Chase, I sent you a private message make sure to get back in touch with me. I am going to respond to this though because I am sure there are other wrestlers in your shoes with the same questions. As a former high school coach, in football and soccer, I must say that things do not always take care of themselves. I have responded to this in the past but the bottom line if you want to wrestle or compete on a college level, you must take some responsibility to promote yourself. There are several Kansas kids I am promoting now on a college level to various colleges who have contacted me. I also know that several colleges are in contact with Aaron Sweazy regarding Kansas Kids. I can only give you my knowledge in this but I think that that knowledge has proven to work.

My last official “high school” coaching experience was in North Carolina before I moved to Oklahoma and then back here. I made it a point to help all of my athletes go to college if that was their dream. There were several things I did to help insure this. The first was that I set up study groups and had tutors helping out the team in mandatory study sessions before practice. In North Carolina that was easy because our practices generally started at 4:00 or 4:30. I also had requested weekly progress reports on my athletes. I insisted that they maintain a 2.3 GPA in order to play on the team. That by the way was higher than the schools requirements, but was within my rights as a coach. With the addition of all of these things, I never had a kid not meet their requirements. As a result, one of my proudest accomplishments was not only a top ranked team in state, but also a top 50 team in the nation that was also a Pepsi Scholar Team, which meant that as a team we had an accumulative GPA of 3.5 or better.

There was a reason for this, on my last soccer team; I had 5 legitimate Blue-Chip Players on it. All of which played D-1 Sports and one with a national championship ring. I was hearing from coaches, on an almost daily basis. I was always asked about 3 questions from each coach, the first always being asking about their grades. Meet your core requirements and then some. Take your ACT, SAT as many times as possible. Research shows that each time you take it, your chances to improve your score also increases. Colleges will not generally recruit players or athletes that don’t have a chance of succeeding in school.

The second thing that colleges asked me about was normally personality traits. “How do they get along with teammates?” “What types of activities are they involved in?” Things of this nature. Remember a well-rounded personality, commitment to community, those types of things are things that tend to show a coach that you will stick with it, not cause problems, and the like.

The third thing generally asked was about the kid as an athlete. “Are they coachable?” “What are their strengths?” “Weaknesses?” “What was their competition like?” Things of this nature.

There is another very important trait that I became aware of. The parents, athlete, and high school coaches have to promote you actively as a athlete. Truth is, that things work out for the studs, but you hear stories all of the time, of coaches finding athletes by having material sent to them. Truth is, that with all of the colleges offering opportunities, very few have a large budget to be going out. You have to make the effort to contact the colleges that you are interested in. Anyone saying otherwise has never been to a college web site and seen the requests from colleges, even like OSU who are asking for athletic profiles from athletes interesting in attending college there.

I would recommend the following. Identify what it is that you want to do in life, I don’t mean wrestle unless you are wanting to coach or something, but as close as possible, what vocation or area of study are you interested in. Then determine the type of school you want to go to. Large, small, private, public, junior college, and you can go on and on here. Then contact the schools that offer wrestling if you want to wrestle in college. I will say this here, I have seen you wrestle, I will assure you that you can wrestle in college, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You may not wrestle at Oklahoma State, but there are plenty of colleges that would love to have you. After you have made your decisions, done some research, start contacting those colleges. I would recommend a quality packet of material. A brief introductory letter, along with stats that include your grades, extracurricular activities, wrestling stats, and so forth. Keep it brief and informative. Then you will want to have reference letters, and obviously a letter from your coach. You will also want to have a 5-10 minute highlight video. There are different theories on how to do this, some say with music, some say without. I believe you should do it with music myself to keep it entertaining. But some will again disagree with that. The video should be brief though because you will have to realize that many other coaches are sending in material for their athletes.

There is a lot more that could be said here, but I believe the process starts in the Freshman year of high school. It starts by starting to put stuff together, and finding some ways to communicate with coaches and programs. It intensifies at the end of your sophomore year through the start up of your senior year. By the completion of your senior season you should have made a decision. For those that don’t there are still opportunities. I will also say this, as a person who attended an expensive college, who had little or no money at the time, (some things never change) I was able to go to college. I was also able to help a daughter go through college. If you want to go to college, you can go to college. If you want to wrestle in college, you can wrestle in college. If you want to do these things, you can not leave it up to chance. If you wait on someone to do it for you, it will likely never get done. You have to do what a lot of good Kansas wrestlers do, you have to take the bull by the horns and go after it on your on. The help is necessary but the bottom line responsibility is yours.

There is a pretty good resource available that goes over all of this. I have reviewed it and found it to be pretty much right on the money. A link to it is http://www.collegeboundsports.com/index.php?ref=aam Check it out, and I believe that especially for those going into their Freshman/Sophomore Years that this is a great resource. There are many others, many that are just as good for a lot less money, but this gives you an idea as to the type of business that this has turned into.