DIII Athletic Recruitment

Hello everyone, Good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about the NCAA NCAA D3 Athletic recruitment process. My name is Cassie Martin and I am in admission counselor in the office of admission at Sony and will let you introduce yourself and as you are all tuning in and tuning on feel free to type in in that chat box where you're tuning in from today and your names and feel free to add in your sport in there too 'cause why not?

And I did forget to mention in my introduction I was a D3 Varsity athlete, which is a crucial part of why I'm here talking to you all today and I was a volleyball player and so this is pretty fresh in my mind. I only graduated in May so the recruiting process and you know, being 83 athlete on campus is something that's very, you know. Still, still, I remember it, and so we're really excited to talk to you all about that today. And if you do have questions as we go through, feel free to send them in and will either answer them if they are.

Um, if they match up to what we're talking about or will wait till the end to answer all the questions.

So how often do you hear from a coach? and I think you know just mentioned it earlier and it's going to be a pretty much a common theme throughout our presentation today, but a lot of these questions and comments are really sport specific. So how often are you getting here from a coach? Well, one that depends on how, how reliable that that coaches and how often they check their email. That I would say a general rule of thumb is that you're going to hear from that coach increasingly as you get older. So really in that junior year is when you're going to be hearing most from college coaches who you're talking to the schools you're interested in.

You know, think about it in seasons and so if you're a swimmer, I know we have at least one swimmer on here today. If you're a swimmer, then your college coaches are probably going to be quite busy during the winter because that's when swim season is, and so you're probably going to get the most communication with them in the fall or the spring. But say you are a tennis player and your seasons in the spring, then in the fall in the winter you're going to get a lot of contact with that coach, so just keep in mind the cycle of the college team and know that that coach, well, you are a huge priority. Their season is also going to be a huge priority.

For them to come, and then this next question is how you can tell me this PowerPoint a little while ago, but you know, should should you come to campus to meet with a coach? Well, right now, no, you should not use to stay home and be healthy, but in general if you can get to campus for those of you who are juniors or sophomores who are tuning in absolutely come see the campus. Definitely visit, but by no means do you have to do so to communicate with the code. You can start that process and really talk with them, email, text, whatever that form is and really start communicating with them.

They may even take you up with some of their current players so you can get a sense of what it's like to be a student athlete at Swanee or wherever you're looking. But if you can come to campus, I would say it's really a really valuable tool in your college decision making process, because not only do you get to talk with that coach in person, you're going to be able to see that a sillitti's going to be able to see the gym or the course or the you know the field wherever it is you play your sport, and then you can also meet your those teammates and eat in the dining Hall. And so there's a lot of really great ways to.

Visit and you know. Speaking for Swanee and also speaking for all of our other colleagues as colleges and universities. We all have developed really great virtual visit pages and so if you are a junior or a sophomore and you want more information you want to connect with current students and you're thinking about playing, definitely check out those virtual visit options. At most schools will have on their websites so you do it virtually until we can get back to traveling. And then when you can. If you can make that happen, definitely reach out to that code to see if you can set something up. And then I think something really important for you all to remember as you go through this process is.

It's really important for you as a student to take control of that communication process with the coaches. Well, they're they're really excited to talk to you, and they are definitely going to be reaching out. It's your future, and it's so exciting 'cause you're going to college, and you're starting this new chapter, and you're going to be a collegiate athlete, so feel free to take the Reigns there and reach out to those coaches and ask if that you can connect with some players and ask questions if you have them or reach out to your admission counselor. So definitely in that whole process, you really want to be in charge because.

Ultimately, it's where you gonna end up for the next four years and what team you're going to be on. So you definitely want to have a big role in that.

Yeah, well hard to see right now, but it's at the that is linked to guide under that picture on the side.

And just turn it to jump in there. I kind of went into my college search process. The opposite of Jeff, knowing that I wanted to be a D3 athlete. I'm kind of getting into that and I will just say, you know, I am a a five foot five volleyball player. So I mean, it wasn't really an option to go D1 anyway. But I really did choose to go D3 because I really wanted to have a life outside of my sport in college until I love volleyball and I wouldn't do it. You know, I wouldn't do it any differently. I would do it absolutely again.

I really wanted to be able in the spring to join other clubs and do other things on campus and I really need to be able to take classes that met during practice time in the spring. And you know, if you are a D3 athlete, there's going to be a lot of a lot more options that you can do outside of your support. And for some of you might be like Mitt, not for me. You know, I want to do whatever sport I do all the time. That is awesome. Great, but you know, I think for me the definite benefit of being a D3 athlete was I loved so many things and I want to do experience them all in college and so. D3 Athletics, really.

