<p>Hi. I'm the parent of a high school junior who is just starting to look at potential colleges. I would appreciate some advice from someone who has recent experience with Nescac football recruiting in particular. What I'm basically trying to figure out is which programs are worth exploring for my son. We don't live in the Northeast and so we need to be careful about how we invest our time. He has a 3.6 gpa at a competitive prep school in our state and just received a 30 on his ACT test. He is a 6' 1" 205 lb quarterback and linebacker who will start for his varsity team next year and is slated to be captain as well. His school had a winning record last year and played in the state tournament. Obviously there is a lot more a person and a player than these stats, but I'm hoping this will give you a rough idea of his abilities. I've looked through the rosters of some of the Nescac schools and he seems to be about on target in terms of his physical stats to play at one of those schools. He would also seem to be a decent fit academically for some of the schools, but maybe not all of them. I'd appreciate some candid information.</p>
<p>Really OK,</p>
<p>We’re not from the Northeas either but my son was recruited by 1/2 the schools in the NESCAC and received offers to be supported for admission from three of the schools. My S has 4.0 1400 SATs and was third team all-state as senior. All of the NESCAC schools send coaches to the camps that the Ivies hold in late June so that is a good place to get noticed. A few schools (Bowdoin, Trinity) reached out to my son before the camps for their junior recruit days but he ended up on a lot of NESCAC radar screens after he attended the Dartmouth camp while doing a NE college tour.</p>
<p>I would hasten to add that if you search for NESCAC football recruiting on this site, there is a multitude of good advice.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, my son picked Washington & Lee rather than the three NESCAC schools but it was a really close call for him.</p>
<p>Good luck to you and your son in this process.</p>
<p>ReallyOK,</p>
<p>It sounds like your son has positioned himself well to play at the next level and get a great education. My son (now a freshman football player at a NESCAC school) went through this process and it can be confusing … but in the end worthwhile. The cool thing is that a good football player can get admitted to a better academic school in the nESCAC than he could without the football piece. </p>
<p>The first thing I would do is send a highlight video to all 10 of the NESCAC schools. Then I’d follow up with an e-mail to the coach, along with filling out the prospect form on each website. At this point one of three things will happen: you will be ignored, you will get a generic e-mail, or the coach/staff will contact you via e-mail or phone. It was surprising to us the difference in interest within the NESCAC conference. My son had offers to be supported in admissions from 6 NESCACs, 2 others that expressed interest but didn’t pursue either strongly enough or quickly enough, and 2 schools that didn’t even acknowledge that he existed! Granted my son decided around Labor Day at the start of his Senior Year which school wanted to attend, so the process did not drag out too long.</p>
<p>The next thing I would do is have your son do some research on the schools in the NESCAC. Have him try to decide which schools would be a good fit for him based on his own criteria … without football being in the equation. We told our son that he ought to choose a school as though he was going get injured in the very first practice and never play football again. We were happy that did not happen! 
I’m not saying the culture of the football team or the personality of the head coach isn’t important. It is. But if you went to Colby last year only because of the head coach … well … he’s gone now.</p>
<p>Start planning your summer now. Your son will need to visit several camps. It’s very hard to attend 10 camps at 10 schools, so we choose the Harvard Camp and the NE Elite Camp. Most if not all the NESCACs had coaches at these schools. It is VERY important to establish a conversation with the schools prior to attending these camps. The coaches can’t watch all the kids in attendance … most of them had clipboards with SPECIFIC kids they were there to see. Have your son master the “drive by” handshake. He will have to be comfortable enough to walk up to a coach, look him in the eye, shake his hand, introduce himself, and thank him for coming to watch him. Most coaches will engage in some small talk, but they need to see so many kids it won’t be a long talk.</p>
<p>Later in the summer if the schools are interested they will invite you to a “Recruit Day”. I think those happened in July and August. You and your kid visit the school with 20-30 other football recruits and they put on a “dog and pony” show. They sell the school in terms of football but also in terms of academics and social life too.</p>
<p>Keep your options open. While we found the coaches to be honest, they are having to tell 50+ kids they are interested to get the 17 slots they need to fill. And that’s okay, you will do the same thing. My son was sincere in telling four schools that he could see himself there … because he could. He didn’t want to put all his eggs in one basket. The coaches understand that, and most seemed appreciative of his honesty and open communication.</p>
<p>That’s a start. I am happy to answer any other questions you may have. Looking back, it was a lot of work and somewhat stressful, but my son would now say it was worth it.</p>
<p>As an incoming freshman on the Colby College Mules football team, I went through this process last summer and can give some insight.
