A student athlete hopes to commit to the school of their dreams and play the sport that they love, but waiting to know who you are being scouted by is a long process due to the fact that each sport has it’s own recruitment rules. For the majority of sports, contacts began scouting students in their junior year.
“They started contacting me through twitter and my coaches,” said senior Kezieo Snelling who was first contacted in March of this year. Football players like Snelling normally have general correspondence beginning September 1st, of the students junior year, but there can be only one phone call between April 15th and May 31st. But on September 1st of a football players senior year the recruiters can call them once a week. The National Collegiate Athletic Association has strict rules about recruitment but once they are allowed to start contacting an athlete, they go for it.
The NCAA has different time periods, such as contact, evaluation, and dead period, where the rules change. During an evaluation period recruiters our allowed to have face-to-face contact with the athlete, the family, and can come to visit the school and watch them compete. But when it is a dead period the recruiter may not have any face-to-face contact with the athlete and they are not allowed to watch them perform.
“It’s relaxing right now but when the time comes and I can actually look more closely at the colleges that I can get into then I will feel a little bit more pressure,” says junior swimmer, Ashley Kubel. As one of Steinbrenners top swimmers Kubel is not aware if any schools are looking at her.
Snelling didn’t find the recruiting time that nerve raking because he knew he just had to do his best. Kubel also isn’t stressed out at the thought of someone watching her performance, she just wants to do her best at everything she does. An official visit for most high school sports are done on the first day of the students senior year.
BY: Emma Stevens / Print Sports Editor