Allowed me to do that on this next slide here. You can't really see it, so I'm sorry it's a little small, but if you do download that guide with the link in the in the couple of previous slides.

This is one of the sections on time management between D1 and D3 Athletics, and I would say that one thing for all of you to note when you're kind of making that decision and seeing what's right for you is definitely that offseason commitment as well, so that is something that is going to be quite significantly different between the two divisions. So I would say you know in season as the three athlete, you're quite busy, and so you're not slacking off during season. But I think those offseason commitments are really where that at Time Management is really going to come into play.

So as we move on, we're going to switch over to. How do you become a D3 athlete? And so you know, first of all, have that conversation with yourself of what competitive level do I want to play it, and what can I play at? And then if you nail on down D3 as your option, how to get that started? It is really to start talking to coaches and start looking at colleges. So even if you are a sophomore and you're getting started a little early, that's great. You have more time to to see what you like and see what you don't like and.

Even starting on their websites is a really good place to start, and so a lot of D3 schools tend to be smaller than D1 schools just by nature, and so that's also something to consider. So definitely start by narrowing down what you might want to look for in a college like do you want to be in an urban area, or do you want to be in a rural area? Or do you want lots of students? Do you want these kind of clubs? What kind of majors and to look at that and then kind of pair those interest with your logic, interests? And so when you have both of them? And then that's when I would really stay.

Say that you should start reaching out to those coaches, and so if you're like hey, I really love psychology and I think I want to be a psych major and I also want to play lacrosse and you find a school that does both. Sure, reach out to that coach and then I would say if you're you know in high school and you're kind of like do I want to be a varsity athlete? do I want to keep doing that in college? I want to just play club the big questions to ask yourself are do I do I really look forward to going to practice everyday? do I love competing? do I want to continue to do that at a higher level? Is whether you're competing at D1D2D3?

It's definitely gonna be a step up from high school until you know, do do you really want to challenge yourself and push yourself and really see you know how far you can get athletically, and I think the biggest thing for me in deciding was I love going to practice. It was the highlight of my day. I remember after school I would just go into the gym and I would feel so happy about it. But I know there's a lot of students out there who don't love practice and then I would say you probably don't want to be a varsity athlete in college. Just a guess, but you know, that's something you can figure out on your own and then how and when do you decide if?

You want to be 3 athlete that junior year is probably a good time frame when you start doing that. College search in general, tack on athletics as a part of that and then you can kind of go from there and never that down and see what happens for you.

Jeff, anything to add that I missed?

So I think I think this is my side Jeff and you can jump in at the end OK. And so as as you go into, you've decided you're going to be 3 athlete. You're super excited about that. You're looking into the recruiting process and you're looking for schools. Big component of your college experience is going to be academics. Hopefully that's why you're going to college. You're going to be a student athlete, and so those are really big things to consider.

So for example, do you want a really rigorous course load? Do you not want to really rigorous courseload? Kind of what are you looking for in your college academics? And that's a really good place to start two and so managing college academics and athletics is a bit different than high school. So in high school you're in school from 8:00 AM to 3:30 everyday and you have limited breaks and you go straight to practice. And for those of you break club play club, you are getting home until like 10:11 PM and you're like I gotta do homework. On top of that. And so it's definitely a different schedule in college so.

You're only gonna have maybe like 6 or 7 hours of Class A week, but especially if you're going to a school like spawning that has rigorous academics, you're going to be spending a lot of the time outside of the classroom. Really working on those courses as well, and so it doesn't just stop when you're inside the classroom, you're going to have to be proactive and kind of user user own whatever methods to keep yourself going outside, so that is definitely something to manage. and I would say that this is something to really check in on when you communicate with those players of the teams.

So, for example, ask you know on really long bus rides, what do you guys do? Does everyone watch Netflix or do you guys you know do homework together? Is there a team culture of going to the library after practice in season? You know? How do your coaches in your teammates and your professors support you in being a student athlete on campus? Or your professor is OK if you have to leave Friday afternoon to go to a game that's far away. As long as you're getting your work into those kind of questions are really important to be asking. And definitely the coach.

Each coach of each floor of each program of their own.

Way and own kind of program that they want to do with their student athletes, and so they're going to hold you responsible and all different kinds of ways to your academics. And so also you know the differences between divisions. Again, like I kind of mentioned, you're going to have a little bit more academic opportunity, would say in D3, just because you won't be dedicating as much time two years for as you would in D1.

It.

