Thanks. Yes, the time spent with D throughout this process is something I will always treasure. She has all the info/data you mentioned on her resume, and it looks neat and tidy, but it’s basically just a listing (under bolded categories) with her contact info and picture at the top. I think she has all the basics covered, I just wasn’t sure if it matters if it looks fancy.
Regarding the professionalism or appearance of athletic resume – I don’t think there’s any added value in making it look “prettier.” When my D3 kid went through the process, we heard over and over from coaches that they wanted game film with some way to identify which player is the prospect. Music, spinning graphics etc. were wasted and an unwelcome distraction. I would imagine the same applies to the sports resume – include the info the coaches want – teams, position, upcoming tournaments, awards, plus academic profile and a picture of some sort. I gather girls don’t put height and weight generally on their profile the way boys do, so whatever the norm is for that.
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Great point, thank you!
Thanks all, as always, for sharing your collective experiences and indulging me in asking so much! Ironically, D just sent me a screenshot of an email she just received from the head coach at the school she went to ID clinic at on Sunday. It has always been #1 or #2 choice, but after Sunday, she feels it’s her #1. Coach said they thought she did an “excellent job” and “we continue to be impressed with your skill and work ethic!” She added, “You continue to be at the very top of our list and we truly hope to have you here at ___ in the future!” I feel like that is as positive as she can expect at this juncture. The coaches are going to other events in the next month or two leading up to 7/1, but they have finished they’re ID clinics, so I’m thinking that is unlikely to change much until then. D’s plan is to email her thank you and ask for a call next week to ask some specific pre-read quesitons. Coach added at bottom, “Please let me know if you have any follow up questions. I’m happy to chat at any time!”
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Also, just to clarify, I don’t think anything is a done deal, but this coach had previously told D last month on a call that she would fully support her through admissions, so I think she’s in as good a position as one could hope and I hope this ID clinic on Sunday helped solidify that.
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I think it depends on the sport, the kid and the coach. Some sports, like baseball, don’t require too much dependence on who it is you’re playing with. Hitting, throwing, fielding and pitching. Basketball and, especially soccer, do. So I think it’s not always easy to evaluate a player in those sports outside of a real game context. I feel like football coaches are looking for measurables and so that sport lends itself well to “just look and me” types of evaluation … 40 time, vertical, size, weight, etc.
I’ll give you an example with my D. She is 5’8"+, can jump, has state-level sprinter speed, is long and athletic and played for a nationally-recognized club. As every coach who’s ever had her said, she gets the benefit of the doubt before the soccer-part even starts, and they were right. She was heavily recruited in D3 & 2 and decently recruited in D1. She liked Conn and Trinity, but neither coach came out west to the big ID tournaments. So she attended Conn’s ID clinic, where they did skills, etc. and then a 20 min scrimmage at the end of the clinic where she was playing out of position with strangers. His e-mail, which lagged, was “you’re clearly an athlete, but my evaluation of you was to wonder whether you can add more “bite” to your game.” She attended the clinic at typically-struggling Whitman where, honestly, she dominated that coach’s current team in scrimmage, and the coach expressed zero interest in her. OTOH, the coaches at Williams, Middlebury, Chicago, Vassar, Wellesley, Holy Cross, UCSB, Citadel, Idaho, Montana, Gonzaga, LMU, Oxy, Pomona-Pitzer, Oberlin, Kenyon and many others thought quite differently. I’d say 99% of the programs that legitimately pursued her watched her play at Players Showcase in Vegas or Surf Cup in San Diego. I don’t think she ever generated any real interest at an ID clinic. But when you’re at Surf Cup and you’re ostensibly shutting down a kid who everyone knows has been holding a Stanford offer since sophomore year, coaches are going to notice, and they did.
I share all that to emphasize that sport and eval context can be very important and ID clinics may or may not be the best investment of time and money. As to what the coaches say and what ultimately happens, there are other threads on CC that cover that. I’ll warn you: opinions vary and people who felt burned by a school or two will chime and make sweeping generalizations and statements because this is personal to them.
I’ll just say this on that topic: be very precise with how you frame the question to the coach. Don’t settle for “we really like her” or “we’d love to have her here” or other fuzzy statements to that effect. It’s not enough. Even though you’re getting a pre-read, ask “What level of athletic support is she getting with admissions? Is she getting the most support available or a good recommendation?” Ask how the coach’s list works. Ask how many slots and tips the coach has and which one he’s using for your kid. If the coach feigns confusion about those terms, don’t let it go. Keep (politely) pushing the concept of multiple levels of support, regardless of the nomenclature. Read the Amherst memo, which is posted in one of the threads on this topic. Get educated. Be persistent but don’t be a pain. Coaches get busy so a one or several day lag between e-mails means nothing. But if you get the feeling that you’re pulling teeth dealing with a coach, then it’s probably not happening and you need to focus on other options. @cinnamon1212 's post here is worth noting. You don’t want to be perceived that way by a coach. Every single coach you’ll deal with has recruited a nightmare player. They are looking at how she handles herself. Maintain poise at all times.
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Thanks, great points. Yes, through this board we have learned that exact language matters and vague statements like “top tier” or “a top recruit” are meaningless. That’s why last month D asked for a call with this coach and specifically asked her pointed questions about where she was on her list and if her ACT score would be acceptable (grades/rigor are great, 31 ACT below school standard of 34). Coach told her verbatim they would support her through admissions and her 31 was not a concern. So, I’m hoping that call, combined with the email today and how she played at the clinic this past weekend put her in as good a position as possible. She’ll continue nailing down specific info. in a call next week.