This may be somewhat difficult, but you’ll want to take a few days (took me and my dad five days) and tour these New England NESCAC schools. Figure out which ones he likes best, and go to camps hosted specifically by those schools. For example, Colby, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Bates and Williams were my top 5 choices, so I went to the C-B-B football camp at Bates and the Williams camp (I was away and couldn’t go to the one at Midd). What these are is basically a five-hour skill evaluation recruiting camp- although they call them “skills clinics” because there’s some regulation against calling them recruiting camps. Beats me, but anyway… These are the absolute best way to get attention from prospective coaches. Just make sure he sleeps well the night before, and has some caffeine and plenty of water before he gets there- these camps are TOUGH and meant to weed out the players that aren’t up to the challenge. Even though NESCAC football is D3, that doesn’t mean it’s less competitive than D2 or Ivy League. He’ll start out running 40’s and doing agility drills- the caffeine boost really helps with these in my experience. He’ll then do drills pertaining to his particular position(s) for a skill evaluation. FYI, there are usually four or five quarterbacks per school at these camps, so he’ll have to REALLY stand out. As a side note, I was on the small end for a lineman (I played offensive tackle in HS and will play defensive tackle next season at Colby- I really fleshed out over the year) last summer and Williams decided they’d lump me in with the running backs on offense, lol. Turns out I might make a decent running back, haha. Anyway…
So yeah, he should go to camps and make sure he gets noticed. This is beat done by HIM and not his PARENT- this shows that he’s got some initiative of his own and gets him much more notice and respect from a coach than if his mother or father introduces him. Try to figure out which coach is responsible for recruiting in his geographic area and have him introduce himself to that coach, his position coach and the head coach first. Drop an exam score or two if they’re impressive- I got a 2300 on my SATs, 700 on chemistry SAT-II and a 780 on math-2 SAT-II, and all the coaches I mentioned that to INSTANTLY noticed me more. These NESCAC teams really want players that could get in without the help of athletics dept., as that allows them to recruit another guy who might not be as good a student but is a stud player, and they can keep an acceptable average incoming GPA, test scores, etc. with admissions.
Maintain contact as much as he can with coaches who talk to him. He should keep his options as open as he can, as long as he can, until he has to decide.
For me, it was down to Midd and Colby by the end, and both invited me up for a game and overnight visit. These visits really gave me a sense of the social scene at the two schools (both involved some drinking, Midd much more than Colby because my host at Colby wanted to make sure I stayed out of trouble- I was a higher-priority recruit at Colby and they really wanted me to not get in trouble with the school. make sure your kid knows to stay safe, drink in moderation and have his host keep him out of trouble). In the end, for me it was a mutual selection event- I ended up liking Colby better than Midd, and they ended up wanting me more than Midd did.</p>
<p>Ditto everything FourMore said. My son is going through the exact same process. One additional thing that really benefited him: Many NESCAC coaches attend one day prospects days held at Patriot League schools. For example, at Fordham there were coaches from Trinity and Colby. Have your son check with the coaches from a particular school and ask what one day camps they attend. My son attended a Patriot League school’s prospect day and was basically ignored by their staff. However, a close by NESCAC school had a couple of coaches present and they loved him. After the camp we went and toured the NESCAC school with the coaches and it was a great fit. Be prepared though to make a decision on where you want to apply ED. All the schools will stress ED however you can only ED to one. Good luck.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for this information. It is very helpful and I appreciate you taking the time to post here. My son just attended the NE Elite clinic, which was both a great football experience and a super opportunity to meet with coaches. He contacted a number of them beforehand and was able to talk to them in person at the camp. The coaches are all very friendly, but holding their cards close to the vest right now. My sense is that now that camps are starting to wind down, they are beginning the process of figuring out who they want to recruit and who they want to take for “pre-reads” to the admission department. Then serious discussions will start to happen around September 1 for many potential recruits. My son does not have the fabulous academic stats of the poster above (Go Mules!), but the sense I have is that he is the ballpark for all but perhaps the very top academic schools in the conference, but I would add that this is just my sense and we may be told down the road that he is not a good fit academically for some/all. This thread has been very useful and I hope will benefit other student athletes interested in the NESCAC.</p>