Balanced Attack - Part 2

Rob Naddelman: Through a Parent’s Eyes

Last week I wrote about the importance of a “Balanced Attack” to the college recruiting process for high school players. Parents need to avoid the “showcase and college camp itch” when it comes to every invite received in the mail. Try not to allocate your family’s entire budget to these two categories. As I mentioned last week, showcases and college camps are important, but they need to be a part of an overall strategy that makes sense for your family’s goals and objectives.

At Baseball Factory, our staff constantly stresses to families that they need to look at four different areas of focus EACH year when determining their plan of attack to prepare for college baseball. Leaving out any of these four areas can create an unbalanced approach and leave you behind the curve.

For those parents that are scratching their head and are looking for some guidance, here are the first two areas to focus on when creating a game plan for the college recruiting process:

Academic Performance – This is #1 on the list by a long shot. An honest assessment of the student’s academic achievement needs to be performed. Make sure to get a copy of your son’s official transcript from the guidance office and calculate his core course GPA. Remember only the core courses (ie: Math, Science, English, History, etc) will count towards your son’s eligibility for NCAA programs. Check out NCAA.org for more information on this topic. Those lovely elective classes like baseball and weight lifting will not contribute one bit to his academic eligibility. Have him take sample PSAT, SAT, or ACT tests depending upon his year in school to see how he measures up. If the academics need improvement beyond what the student is capable of doing on his own through hard work, seek academic tutoring or standardized test prep courses. The reality is that the admissions process is wickedly competitive and the better STUDENT-athletes (notice STUDENT and not athlete is capitalized) have an admissions advantage every time.

Skill Development – As Steve Bernhardt wrote in his Building the Better Ballplayer Blog, parents need to seek professional instruction assistance for the areas of their son’s game that need improvement. It is easy to practice the areas of the game where the players are excelling. It is much tougher to work on your weaknesses and try to elevate them to a player’s strengths. Just think: instead of running off to another showcase and “exposing” a weakness for everyone in attendance to see, what if you used those same budget dollars to get professional instruction and improve your game? Doesn’t that make more sense? Well rounded players at the high school level usually make better players in college. Whether it is running speed, overall body strength, throwing mechanics, hitting mechanics, defensive ability, etc. get yourself some professional help and attack your weaknesses.

Next week, I will touch on the final two areas of focus for your balanced attack. If anyone can guess what the last two categories are, feel free to post them as a comment to get some discussion going!

Naddelman is a former two-time All Ivy League Third Baseman at the University of Pennsylvania, where he competed in a College World Series Regional. He has served as the President of Baseball Factory for the past 13 years, and also is the Executive Director of Baseball Factory's charitable arm The B.A.S.E. - H.I.T. Foundation. Naddelman and Steve Sclafani (CEO) have been featured in Business Week and CNN for their work in building Baseball Factory into the nation's leader in player development and college placement.