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Great. Sounds like she’s pursuing a top-tier NESCAC with that 34 number. Based on my travels, Williams will easily admit a kid they want with a 31. I’d be skeptical if they said that wasn’t good enough. A 31 would have worked at Vassar during our time with this a few years ago, and coaches there have very little pull with admissions. Middlebury is another one that we found was pretty forgiving of test scores if they wanted an athlete.
On the point of what the coaches told her, I’d want more than “will support”. I’d want to know which level of support. It’s a fine line and you have to weigh the subtle social cues in terms of how hard to push. And, of course, keep pursuing other options as if this one isn’t going to work out. Always prudent. Every year I read posts here of really ticked off people who swear the coach made them think it was a done deal and then it wasn’t.
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I wouldn’t worry much if at all about the resume. I’m surprised to hear that any athletic recruits might be thinking about hiring professionals for this. Totally unnecessary IMO. If the coach thinks something needs to be improved for admissions she’ll tell the recruit.
As for follow up calls, it seems your daughter is in a good position already and if I’m understanding correctly she has enough info about the school and program at this point. I wouldn’t artificially create questions just to arrange yet another phone call. I don’t know what questions she has about the pre read process but it is pretty straightforward. She could just email to say she has transcripts, test scores, next year’s tentative schedule, and school profile ready to go; will anything else be helpful?
If she has questions that are best discussed by phone that’s another story. But if you’re asking for phone calls because you think it’s helping her recruiting position I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. Could be the opposite. It’d be pretty normal for top recruits not to talk to coaches for a month or more as the identification process winds down. I think what you’ll find is as coaches round out the recruiting board they’ll ping recruits with texts or IG every so often and the communication becomes more organic between coach and recruit.
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I think professionalized resumes could backfire as they could scream “overinvolved parent”. They could scream “detail oriented kid”, but I think many won’t/don’t.
The risk is that the coach feels the kid needs all of this puffery to sell themselves, and starts to wonder…
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I tend to agree. This also is something to consider in ghost-written e-mails. I’ll confess to doing one or two for my procrastinating youngest, who was ignoring coaches that were expressing interest in her (as if that kind of interest were in inexhaustible supply). In each such case, she said, “well can you e-mail him/her for me?” and I made sure to not sound like me in the e-mail.
It doesn’t represent my ethical high point, but I’m not losing sleep either. The key though is to try and be invisible. I think one or two chats between parent and coach are fine. This is a murky process as is evidenced by the many threads on this forum. When it comes to the brass tax about the kid’s chances using their ED chip and how much support they are getting, having the coach explain what he/she is willing to do for the kid to an adult is, I think, a healthy thing. When coaches were talking to me, they were clear they were speaking to someone who wasn’t going to misremember or misunderstand what was said. I thought that was always an important part of all of our recruiting discussions. I was mostly invisible but at the end they knew I was there and my kid wasn’t alone.
In my cases, I didn’t meet the coach until very late in the game when the coaches asked to meet with me together with my kid. From the coaches point of view, part of recruiting is meeting the parents to understand the type of environment the kid grew up in. What they say is very true, apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
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Oh, I’ve never asked the coach for a phone call. I’ve talked with the coach twice; once when my daughter had an unofficial visit with the coach and team and she introduced herself to my husband and I and we chatted for about 10 minutes. Then this past weekend at the clinic she said hello and we exchanged brief pleasantries. I can’t see myself every asking her for a call, nor have I reached out to her in any form. D has done all of that. My thought with D asking for a call next week isn’t to improve her own odds (I think we’re doing well there) but to ask specifics such as how long the pre-read takes, and when she anticipates offering supported slots. The coach has her current transcript and asked for her school profile already. D is not sure it’s necessary to have the call, so I have to defer to her…
This is the right approach. Recruits often have a better sense than parents of how to deal with some of this. And even though coaches are adults and professionals, they are more accustomed to operating in the world and culture that 18-22 year olds inhabit than are parents. So it’s likely your daughter and the coach are on the same wavelength with how and when to communicate.
That’s not to say that recruits don’t sometimes need a nudge on mission critical items, or some help understanding the process and the meaning of what coaches say. But on these sorts of gray areas I think recruits usually nail it while parents can tend to overreach (with the best of intentions, but operating from standards shaped by their own professional environments rather than those that the kids/coaches are operating in).
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This is so true. It is one of the rare times when an attentive kid REALLY does know better than their parent. An inattentive and lax kid might be different. I have made the mistake- if your kid is generally on top of things in most aspects of their life- follow their lead here. You don’t know more just because of life experience when it comes to this. The coaches are MUCH closer to the students’ ages than ours!
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Admissions is not interested in an athletic resume. Admissions will be focused on all the academic aspects of the preread!
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There are a few things on an athletic resume that both the coach and admissions cares about. Being Captain (leadership) and scholar athlete were two on my daughter’s record that mattered to both.
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Yes that’s true that those things are very important!
Coaches knew of my son’s leadership and accomplishments. Later, admissions learned of it on the Common App when formally applying as part of ECs, awards, leadership, etc.
However, in our case, no NESCAC asked for an athletic resume to submit for preread.
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That makes sense. My D will be a captain this fall and was JV captain when she was on JV. She is a scholar athlete as well. In your experience are those only factored in on the application, or in the pre-read? If the pre-read, how is that info communicated?
That should be on her resume (which I know you said your D has) that many coaches ask for as part of the pre-read. In my experience some coaches ask for a resume, some don’t, but even if the coach doesn’t ask for a resume, no reason to not send one along. If you D has a recruiting profile on Twitter, or YouTube, or one of the many recruiting sites, important info like GPA, test score, captain, etc. can also be in her bio.
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