How Scholarship Offers Are Made To Athletes

What's up, team? Alex Swenson here. Hey, thanks for joining me today. And if you're new to this channel, I'm a former Division I college coach, scout and recruiter with 11 years of experience, and I'm here to help you or your son reach the next level. And in today's video, we're going to be talking about how scholarship offers are made from start to finish. So I'm going to walk you through each step of the way. I'm going to try to condense this as much as I possibly can. If you have any questions at all, please comment down below. I will answer all of them for you. And if you get anything from this video or you're looking for a scholarship, whether it's academic or athletic, smash that like, button for me and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already. I put out a weekly video on recruiting and how to just get better on and off the field. All right, let's get into it. So this information is coming from my experience as a College Division 1 recruiting coordinator and talking to these college coaches. I talk to these college coaches almost on a daily basis about what their needs are, their recruiting process, almost all things recruiting. So I can help them and I can help student athletes in high school go through this process. So the first thing that these college coaches are going to do are going to establish their needs in each class. So they're going to look at their current roster and let's just use an example for the 2023-2024-2025-2026, 6. Okay, where are they going to be with their rosters? Are they going to need catchers in these particular years that I just listed? They recruit three to four years out and it varies a little bit depending on the team, the division, etc from there, but let's just use those examples. So are they going to need a catcher? Are they going to need a middle infielder, outfielder? Depending on this particular year, some are going to need a position one year and some are not going to need. So. So they can identify the right players, then they're going to establish what kind of scholarship dollars are they going to have each year, depending on their roster and depending on the guys that are coming in, because as some of you may know, and if you don't college Division I schools can only have 11.7 scholarships. That is the max amount they can have right now. Okay. And not everybody is actually fully funded. That's for another video. So, meaning not everybody on the Division 1 side has 11.7. Some might have 10, 8, 5, 3, 1 0. Some of them do not have any athletic scholarship. Okay? But they're going to identify that because they're going to have to know what money they can throw out there to an offer. And this is what we're going over offers from start to finish. So this is the very start. We're going to go all the way to the actual offer and how that works, okay? So they're going to establish that. Then from there they're going to start identifying players. Okay? And how they start with that is one they start consulting with, like, people like myself. High school coaches, summer ball coaches are big, definitely. Okay? And this is where you get in relationships, forming relationships, working with people, and probably just even more importantly, having good relationships with your. With your coaches, your high school coach, your summer ball coach. Because they're going to be talking about you. Our coaches are going to be reaching out to them about players that they're looking for. So if I'm a college recruiter, I'd call like, I need a catcher in this class. What do you got? You got anybody for me that I can come watch? That's how this process starts going. As you guys probably know, these college scouts can't be everywhere. So that's why they use these resources like these high school coaches, the summer ball coaches, and people like myself help them go through this. But also, recruiting videos are so valuable and so important, especially over these last 18 months and how the dead period was extended and extended. They couldn't go out and recruit. The only way they could recruit was off a video. So more and more coaches got comfortable with recruiting off video. And what video I want to be very clear with this is what. What video does. It gets you on their radar. It gets you on their board, on their short list of players that they want to come see. That's why it's so important to have one. You be also proactive in this process as far as outreach. And putting together a good recruiting video is really important. So they have players that they are going to go see. Then they start going out, okay? They start going out to these locals, local and national showcases, tournaments, camps, and watch players play. If they're going to watch a pitcher, they're going to want to see them as much as possible. Ideally, if you can. It's hard, but ideally, as a scout, if you can see three starts, that is great from a pitcher because you're going to be able to see his stuff as far as maybe you see him on his best day. But also maybe you see him on his worst day, how does he perform, how does he respond mentally as far as failures, etc. From there. And then as a hitter, if you can get 10 to 15 at bats, that is ideal because again, you want to see different pitchers that he's facing with good velocity. Maybe you caught him and the guy was throwing like 75 miles an hour. He had a great day and you see he's got good actions, good swings. But you need to see him off of like good velo, you know, a good Velo 85 plus plus, see how his bat plays. Because these exit velocity, hey guys, that's great and all and they use some of that. But you know, you could have 110 exit velocity but if you can't hit the broadside of a barn, it doesn't matter, right? It doesn't matter. You got to be able to hit the ball and hit the ball solidly. Again, nobody, I haven't noticed a T in a high school game or a college game. Right? Because that's how usually an exit velocity you get your exit velocities off the teeth. They don't use that in the game, guys. Right. You got to actually be able to hit the ball. So they're going to evaluate those things when they come