And in general I'm talking about being recruited at Swanee. I would say definitely engaging with us with your coaches with your future teammates is going to be really important when I think whether you are visiting virtually or visiting in real life, if you can get to campus in any sense, you know, even if it's just taking a virtual tour, I think that is going to be really helpful in your decision making process, especially because he does have a really unique location. We're on top of Mountain and kind of see, and it is absolutely gorgeous.

And then we have so much land, and so if you're a runner, you could not pick a more perfect place to run cross country and you know, things like that is just definitely definitely visit all the schools are looking at because you might. You might get somewhere and realize. Oh no, I have to travel on the plane every single time we have a conference game. But I don't like flying so I don't want to do that. So definitely you know Swanee specifically, we love our campus and we love our location and we want to welcome you to it virtually or in person when we can, but also just for every school.

Really make sure that you you know the kind of the layout and the setting of the school before you get there and for us as a recruited athlete. So you have to apply you. Then you go through our office in the admission office and we do track, demonstrated interest and us along with a lot of our small liberal arts college cures will track your interest and so you know we want you. But also do you want us? And So what that means is you can attend a D3 Athletic recruitment session on a web and are good job that's demonstrating interests or you can.

Email coach you can communicate with them really frequently. You can email your admission counselor. We are divided up by region of the country and so if you have any questions, you can always find this on the website or reach out to Jeff and I since we are the athletic liaisons, you could.

You know, register for resume tour that we're offering, or once we get back up and live again, you could come to campus in person. So all those are different ways that you can really engage with colleges, and that's funny specifically and you can demonstrate that interest and show that you know it's funny is a priority for you.

So being extreme athlete on campus, I can talk about my own personal experience and what I have heard about Swanee students. Why didn't go to Swanee? I did go to very similar school. Small D3 liberal arts college, so there are a lot of overlaps in our student experiences. And so when you were thinking about becoming 80, three student athlete on campus, and really what you want to get involved in, and you're so excited, you come to Swanee, Love the outdoors and you're like.

Ready to be here on the mountain, So what it entails. And so for the most part, your season is going to be pretty heavy on whatever sport you're doing, so you come in as a fall athlete and you're going to start with pre season. And then you're going to go through Thanksgiving. Basically with your sports season and so that that fall is going to be, you know, football or whatever it might be and say you're a springboard, then you're going to have a little more down time coming into the start of your freshman year, and you're going to have a couple months to kind of adjust in and see what you're doing. And then.

Then the season rolls around, so it's really interesting timetable. Depending on what season your sport is in, but whatever that season is, that is going to be pretty concentrated with playing that sport.

So you know in in season you can expect practice everyday, certainly maybe a couple times a day if need be and most weekends you were going to be competing weather that's at home, or whether you're going to be traveling and so most are weekends and all of your week nights are going to be occupied by that sort. So then what happens in offseason? So then in offseason you're going to have a lot more flexibility and a lot more time, so you will probably have, you know, an offseason season or offseason workout at the at the least, and so you're going to be lifting or you're going to be doing workouts together. We're going to be doing team runs or whatever. It's going to be.

But you're going to have some weekends completely free, and you're gonna have a lot of weeknights, where maybe you end class at 4:30 and then you're done for the day. And you know, for my fault fall sport, athlete friends, let me just tell you that that transition is going to be really strange because you know, if your Winter Springs for you kind of had time to get used to that but fall sports, we just kind of pop in there and then, that's College. And then you so much free time. It's a little weird, but you know, it's it's definitely going to be an adjustment, and so that's why I would really encourage you if.

You love hiking and you want to go hike the perimeter trail after season ends. Absolutely go do it more. Say you want to become part of one of our Greek organizations. Here is funny alot of our athletes are also in Greek organizations and they even rush affect about are a great life is that's actually inclusive just for all it. For all of you to know. And we do a delayed rush. So none of our freshmen are rushing until second semester. So it looks different with every sport. That's a conversation. Also to have like hey, do you let your athletes rush or when you let them rush?

And then practice expectations and we can. Expectations are really going to differ depending on the coach and the program and whether it's in season and out of season. And so when you're talking to coaches about the recruiting process and you're talking to your future teammates, be like hey, So what do you guys do during weekends and what is expected of you and you know if I'm in the training room, getting my ankle taped, am I allowed to be late to practice? Or if I'm late to practice no matter what? We're all running for the whole time so you know, it really depends on on the coach. So those are definitely really fair questions. Ask.

You also want to know what you're getting yourself into in the offseason, and so, like I mentioned, lifting or conditioning sessions, I know from my own personal experience, we would have team lifting sessions slash conditioning sessions four times a week and so two times a week. We would go as a full team and two times a week. We grab a couple buddies and just go to the weight room and do our work out. So it really depends. And then you also again want to have those activations about what you're looking for, what you need, what kind of support you're going to have access to and also just in general, like what does the training room look like and how many trainers are there. And you know if you have an injury, what's the protocol on that so old?

