Waiting for colleges to contact you

As a parent, it is tough to balance between marketing your child and being too pushy.  If you are reading this, you obviously don’t want to be THAT parent (Discussed here) but you also want to make sure that your child, if he or she is good at athletics, gets the attention that you feel they deserve from media as well as college coaches. 

When emailing with a parent recently, her first question that she wanted answered is if she should contact schools they are interested in or wait until the school contacts you.  The problem with waiting for the school, even if you are the best player in the country, is that the program may just never end up contacting you.  They may think you are too good, not interested, or any number of different things. 

So with that in mind, if there is a school that your child is interested in (Don’t try to force your child to a school that you as a parent like), it is essential that you take the first step and contact them.  At the very worst, if you make the first step by emailing a recruiting profile (Click here for directions on how to put that together), they may thank you for sending it to them and not have any future correspondence.  If you do that, it at least shows you gave it a try and that they should now be aware of you. 

If your dream school has moved on to bigger and more talented prospects, the good news is that there is more than one college that your son or daughter could go to.  Well, there are a lot.  The University of Texas has put together a list of colleges in each state and let me stress to you that the list is LONG (Click here for the list).

If you check out the above webpage, this will allow you to see more about schools throughout the country.  One thing I would not recommend is using it to find as many schools as possible to send information to.  What I would do if in your shoes would be to think about where your child wants to go to school (Again, not you as a parent) and look more into options.  Be realistic of the levels of play and look more into the school.  Chances are your child is going to have to rely on that education over their athletic abilities for the next forty five years of their lives.  Find out what academic programs that your child is considering and look into it. 

Going back to the original point, you should never wait for a college to contact you.  If that is the case, then the college may never contact you and that gives you little to no chance at playing there.  Instead, email them a copy of your recruiting profile.  Send an introductory email that tells about your child and says that they are interested in their school.  Don’t expect a scholarship the next day but their next move may be to request some highlight tape.  That will at least get the ball rolling and allow for the school to know who your child is.