As mentioned in the previous article in this series on athletic recruiting for non-US residents, an already complex process becomes even more challenging when you live in another country, since coaches don’t have easy access to the types of situations where they see many U.S. high school players. And to be recruited to play your sport at the collegiate level in the United States, you first have to be noticed by coaches. Then the coaches must decide that you can contribute to their team, and that you are academically strong enough to be admitted to their institution. But it is becoming more and more common for international students and U.S. citizens living abroad to be athletic recruits, so if this is your dream, persevere with the process!
[Note on terminology: Remember that in the U.S., the words college and university are frequently used interchangeably when referring to institutions of higher education.]
Put Together Your Sport Resume
Your athletic resumé or CV summarizes your athletic career in a form that you can both email to coaches or print out to hand to them when you talk in person. It combines contact information and education details, along with your athletic statistics and accomplishments. When possible, get letters of recommendation or technical evaluation reports by high-level or professional coaches.
Here’s one sample of an athletic resume. Search on the web for CVs for your particular sport because the specific information to include varies by sport. Keep this document in a file on your computer so that you can add to it on a regular basis.
Collect Relevant Academic Reports
Coaches also need to know if your academic performance is high enough for you to be admitted to their university. If you are talking to a coach from Harvard or Stanford, s/he needs you to be much stronger academically than coaches from many state universities.
Be ready with a scanned copy of your most recent school records, starting from year 9. If the records are not in English, be sure to also have a translated copy available. Unless you go to an American or international school abroad, the coach may need to see more information about your country’s system of schooling in order to understand the level of rigor involved. The NCAA guides for international students are critical to this process.
Prepare for the SAT or ACT
Standardized tests for U.S. college admissions, the SAT and ACT, are crucial in the athletic recruiting process. Test scores give coaches another data point about whether you fall within range for admission at that institution. Practice these exams early because practice has been demonstrated to increase student scores, and the higher your scores, the greater the chance a college might accept you. If the language of instruction at your school is not English, then admissions departments will not expect your test scores to be as high as those of students educated in the U.S.
American students typically take the SAT or ACT for the first time in the second half of year 11, but many take the PSAT or PLAN – practice versions of the full exams that are formally administered and graded – in October of year 11 or even year 10. These exams are administered at some international schools. Once you have results from an official exam, add a scanned copy of your scores to the information you give to coaches.
Search Out Connections to Coaches and Players
With your resume in hand, start with your own coaches and then widen your circle. Talk to coaches and more advanced players, looking for those who know about specific programs in the U.S., who have played themselves in the U.S., have contacts there in your sport, or have experience helping other students who were successfully recruited. If there is an international school near you, even if you have never attended it, contact the coaches there for information. If you cannot find coaches for your gender or your sport, keep trying and ask each person to refer you to someone else you should contact.
When you talk to local coaches and advanced players, ask for an assessment of your ability to compete at the collegiate level in the US, and in which division. Another goal is to find people who have credibility with coaches in the US and who can acting as a reference so that coaches pay more attention to you.
Record Your Play
Have your parents or someone else video your play. Video will be especially important for reaching coaches since many are unlikely to be able to watch you live. Start early on this project because it takes awhile to become proficient and a lot of video to get what you need. By the latter part of year 10, your goal is to have a well-edited highlight video to showcase your skills during training and matches. Search on YouTube for samples that other athletes have posted.
You can then use your videos to give coaches a first indication of what you can do. Specific video requirements vary by sport, and you may eventually need video of an entire game showing how you played for the duration. Upload your video to YouTube.com and consider setting the permissions to private so that you control who sees it.
Identify Programs of Interest
Now comes the research-intensive part of the process. Build a list of criteria that you want in a college or university you attend independent of the athletic program. Then add the factors important to you in the sports programs you consider.
The next step is to create a list of the 12 to 15 institutions that best match your list of criteria, where you are interested in both studying and playing. Identify institutions to consider by looking on the NCAA Eligibility Center website, or use the college search feature on the CollegeBoard or College Data websites. If academics are very important to you, consider the universities in this list of schools that take the concept of the “scholar-athlete” seriously. If you are having a very difficult time identifying enough schools for this list, then you may need to consider loosening some of your criteria.
Contact Coaches
Once you identify a school you are interested in, the next step is to contact the coach by email. The best timing for this varies somewhat from sport to sport and among the NCAA divisions, but two full years before you plan on starting university is appropriate in many cases.
Write a short letter of introduction that includes a specific reason why you are interested in this coach’s program and attach a copy of your athletic resume and academic record. Try to have someone fluent in English proofread everything. Offer to send the coach a link to your video.
If you don’t hear anything back from the coach, you can try calling but it probably isn’t worth leaving a message. Be sure to pay attention to the difference in time zones. The NCAA regulates when coaches can return calls to players, and they are very limited before your final year in secondary school. Analyze which coaches you are hearing from and which not. If you are hearing from D3 coaches but not D1 it may mean your level of play is not high enough for D1.
Don’t hesitate to contact a coach more than once, even if you get no response. However, it is most effective if you have additional information to give the coach – for example, you now have official standardized test scores available, or your team just won a championship.
Plan a Summer Abroad
Most recruited athletes in the U.S. spend the summers during secondary school at development camps where they hone their skills and where, more importantly, they can be seen playing by coaches they hope will recruit them. If you can spend time in the U.S. during the summer, be sure to ask coaches what camps they will be attending. Then go to the camps where you can be seen by the coaches you want to be recruited by. Be sure the coach knows you will be there and has seen your package beforehand.
If possible, tour some U.S. colleges or universities to get a better understanding of the differences between what they offer. Even if they are not schools that have made it onto your list, seeing them in person will give you a better idea of how to interpret information about other colleges and universities.
This type of trip is not financially feasible for many athletes, but don’t give up hope. Most coaches understand this because they cannot afford to travel internationally for recruiting purposes. Be sure to ask them if there is anyone in your area that they know and whose player judgments they value. Finally, ask if there are additional types of video the coach would like to see.
A final note is that the player, not parents, should be contacting coaches. The coach wants to talk to the person they might be spending a lot of time with over a period of years because they’ll be trying to decide how you will get along with both coaches and players. Parents can help with identifying programs that might be of interest, sifting through information on programs, strategizing what to say when phoning or emailing coaches, and reviewing all written communication.
So now the U.S. collegiate athletic recruiting process is all crystal clear, right? Well, I know that is too much to ask for but hopefully you know a lot more now than you did before reading this series of articles and have a strong sense of what you should be doing next to get recruited. And now is an excellent time to leave me a comment telling me what isn’t so clear!