Top Misconceptions About D1 Sports

Hey, how you doing? Alex here. Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, we are going to be talking about the misconceptions about Division 1, Division 1 athletics, and hopefully this saves you a lot of headache, a lot of heartache, a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of money, all of that stuff to help you. Because this is a big decision. And when you need to make a big decision, you need to take your time. You need to do your homework. That is really big. You need to ask the right question questions, because this is if you're an athlete watching this or you're a father, a mother of a son or a daughter going through this process and you're guiding them and directing this, you need to make sure you're positioning yourself and again, asking the right questions to see if this is a good fit. Anytime we're making a big decision, we need to do our homework. Okay, so what are some of these misconceptions about Division 1? 1 is that only Division 1 or Power 5 schools gives great opportunities or great experiences, and that is not the case at all. Do they? For some people, absolutely. I'm a product of one. Had an amazing experience at my school. I'll tell you a little bit about that here in a minute. And that was fantastic. And honestly, that is why I do what I do now to help student athletes get to that next level and have the experience and opportunity that I did. Okay. But what I'm seeing right now, especially with the transfer portal in college baseball, because that's my specialty here, is there's over as of this recording. This, of course, will change and probably go higher. Is around 4,000 college athletes in the transfer portal. And why are the reasons that they're in the transfer portal? Everyone has a little. Their own reason for it, but a lot of the reasons are the experiences they had at the college wasn't what they're looking for. Okay. The opportunities wasn't what they were looking for. They didn't have any opportunities. And you need to make sure you're looking for schools that have opportunities and you're going to have a good experience there. Right. Again, this is a big decision. And. And it's not only Division 1 that can give you that. Division 2 can give you that. Division 3 can give you that. Nai, they just got done with their college World Series. You guys can go see some video of them. I mean, just amazing opportunity, amazing experience in their world Series, Juco can give you that as well. Okay, so this misconception that only division one can Give you a great experience and great opportunities is wrong. Okay? You need to look at all the levels to make sure you cover all of your bases for opportunities for you. Because not all of us are Division 1 players and that's okay. You can still great have a great experience at all those other levels and have great opportunities because you got to think of yourself as if you want to just go after Division 1 and just Power 5 schools, which I highly advise you, don't do that because only such a small percentage of guys makes sense for them to go after that and has good opportunities. But we're seeing guys all across the transfer portal transfer out of there because the opportunity wasn't there. I mean, when you go to these Power 5 schools, you're playing with guys that are going to be high, high, high draft picks and maybe were high draft picks out of high school and the opportunity might not be there. You also see that with Division 1 mid majors as well. Okay. For some reason, this misconception about Division 1 majors, not good baseball, any level, if you make it to college, it's good baseball. Okay? It is good. It's a lot better baseball than you're playing in high school and frankly, you're playing on your travel team. It is a lot better baseball. Okay? So I want to kind of COVID that and go over that misconception and ask you a question. You guys asked yourself this. What type of experience do you want in college as an athlete, but also as a student and as a student athlete socially? What are you looking for? Are you looking for opportunities to play? I advise that you look for opportunities to play that fit you. Look for schools that fit you athletically. What type of athletic standards are they looking for? Do you fit those athletic standards? Okay, some of these athletic standards for Vanderbilt, most of us, I didn't. Okay. I'm a product of a Division 1 school. So I went to Jacksonville University. It's a mid major school school, smaller private school in Florida that, that is very competitive and it was a great experience for me. I didn't play my freshman year, okay. Honestly, I wasn't ready. But I worked my way into that as, as we good. And I had the opportunities to compete. You have to earn it to play at the next level. No college coach will ever guarantee playing time as a high school player if they do run, because it's not, it's not true. You have to earn your spot there and the best nine will play and the best nine that will help the team win will play. Okay? But you're just Looking for opportunities. Okay, are you a good fit for them that could help that team? Because if you can play, then you can develop. Look for places where you can develop. Look at the school's track record as we go through this process. If you can do that, that is really big. I mentioned this, but looking at the athletic standards of, hey, look at all the levels. Look for the power fives to the mid majors, to the D2s, D3s, NAI and JUCO. Listen to these coaches, okay? A lot of these coaches talk and express what they're looking for. As we go through this, I talk about it all the time of what these coaches are looking for and making sure it's a good fit for you. Because it would be like some players do this, go after schools that's just not a fit for you. Like, I wasn't a Harvard student. I just wasn't. Okay, I wasn't gonna get into Harvard, but it would be like me trying to get into Harvard where I had, hey, I had a 3.6 GPA. That's fine. But I didn't test well. I wasn't a good test taker, but it would be like me trying to get into Harvard and expecting myself to get into Harvard where I wasn't even close to the standards. Okay, so we need. And I found a good fit in another school and it was the best experience of my life. Okay, so making sure you're doing the homework, looking at the track record of the school, looking at the track record of the players, how many people are transferring out, what's the freshman retention rate? That's really, really important in going through this process. And ask yourself what type of experience you want because again, you're going to have. You're going to have an opportunity to have great experiences at all the levels. And what are those experiences? One, it's like the. It's your brotherhood, right, that you're going to have amongst your teammates that's going to last you a long lifetime. Of course it's going to be your playing experience, but honestly, you're going to remember some of those. But you're going to remember more of the experiences that you had with your teammates. The bus rides, the. Yes, the championships. You're going to learn so much from life skills, leadership, teamwork, all that. The network that you're going to build. And again, those experiences, you can get that at all the levels. Again, I just saw the NAI World Series and those guys celebrating and all of that. They're going to remember that for the rest of their life and they're going to remember the brotherhood and the friends that they made on those teams and that's going to last a lifetime. So look for those experiences. It's not all about baseball, but when we are looking for baseball, look for opportunities to play and look for places where you can play develop. Hopefully this helps you. Please comment down below. If you're watching this on YouTube or if you're on the podcast, reach out to me. Let me know what things that you want to learn more about in the recruiting process or about baseball, and I'll be happy to cover that. Thanks for watching and listening and I'll see you in the next episode. Take care. Bye.