schools even publish (approximate) standards for recruits and walk ons.

You can also look at places like athletic.net to see what kind of marks athletes on college teams had in high school, and also where you child stands in terms of national rank.

5

Here is how we did it – hope this helps…

Start by going to the NCAA.org site and getting the full list of all D1 schools that have track. Keep in mind there are D1 schools that only have a women’s team, no men’s. So start with the right list.

Then start crossing schools off the list based on all of the other criteria that come in to play; does the school have the right majors for your son/daughter, are they too close, too far away, too big, too small, wrong conference, too competitive or not competitive enough for their current performance level.

Then contact coaches directly and see if there is any interest. Depending on the year your son/daughter is in, you may need to complete applications for schools that you are interested in (if you want to maximize the possibility of any academic money) even if the coach has not answered you one way or another yet. My son’s marks were very competitive for his event but the coaches of the schools he was interested in did not initiate contact, we needed to do that.

In my son’s case he is currently on a combination of both academic and athletic money but had we waited to hear back from the coaches first, we would have actually missed the deadline for scholarships. There is typically more academic money than athletic money for male track athletes, but there are so many variables it is hard to give blanket direction.