watch you and meanwhile they haven't communicated with you at all by the way. Right? We haven't got to that point yet. We will. All right. But they're watching, they're evaluating you. They're looking at your physicality, they're looking at your measurables, they're looking at how you play and compete. They're looking at your athletes athleticism and your projectability. That is big. Okay, so you kind of really pass those four characteristics as far as from the athletic side. Then they will get into character and we're going to get into that here in a minute. So you've checked all the boxes up to this point and now they're going to move into your background and there's really two ways that they do this. One is they're going to scour the Internet. They're going to check your TikTok, they're going to check your Instagram, they're going to check your Snapchat or whatever social media that you are on. And guys, it's amazing how fast you can find information on people on the Internet. It's wild. And they're going to make sure that there are no red flags because they cannot afford to bring a guy that could be a cancer to their program or into their clubhouse. It just can't happen. You can't bring a guy like that in. And they're also going to talk to your high school coach. They're going to talk to your summer ball coach. They're going to talk to him, hey, is this guy a leader on the field? I've been able to see him compete. I really love how he competes. But how is he with the teammates? Is he a good teammate? How is he with you? Is he coachable? Does he take direction well? Does he step up when he needs to step up? They're going to go into all of that. This is where it goes back to forming good relationships with your coach. And hey, just working on your leadership skills and leadership doesn't have to be all rah, rah. It can just be putting your head down and working and again, leading by example, going through. So everything checks off there. Now they're going to move on to communication. And a lot of these coaches use different methods. Some email, most by text and phone call, and some even FaceTime, especially over these last 18 months, when you couldn't come on campus during the dead period, they would use FaceTime, get FaceTime, tours, et cetera. From there. We're not going to be using that examples because they're going away from that because they want to get you face to face, face if they can. So they're going to use that communication and they're going to reach out. Now, if you are a freshman or sophomore before September 1st of your junior year, they cannot reach out to you. You have to reach out to them. Okay? This is an NCAA rule. So how they would normally do this to initiate contact is they would tell either like a person like me, high school coach or summer ball coach, hey, tell Johnny to call me at this time because you can reach out to them. They can't reach out to you again if it's before September 1st of your junior year. So contact is established. They're going to get to know you a little bit more. They're going to see how you tick, what you know, what aspirations do you have, what type of player you want to be, what do you want to do on the academic side? What are some of your goals? Again, they're just getting a feel for you, see if this is a good relationship, see if you fit their program well. And then they're gonna get to know your parents a little bit more. This is when it gets really, really serious. See, honestly, see if there's any red flags there as well or anything they have to address from that end. And then they're gonna bring you on campus. Okay, now we're really getting close to the offer and they're gonna, they're gonna set up a time for you to come and your family come on campus. And this is usually an unofficial visit, depending on the division, but usually most times unofficial visit, meaning you have to take care of the travel and the hotel, etc. But they're going to show you around. They're going to show you around campus. Usually how a tour goes is they'll meet you at a certain location. Usually it's at the baseball field. They're going to show you around the baseball facility. They're going to take you around the tour of the campus on a golf cart. They're going to just wine and dine you, if you will. Say, you guys will probably go out to the lunch and. Or dinner. And again, you're gonna have to pay for this because these are NCAA rules that we don't have to get in the nuance of. But that's where this starts. And then they might bring you in, depending. This is different. Sometimes the recruiting coordinator will offer you or the head coach will offer you. The places I've been and what have worked the best is when the head coach offers. So the assistant recruiting coordinator, assistant coaches show you around campus and then they leave you to the head coach and the head coach again talks to you, gets to know the parents well, and then ultimately offers you. Okay. And then you usually some players accept it right on the spot. Some players took some time to accept the offer or even decline the offer. Maybe they don't want to go there. And then as a coach, we have to try to establish that relationship. Obviously, if we have offered you up to this point, we really want you, we like you. So we, we are communicating with you, we are selling you. We're trying to sell you on the program to get you to commit as we go. So we are communicating with you again via text, via phone, just checking in on you, whether it's once a week, every two weeks, just again checking in and trying to influence you to commit and come to our university. That's when a coach really, really wants you on that end. So I hope you guys got something from it. That is from start to finish of usually how the offers work. Of course, there's some differences in each school, but that's kind of the overall way offers are made. And that can really apply to most, almost all sports. It's a little bit different in each, but it's pretty foundational how that works. But hey, again, if you got anything from this video, please smash that, like, button and subscribe and I will see you in the next video. Take care.