Really important questions that are going to define your life as a student athlete and really things you want to look for? Jeff, do you want to jump in? From the coaches perspective on any of those?

To wrap up, Jeff and I are gonna, you know, maybe give a last piece of advice to you all, and then we're going to really open it up to your questions. So if you do have questions, feel free to send them in in that chat box. We would love to answer them for you, whether it's sport specific will do our best.

Or, you know, in general we we can probably answer those quite effectively, but I would say my last piece of advice to all of you, especially my underclassmen, who are still deciding on a school and deciding if you want to play in college is that definitely make sure you pick a school that you like regardless of athletics so you know when I was doing my college search I did a lot of looking and I really narrowed it down to schools that I loved and had majors that I wanted and I really loved. All of the aspects of them, which was very lucky for me 'cause my junior year ended up tearing my rotator cuff.

Uh, when I was certainly not playing volleyball, so you know, when I was still at practice, it was definitely very different, and so I think it's very important to love the school you go too. Regardless of this, work is what happens if you're like me and you do get injured and you have to take some time off from that sport and you know what happens if that sport is the only thing you like about the place, so you don't want to be stuck in that situation. So definitely junior year is you're going through that process. Make sure you like the school and the athletic program as well.

Yes, so if any of you have questions, definitely feel free to send. The men will give it a couple minutes if any of you are typing or you know, looked away for a second and do you want to get your question answered?

And well, we'll just pause for 1 second.

Oh yes, so everyone who is tuning in definitely tune into our coaches panel. It's going to be held via zoom. That is in the first week of May. I believe it's on that Thursday. I'm forgetting the date at the moment I don't have a calendar in front of me, but it should be really great. We have six of our coaches, all from different sports who are going to tune in and talk to you about, you know specific sport questions or being being a student athlete. That's one Ian.

You know what that really entails, and talking about their own experiences? That's funny. They've all been here quite a long time. And no, this priest pretty pretty well, and so they're really excited to talk to you, and we definitely encourage all of you to tune in. Talk to the coaches. Maybe you may even might need some of your future teammates on there as well, and so it will be a really great event that we're looking forward to and hoping that you know we all learn a lot of information so we do have a question coming through here. Thank you. Juliette so the question is to Swanee dupree rates of transcripts to make sure that perspective student athletes are able to get in.

Before committing committing excuse me so I will take this 'cause I'm already talking. So absolutely great question. Juliet so Jeff and I as the athletic liaisons. We are your preview people. You won't know that of course, but so if you're talking to a coach and you're an underclassman, we do pre reads on juniors. And so if you're a junior athlete an you are really excited about.

You playing basketball. It's funny and you're talking with the coach and you're ready to go. They will send over a pre read to us. So all we need is an unofficial transcript from your high school and we can give them a pretty good sense. Obviously things change and we have no idea what senior looks like and you might not have test scores yet. Or you might be applying test optional so there's a lot of factors, but we absolutely do pre reads. And if you were talking to a coach definitely ask that question and be like hey I would love a little more reassurance or you know we do merit aid previews as well, where some schools do. Some schools don't.

So that's definitely also something to ask, and so if you want to have a kind of sense of can I go to this place that I love the coach and I love the team and maybe I could even get some scholarship money. Definitely ask those coaches when you're talking to them through that recruiting process. But yes, Lonnie absolutely does do breeds.

Thank you for that distinction, yes.

Get up.

Well, it's, uh.

How are you?

Even.

We're ready for the random questions. You know you could ask us what Jeff and I ate as student athletes. You know, personal perspective. I only ate pizza freshman year, 'cause I thought I was in season and, you know, it was fine. Don't do that. You might want to mix in some stables. Just as a tip.

Hindsight is 2020 for both of us. Jeff, you know it's really.

OK, well we do have one more uhm through soda teams have outside team support, academics, advisors, nutritionist, etc. So Jeff, you want to take that since you have for so long.

Alright, so it looks like we really are out of questions then I am just put in Jeff and eyes email in the chat and so if you do have any further questions and you want to know more we are always happy to talk to you. Always happy to answer anything you might have and so we will let you all go enjoy the rest of your Tuesday. They save, stay healthy for the underclassmen. We hope to welcome you soon to campus.

And for our committed two years, you know, we hope we're going to fall and we can't wait to see you here on the mountain. So thank you so much for everyone for spending time with us and have a great rest of your day.