YouTube talk by Alex Swenson (former Division I player, coach, and scout) offering practical advice to high-school baseball players (and parents) on finding the right college fit. He emphasizes choosing a school where you will have a realistic opportunity to play while also getting a strong student-athlete experience — teammates, coaching, leadership, travel, academics, and post-baseball networking. He urges being open-minded about Division I/II/III options (gives a D3-over-D1 example), knowing athletic standards for target schools, using junior year as a decision benchmark, and visiting campuses and practices. Ends with a call to engage (comments, email, app).
Chapters
Hey, how you doing, Alex here. Thanks for joining me. Today's episode, we're gonna be talking about finding the perfect college fit and things to think about as you go through this college recruiting process to find that perfect college fit for you or your son. And as a former high school baseball player that navigated this college recruiting process and that was able to find a perfect college fit for myself, for me. I'm gonna talk a little bit about that. And it was not without struggle. Man, there was times I was completely lost in this recruiting process, especially starting off, and it was hard to know what I didn't know and actually had somebody help me go through this college recruiting process. And frankly, it's why I do. What I do today is to help high school baseball athletes go through this and give them that experience, help them give that experience at the college level. Because it changed my life for so many different reasons. That, again, I'm going to talk about today. And if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swift Winston. I'm a former Division I college player, coach, and a scout. And now what I do is help high school baseball athletes go through this process. And if you get anything from this video, please smash that, like, button on YouTube and subscribe. I put out a weekly video on recruiting. If you're on the podcast, please smash, subscribe and write a review. That helps me a lot. But with that said, let's go on and get in. So things to think about when you're finding the perfect college fit, it is go where you will have an opportunity to play and have a great experience. Not just as an athlete, but as a student athlete. Yeah, as a student athlete. Hey, there's a lot going on. It is nothing like just being a regular student. You don't have as much time as a regular student, but there is no doubt you're going to be off the field a bunch. You're going to have somewhat of a social life. All right. Again, it's not as much as just a regular student, but you want to make sure you're going to a place where you're going to have a good experience and we're going to talk about things to think about. Well, how do I know if I'm going to have a good experience and just things to think about as we go through this and then an opportunity to play. No coach will ever guarantee that you are going to play. You're going to start right away because you do have to earn that right. You have to earn that when you get to campus. And there's 35 other guys and there's a group of guys at your position that hey, let the best man win. And that's what you want, you want to earn it as you go through this. So things to think about now as we go here, here's what to look for as a student athlete. This is what changed my life and all the benefits of being a student athlete was when I went through this process. So teammates that you will be friends with for the rest of your life. I literally the amount of weddings that I've been to and all the experience with my friends that I'm still now to this day, I'm actually about to go have lunch with one of them now and I am about man, I'm over, over 12 years removed from that. So it friendships that will last a lifetime that is life changing experience that you will remember forever with your teammates in school, socially as well and putting yourself around a group of guys with one goal to be the best team that you possibly can to win a championship. It's very motivating. And you're going to have great experiences. It helps keep you in line too as you go through the college experience and honestly through bad influence as well. Definitely helps, definitely helps. Great leadership. You're going to have great leadership through teammates. You're going to learn what to do. You're also going to learn what not to do. There's going to be experiences where you'll learn, hey, I'm not going to do that. Whether you experience or you watch somebody else experience, you're going to have great coaches. Literally 90, 95% of these college coaches are really, really good at what they do. Not only developing baseball players, but young men. My coaching staff that I have, coach Ta, Moni, all those guys hazy, they did a great job of raising young men. And I also had fun going through that experience at as well. And again, I'm still very close with the coaches that coached me in college and actually talked to one yesterday. So again, it is a life changing relationships that you get not only with the players but with the coaches. Challenges individually and as a team. So challenges, you'll go through challenges. It's not going to be all roses. All right, you're going to have challenges, you're going to have bad days, you're going to have things and doubt yourself at times, but ultimately that makes you stronger again individually and as a team, a strong network of people. When you leave, right, you're going to have a degree, you're going to have your university as A network, right. To help you and being a student athlete once you leave baseball. Because most of us are going to be done playing baseball. Honestly, most of us get done playing baseball at high school and then the next round is kind of college. And then did you know this? Even if you get drafted to play at the next level, the guys in pro ball, only 10% of them make it to the big leagues. So 90% of the guys that are in professional baseball don't make it to the big leagues. And having a good degree, having that amazing experience behind you and having a path forward is huge. It's life changing. All right. It's life changing. Not to say that you don't dream big, go for it and things like that, but you also need to find that balance of dreaming big and being realistic at the same time. Your travel, so traveling, you travel all across the country for a lot of these teams and with your guys. And there's so much fun on the buses, on the planes, all this stuff in the hotel rooms. It's a lot of fun with you guys that you will remember. So that is what to look forward to. And that is, that will frankly keep you out of the transfer portal, which so many guys, thousands of guys are in right now. And I obviously it's not the perfect college fit for them. What else? Think about type of experience you want as a student athlete, what are you trying to get out of? And I think academically, not only athletically, right? Yeah, that's type of experience. A coaching staff, the environment, how they run their team, all that stuff. But academically, what are you looking for from an experience standpoint? Socially, geographically, financially, some, some of these things are nuanced where socially you're going to have to get a feel of the university. Even college visits, I recommend going to just start visit colleges, you can just walk on colleges, most of them just walk on and start locally and get a feel of the university, what it looks like, go watch practices locally. You can do that. Especially right now. You can go and watch practices and games on the weekends. What else? Where can you contribute and have an opportunity to play? So this is where we need to start getting realistic as we go through this. As we target schools, I see so many times that people are targeting the Vanderbilts of the world and UCLA's of the world, the Florida's of the world. And there's nothing wrong with that, that is a big dream. But we need to make sure that we can have an opportunity to play. And the reality is not everybody, most people don't will not have an opportunity to play for Vanderbilt. It's just not. It's such a small number of guys. So being open minded to all the levels, not just the division ones and the power fives or I should say power fours. Now, now PAC12 is going to be gone here soon and being open to Division 1, Division 2, Division 3 and did you know that Division 3 baseball, a Division 3 baseball school, Birmingham Southern beat a Division 1 school. They run ruled them it was 1320. College baseball is as good as it's ever been. And all the things about teammates, great leadership experiences that you're going to have, you can get that at all the levels, not just the division one, but D2s and D3s and just be careful of like going after all the sexy and the logo and all that. You can fall into a trap because power five and power four is not made of everything that it looks like it is. It's super, super competitive and there's nothing wrong. I don't want you to run away from being competitive but it's not a good fit for everybody. The retention rate for Power 5 schools are not good going through this but so be open minded to all the levels and then know the athletic standards of the schools. And if you're not sure what the athletic standards are because think of it this there are academic standards that we have to meet for all the schools. A perfect example is the Ivy League, right? The there are academic standards that we need to meet to go to Harvard or Columbia or Penn or things like that. Well it's just like that for baseball that these coaches you need to meet certain athletic standards. And if you're not sure, go to Premier, my premier athletes app, premierathletes apb. It's actually right under my name right here and I have all the standards of schools plus so much more that guides and directs you through this college recruiting process. But know the athletic standards. Where do you fall during those athletic standards? Especially after your junior year in high school, going into your senior year that's kind of the time frame of hey, where we should be or need to be from an athletic standards standpoint. So take a look at that and these are things to think about finding your perfect college fit. And if you have any questions, please let me know, comment down below or shoot me an email and we'll go from there. And good luck to you. Hope you find your perfect college fit.
