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High School |
Sport Sections |
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| Wednesday, July 16 |
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| Recruiting tip of the week By Dan Tudor SchoolSports.com | |||
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It's the eternal question for high school athletes: Do grades really matter when it comes to getting scouted by college coaches? If I'm a good athlete, won't that make up for any academic shortcomings? For the answer, we turn to the coaching staff at Stanford University, located in Palo Alto, Calif. Stanford is one of the nation's elite academic institutions and is also ranked near the top in several sports. Most notably, the school's men's basketball squad is currently the No. 1 team in the nation. According to Stanford's coaching staff, solid academics are the starting point of any serious consideration they would give to a prospective student-athlete. Robert Weir, a track and field coach at Stanford, says the school has some high criteria that each athlete must meet to even be considered for admission into the university, much less earn an athletic scholarship. "The average athlete on the track and field team has a 3.7 overall grade-point average coming out of high school, along with a 1,300 on the SAT," says Weir. So, what happens when one of Stanford's coaches sees an athlete they want to recruit, but the athlete only has a 3.0 GPA and an 1,100 SAT score? "At that point, we look at other factors to see if the athlete could still be considered for admission, but it's a lot harder," says Weir. Weir notes that the university admissions department will look at teacher and coach recommendation letters, the quality of a prospective student-athlete's high school academic classes and other factors in determining whether the athlete would be a good prospect for the school. "We want to make sure that any athlete we bring into the school will be able to succeed academically," says Weir. Every high school athlete reading this should pay attention to what Weir says about getting recruited to a top-flight academic school like Stanford. Grades matter. If you have not taken your academics seriously in high school, you will not play at one of the nation's top universities. Many athletes will sit down on a Saturday afternoon and watch Stanford, Duke or other top college basketball teams on television and say to themselves, "Hey, I'm good enough to play with those guys." That may be, but can you compete with those guys in the classroom? At the nation's top schools, you'll need to do both.
Dan Tudor is the founder of Recruit, the nation's leader in athletic recruiting, and the author of "The Official Recruiting Guide for High School Student-Athletes." Recruit helps high school athletes get exposed to college coaches and receive opportunities for college sports scholarships. If you want to play college sports, click here.
Material from SchoolSports.com.Visit their web site at www.schoolsports.com | |
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