Photoessay #2820 - Softball Reruiting

This evening Dennis and I will go all the way to Auburn to speak to a softball team coached by Susanna's good friend Amy about college recruiting.  These kids, 9th and 10th graders (and their parents) likely don't know much about this mysterious process.  Who would?  Part of the system currently operating preserves the information imbalance between the institutions and college coaches and the parents and athletes.

The college coach's goal is to attract the best performing player who wants to come to her school, will stay eligible academically, be 'coachable' and will come for the money she offers.

To do this, the less the families know, the better.  And once the families figure out how the whole thing works, it's over.  It's a very short game.

And there's ton of smoke blown around.  That's why we advocate for families to work cooperatively and share information.

No everybody thinks that way.  Many parents want to get the very best deal for their precious young athlete and screw everybody else.  They don't realize that they play right into the recruiting institution's hands.

I believe that everybody can do better if we all work together.  Organize and smash the state.

Maybe I'm a union organizer at heart.  I seriously looked into organizing at my late job.  I felt that if the women would work together, we could have a better situation for everybody.  Alas, it couldn't be done.

This topic really runs counter to most of my parenting activities, around the Changes group as the parent has to take control of a lot of the preparatory activities.  As long as the child somewhat participates as you go along.  In the end, the student athlete has to come through.  And my daughter did and she had a successful playing career at the University of Oregon.

To this group, we'll step back and kick around the whole idea of being a college athlete.  What's it like and do you really want to do it?  It's not for everybody.  The student needs to be willing to give up lots of other opportunities.  I joke that this was how it worked at a major athletic department.

Rule #1 - The athletic department tells you what to do and then you do it.

Rule #2 - There is no Rule #2, see Rule #1.

We only have an hour, not enough to really get started.  We've collected some materials.  Dennis made this cool Google Fusion table which shows location of D1, D2, D3 schools  http://tinyurl.com/csau3aw

I appropriated the colorful grapic from some athletic recruiting site, used without permission.