The Dean offers advice to this mom, who wonders why scouts haven’t yet recruited her volleyball star daughter. https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/volleyball-scholarship-for-high-school-star/
I think a great point in this article is that if your child isn’t playing club/JO, it’s super hard to know how your athlete compares with others. My daughter played for a school that sent 2-3 players/year to DI schools. She also played at a sports training center in the off season with a coach from a different high school. That coach told her in her freshman year that at her school, she would be her star varsity outside hitter. At her own school, she sat on the bench most of the time. The difference in level of play in HS is vast.
One correction is that D1 women’s volleyball is a ‘head count’ sport. The coach cannot divide a scholarship between several players. If the team is fully funded, each athlete receiving a scholarship receives a full one. If the team isn’t fully funded, a player could receive less, but only 12 players in total can receive money. For D2, scholarships can be divided, but there is a limit of 8 per team.
In some cases, the student could receive athletic aid, merit aid, and some other need based aid (mostly federal and state). There are gpa, rank, or score requirements to take merit and athletic aid.
@twoinanddone -Thanks for that info about D1 volleyball being a “head count” sport. I hadn’t known that.
On another note, this answer was sent to the parent who’d sent the query much earlier in the fall. It was late then to start seeking volleyball scholarships for next September and it’s FAR later now!
Play for an elite travel team. https://www.1stalliancevbc.net/recruiting
Yes, very late for a senior to just start looking for athletic scholarships but it can be done. My daughter didn’t go on her first college visit until July and was able to pick a school and sign an NLI in November. She had to make some choices on the division she wanted to play in and the academics of the schools. It all worked out, but she was flexible.
A few thoughts:
- I'm the father of a D1 recruit who signed an NLI last year and IMO, having a "we are really hoping for a sports scholarship" mentality is not healthy/productive or even realistic for most families. As noted in Sally's reply, very few HS athletes in a given sport end up going D1, even some very good ones. And my take on it is...if your kid doesn't get a scholarship/LL/recruiting slot, will you look back on all the time and money committed to the sport as a waste? I would hate to think so.
- I think being proactive is key, especially for "below the radar" prospects. And for future classes of parents/kids, my advice is to start EARLY. Depending on the sport, as early as the end of Freshman year. The communication should come from the kid, though the parent can/should provide guidance/reminders.
- All parents/kids need to be realistic about their kid's/their own abilities/potential. TBH, I think most of us aren't...and err toward the optimistic. As noted, having a third-party opinion is important. When my daughter was younger, I straight out asked her coach (who is also the coach of an Olympian) if he thought she was good enough to play in college and his response was positive...only then did we think there was a possibility she might be recruitable.
5th year post HS academy could be an option. But $$$$$. IMG etc but for volleyball
http://www.avcvolleyball.com/college-recruiting/
All the advice above is broadly applicable to most sports (eg be realistic about your talent level, be realistic about your recruiting chances, play sports for the right reasons, start early, etc) but there are many thing to know specific to each sport. There’s a cadence to each season, a hierarchy to which positions get recruited first, rules for contact dates, completely different types of camps and showcases to consider and a hundred other details to learn. There are some sport-specific threads on this site that are gold mines for parents just starting out, so be sure to search the Athletic Recruits area at CC. And away from CC one of the best resources for how college VB coaches handle recruiting and why they act like they do is at the www collegevolleyballcoach com site. He seems to have stopped posting this summer, but his archives are worth reading to the very end.