For many high school students, the current economic climate presents a real challenge to college aspirations. With tuitions at an all-time high, college is harder and harder for parents to afford as they watch their incomes fall or lose their jobs. One of the most overlooked options for even modestly successful athletes to afford college is a sports scholarship of some sort. Sports scholarships are much easier to obtain than most parents would imagine, since they depend most on the rapport that a student is able to build with his or her potential coach, and not necessarily on skill or prestige. Students applying to college for 2009 have confirmed this to me in our conversations as I did research for this article. One student noted, “even though my school isn’t anywhere at the top of the high school baseball standings, I was still able to get my foot in the door to be considered for a baseball scholarship; I made a call to the coach and set up a meeting to learn about the program. He was impressed enough by my interest in the program that he asked me to come practice with the team so he could evaluate my skills individually. This was at a Division 1 school, and from what I can tell it’s pretty common.” He added, “where you go to high school doesn’t seem that important.” While in the past, certain high school athletic programs have fed a large percentage of their students to college programs and the scholarships that come with them, a more competitive sports environment and greater academic competition between schools has encouraged coaches and administrations to go out of their way to pick students who are a great match for the school and who show interest by taking the initiative of establishing contact with the coaches. This is true of all sports, but is particularly true of baseball, where individual skill and skill development is not quite at sensitive to the coaching of a team but is instead more dependent on an individual training regimen. College coaches and even minor league recruiters are very willing to overlook high school baseball standings in their recruitment because great baseball players can play on bad teams. (If you need any proof of that, just ask Ken Griffey, Jr.) The bottom line is that just because your team hasn’t won a state championship, that doesn’t mean you won’t be considered for a scholarship. If you have talent and show interest in the school and in its team when you talk to coaches, you have as good a shot at winning a scholarship as anyone – a scholarship that would undoubtedly be welcomed during times like these.
Tags: high school baseball standings