Contributor, Rick Paine, is a friend and an expert on the college recruiting process. He is also the Director of Swimming at American College Connection.
This is a question that every swimmer who wants to swim in college is faced with. Too many times swimmers and their parents don’t consider this question early enough and lose a great number of options for colleges because they waited too long.
Being a former Division I Associate Head Coach and Recruiting Coordinator for 17 years I can tell you that I always tried to identify talent at an early age (13 to 14 year olds for girls and 14 to 15 year olds for boys).
American College Connection surveyed hundreds of college swim coaches to find out when they start putting together their list of potential recruits. Here are the findings:
- 80% of the coaches plan their recruiting 3 to 4 years in advance
- They start putting together their recruiting lists with girls who are 13 and over and boys who are 14 and over.
- They are looking for potential and talent in younger swimmers.
- They tend to favor the swimmers who get on their lists early. This gives them time to follow the swimmers’ progress and get to know them via emails and mailings.
- 98% of the coaches aim to get their recruiting completed during the early signing period in November of each year.
Based on this information the best time to start the recruiting process with girls is 13-14 and boys 14-15.
You can’t go wrong by starting the recruiting process early, but you definitely can go wrong by waiting too late.
The key to our success with American College Connection is to get swimmers on the college coaches “radar screen” early, then keep the coaches updated with the swimmer’s progress throughout high school.
My daughter is interested in swimming D3. She’s a fairly fast swimmer, but not interested in devoting her whole college experience to the sport in a competitive D1 program. She’s identified some schools where her current Junior year HS times look good. How should she let coaches know she’s interested in their school. Most schools have a link to a form to fill out. Is that the best way or is it better to directly email the head coach? Thanks for advice.
Wish We had used some sort of recruiting service for our child this year. It was a really weird year for recruiting with trials and the Olympics. We started the process 2+ years ago with unofficials and took 5 officials this fall but nothing went as planned. We thought we knew what we were doing but could have used some help. Still trying to navigate the process and while we thought we were ahead of the game we now find ourselves behind. It is a very confusing process and if you are a second tier swimmer you get strung along to the very end .
Tired, you summed up the way most families feel about the recruiting process when they try to do it themselves. Not being at the Junior National level makes it just a little tougher.
Since your swimmer has already taken 5 official visits, I’m not sure our program would be right for you, but I would be happy to offer you some free advice if you wold like to give me a call at 719-395-3499 or email me at [email protected].
Don’t give up, there are a lot of schools still looking for swimmers from D-I to NAIA.
My 2 cents worth, we used ACC for our daughters and found Rick to be an excellent source of information. The girls were well prepared for the coaches phone calls, coaches visits and recruiting trips.
Rick kept our girls focused during the early signing period on what was important in terms of education, coaching and team fit.
Best of luck to the swimmers and parents during the process.
This was scratched in another posting by a ACC rep, but the questionnaire the NCAA eligibility center is one of the most confusing things on earth for a kid. A lot of the questions are generic, looking more at sports that could be semi pro or pro when it comes to team sponsorship, compensation, etc.
I had a couple of athletes and parents come to me with those questions, unreal what they ask for and in the most cryptic ways.
You want to help someone, decipher those questions…
on the other hand, if you are a “do-it-yourselfer”, I found that King Aquatic Club’s website was a great resource and helped a lot.
http://www.teamunify.com/SubTabGeneric.jsp?team=king&_stabid_=27965
I think ardent readers of the comments section of swimming websites like this are more capable of navigating the college recruiting process than those who don’t. I went through this process with my daughter last year who eventually received a div. 1 scholarship but in retrospect i wish I had left it up to a recruiting service taking me out of the equation. It worked out well in the end but looking back i can’t believe how much time i spent completing questionnaires and figuring out all the NCAA rules.
At the risk of hacking some parents off, and in response to Marley09, you, the parent, probably should not be filling out the questionnaires, learning the NCAA rules, etc. That should be the kid’s (swimmer’s) responsibility. We’re talking about 16-17 year-olds who should be able to figure a lot of this stuff out for themselves, sans parents, sans recruiting services. The college choice is an important decision for these kids and they need to start making such decisions on their own. That’s not to say ignore them as they go through this, but rather let them ask you for help if they need it; don’t steer the process. I’m not a coach, but I’m pretty sure coaches get turned off… Read more »
i knew i would get slammed by someone. 50 mins…what took so long?
All of what you wrote is true. My only counter is that if if my kid took ownership of the questionnaires, signing up for SATs etc., and i don’t know how to say this other than just saying it, it just wouldn’t have gotten done. Daughter did all the talking to coaches and organized campus visits and dealt with everything swimming related. when she did finally choose her school, my reaction was “huh?.
Didn’t want to slam anyone honestly. Again, if your swimmer asks for help, by all means don’t turn a blind eye. There is a lot on a teenager’s plate regarding the recruiting process. But swimmers learn time management skills at a young age and are probably better equipped than most adults at navigating stuff like this. Trust that they can handle it. There comes a time when one must “cut the cord”; this is probably that time if it hasn’t already been done. For what it’s worth, sounds like your daughter did take ownership of the process, and I bet she felt pretty good about it.
🙂 thanks.
It seems that “who you know” would be an important ingredient to the whole process.
There was a 13 or 14 yr old swimmer at junior nationals one year who was already 6 ft tall and her mom was approached by a coach and invited to train in Texas.She moved to Texas to train and did quite well and ended up swimming well in college.Her mom said she was approached because she was so tall…..Height is a definite advantage but doesn’t account for everything.Beisel is only 5’7, Janet Evans was 5’4,
Sarah Bateman is a sprinter and is 5’6….
Just don’t want young swimmers who aren’t as tall as their competitors to think height will win and that Is something coaches are looking for.Being tall can be an advantage but so can speed,… Read more »
SWIMMA,
Arianna Vanderpool Wallace, a NCAA champion, is only five-six .Height is very good, but skills and a good state of mind is everything.
Maybe the very top colleges are looking at 13-14 year old girls for the next superstar but I think it’s a waste of time to do so for most schools because so many girls plateau in high school. I would guess, after watching the recruiting process as a swimmer on a Division I program, that coaches look for someone with a lot of talent and potential to improve–a diamond in the rough. They are looking for someone who has recently started improving and can make big jumps once they start training at the college level. Someone who started training 20+ hours a week at 12 and hasn’t improved much since then isn’t going to be a strong asset to a… Read more »
The very top colleges are coaching their athletes to win national championships; they don’t have time to look at 13-14 results.
Very good post DMSwim,
Eddie Reese loves to recuit potential and make them great swimmers.
I remember the day our 7 year old joined the club and after evaluation
his coach told me that the skinny tall kid in lane 4 is one of top
breaststrokers in the nation. That was Dax Hill. He signed up for
Longhorns next year. We all know how his breaststroke career turned out.
His breaststroke career didn’t turn out. Dax swims the 100/200 free.
I know, that was the point.
If anyone ‘found’ Breeja Larson at age 13-14, it would have involved accidentally wandering onto a softball field while trying to locate the pool to go look at a girl who was actually swimming at the time.
+1