Time to Re-Evaluate, Revise and Regroup!

Kelly Kulina: Your Link to the Colleges

So, you’re not signing your National Letter of Intent this week. Sit down. Take a deep breath and relax. It’s ok; most players don’t make their decision in the early period. Now, making the most of the time you have is the KEY!

Players that sign early are the ones that have been proactive in the recruiting process and on the coaches’ radar for months (and years!). Yes, it’s a payoff for hard work, determination and baseball skill, but I think it’s a poor measure of “success” for most prospective student-athletes. The reality is that for someone to sign early, several things have to fall into place. Players that sign early have had many conversations with coaches, have been seen in person and have spent the night on several campuses. You can’t expect to sign early without having these things happen, and to try to rush through them would be a mistake!

The bottom line is that you can’t beat yourself up over not signing early, or even worse, shut down the process. Let’s look at the positives:

• You have more time to research and look at schools. Chances are you never had a chance to visit the campus of many of the schools on your list and meet with a coach while there. Now you’ve got time to do that!
• Additional time to get your grades and College Board scores up.
• You have more time to get bigger, stronger and faster. This is a great time to take your game to a higher level. If you take advantage of the off season, you will be prepared and ready to open some eyes this spring!
• You don’t have to rush applications, which will be non-binding. Signing or committing early could mean that you’d have to apply with a binding application.
• Schools may have new recruiting needs, and not all coaches make their decisions early!
• You’ll have a much better idea of what your financial aid package looks like before you make your decision. In addition, more time to research grants, scholarships and loans available.

So, where to go from here? After the dust settles, it will be time to evaluate where you’re at with schools on your list.

• What have you heard from coaches? Have you received personal phone calls, or just camp information? Check out my series of blog entries, “What’s in a Letter” for more information on interpreting what you’re hearing.
• Which schools have you visited? Campus tours and information sessions are great, but how many coaches have you met with on campus? This is a great chance to show your interest, but you have to make it happen! Be proactive with coaches over e-mail and phones, and usually they can accommodate you.
• Have a plan in place and execute it! You can’t rely on coaches coming out to come see you play- be active in the process! The winter is a great time to market yourself to coaches using your Personal Player Page to separate yourself from other players. Remember, with video, there is no dead period!

Now is not the time to panic or resort to knee-jerk reactions. You’re not going on vacation, college will be your home for the next four or five years! Take inventory of what you’ve done up until this point- what you’ve seen and heard and where you’re at with schools on your list. What do you need to do to put yourself in a better position? You have plenty of time to find a place to play baseball and study if you’re willing to take the appropriate steps NOW. Remember, more mistakes are made in Early Period by college coaches and players! Take advantage of the time you have today to reap the benefits of tomorrow!

What’s in a Letter? - Part 1

Kelly Kulina: Your Link to the Colleges

It was and still is amazing to me to hear players and parents talk about who’s recruiting who. In reality the only people with any authority on the subject are the college coaches themselves.

A while back, a Nevada football player made big news when it was announced that he had lied about being recruited by several Division I football programs. Now, while this story is more about lying than anything else, it reminded me of how important it is for players to understand what it means to be recruited by a school. I can remember players, parents and HS coaches asking me about certain players that I was supposedly recruiting, and I didn’t even know who they were, let alone have any thoughts on their athletic ability.

Too many times, players believe that they are being recruited for baseball because they’ve received a letter, questionnaire, camp or general information in the mail from a coach or college. Unfortunately, this is the biggest misconception in the college search process. There are many steps before a school actively recruits a player and many more steps before there is an official offer on the table. What players need to understand as they begin the process is that there is a big difference between receiving a mailer (being on a mailing list) and having a coach call once a week.

Just to give you an insider’s perspective, when I was a coach at the University of Maryland, I would initially send out 1,000 to 1,500 letters to players across the county. Just by looking at the questionnaires I received back, about half of the initial kids could get into the school, or roughly 700. From there, the objective was to learn as much as I could about these players and begin to eliminate players by seeing and talking to them at camps, showcases and other events. By the time I got past these stages, the list of players was down to 350. The other factor was to access and evaluate my returning players given my position specific needs; now the list was cut by more than half to 150.

From this group of student-athletes came phones calls to prospects, calls to cross-check evaluations, and additional evaluations through scouting trips, campus visit invites, both official and unofficial. These players represented my priorities, and even they were split into a depth chart of prospects: A, B and C. Obviously, my focus was going to be on the A-List, but players move between groups throughout the process given their athletic and academic performance along with our face to face and phone conversations. In the perfect world, by November, I would have received commitments from my top players (six to eight) and have them sign their Letter of Intent during the Early Signing Period.

So, we’ve gone from 1500 hundred players to the average recruiting class of six to eight. What do you take away from this? Think about it, and then check in next week to get my thoughts.

Kulina is a former Associate Head Coach and recruiting coordinator with the University of Maryland. As a former recruiting coordinator for ten years in the ACC, Kulina has vast contacts and is widely respected throughout the nation. From 1989 to 2000, Kulina coached 46 players who were selected in the MLB draft.