Balanced Attack – Part 3

Rob Naddelman: Through a Parent’s Eyes

For the past two weeks I have written 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.

The theme at Baseball Factory from our staff is constantly stressing 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.

I spoke last week about Academic Performance and Skill Development as the first two areas of focus. For those parents that are scratching their head and are looking for some guidance, here are the final two areas to focus on when creating a game plan for the college recruiting process:

3. National Tournament Competition – How does a player stack up against nationwide competition? If your son lives in New England and wants to play baseball in the South, how does he compare to players that live in Florida? As I have said to many parents that attend Baseball Factory events, how many high school baseball players that live in Florida want to come North to play in college? Not many, so if your son wants a spot on a college baseball roster in a warm weather climate he needs to know how he compares to players in that geographic area. It may be time to say no to another local tournament (playing with and against the same kids he has competed with for the last 10 years) and challenge your son in a new environment. This experience will bode well for him when he steps onto a college baseball field for the first time and sees players from a few different states. This would have helped me a lot when I transitioned from high school baseball to the University of Pennsylvania. It was a little overwhelming to see bigger, stronger players from Arizona, California, and Colorado for the first time as a college freshman.

4. Promoting yourself to colleges – College baseball is not football or basketball. It does not have the recruiting budgets or scholarships that those big revenue sports have. Therefore, it is much harder for college coaches to know about all the talented high school players in the country. College baseball coaches lack the budget, resources, and "where with all" to recruit high school players as compared to their football and basketball counterparts. As a result, players need to be their biggest advocate when it comes to promoting themselves. Showcases and college camps are only part of the picture here. You need a realistic game plan and some tools to follow up with coaches on a consistent basis. What about schools that haven’t seen your son play at all? How are they going to know about him? You need a professional webpage to help market your son to coaches. That web page should have an edited video of him performing and an unbiased evaluation of his skills. These tools are helpful to initiate a dialogue with a college coach and open the door for communication.

You also need to know what schools are realistic for your son’s baseball ability, academic performance, and social considerations. Think twice about hopping around to only Division I college camps if your son is best suited for a smaller program. Seek guidance on schools that are a good fit for your son and don’t get caught up in what everyone else is doing.

Good luck in the process. Stay focused on your game plan and your balanced attack with pay off in the long run!

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.