001all right all right all right all right hi everyone awesome hi i'm schuyler beckerman i'm the assistant director of admissions at lasell university hey everyone my name is chris weistepeck i'm the executive director for admissions outreach and recruitment for enrollment management as well as the athletic liaison at western new england university awesome awesome all right guys so i have a i have a short presentation so i'm just gonna share my screen real quick alrighty all right guys so the recruitment process so just to start off um the recruitment process is it's a it's a game without a doubt so with that being said i have a a small analogy so it's grades and test scores so without a doubt you need to obviously do well in school um you know coaches out there they want
002to see good grades they don't want to see you know vlogs test scores or low grades make sure you're doing well in the classroom that's that's the most important thing next obviously you know if you want to play in college sports also you have to be good so ability and then next honestly the biggest thing for me um is motivation how bad do you want to um play in college how how much you're willing to work in the classroom work on the field and then also work to get that exposure so when it comes to reaching out to coaches getting highlight film working in the weight room there's all that stuff goes together next you want to find the school that is the best fit for you don't play that name game so don't just
003try to go after division one schools try to find the school that is the best fit for yourself when it comes to your major a school that's going to challenge you a place where you're going to play um you know you don't want to go to a school where that you won't play till your senior year you want to try to have that opportunity to be able to you know play on the field next um you know i'll talk a little bit about this in the presentation try to get highlight film of you compiled um definitely try to start that maybe your sophomore to junior year definitely your junior is probably one of your most important years so definitely try to get high highlight film of you play next whatever school that you're interested in
004you know fill out the recruiting form most schools have recruiting forms on their athletics website so recruit you know fill out that recruiting form and then lastly reach out to the coaches all the coaches information is on on the athletics website um their phone numbers are on there too send a nice email and also make sure you're sending a good email you're not sending like a one sentence send a nice email make sure the grammar is right you know put your highlight film on there reach out to coaches that being said know your options there is so many different options for you when it comes to division one division two division three there's naia there's junior college there's so many different um there's there's so many different places where you can play i i thoroughly
005believe there is a school for everyone out there and you know you know i know a lot of people they want to play at the highest level they want to play division one but you know what sometimes that's not always the the best choice or or the best for you you want to make the best choice that is you know when it comes to your education are you going to get that playing time so know your options there's nothing wrong with going to playing division two playing division three going to junior college for two years and then transferring to another school so definitely know your options with that being said your junior year is probably your most important year um when it comes to in the classroom and on the on the field um when
006it comes to your grades this is probably your your heaviest emphasis uh in your classes and when we're as a admissions counselor i i like to really look at your junior year because like i said it is one of the most important years the same time this is where you're probably going to start getting recruited to do colleges so definitely you know that junior year you want to really work hard you're you know you're probably gonna have a lot of late nights when it comes to doing homework practicing you know hitting the weight room doing things like that it's gonna be a long year but definitely you know that junior is so important next uh make sure you know you're cleared with the clearinghouse and know just know that know the rules know your recruiting
007rules and what what coaches are allowed to do as well also you know register for sats i know this year's a weird year with with test taking but you know make sure you take your sets most multiple times try to take it two or three times if you can um i was a person that i struggle with test taking and i i took it four times um when i was in high school so definitely you know take them as many times as you can um you know that sat is definitely important when it comes to getting into schools another important question to ask yourself is you know what college level should you play at talk to your coaches um you know be honest with yourself you know like i said you know everyone wants to
008play the division one level everyone wants to play professionally but unfortunately that's not the case for everyone but you are still good enough to play in college without a doubt there's nothing wrong with playing division two division three you're still a good player you know so definitely you know be honest with yourself when it comes to your ability and your junior year is a big year for you know start start your college research start trying to figure out what you want to do um with with your career or after sports um these are all things that are questions that you have to ask yourself so definitely you know get your parents involved talk to your guidance counselors those guidance counselors are here to help you go to your guidance counselors as much as possible they're
009going to help you through the whole process obviously your coaches and and any other professionals out there out there to help you another point i'd like to make um you know a lot of families might think you know their coaches are supposed to get you recruited or or or coach is supposed to come out come out to you know recruit you sometimes you have to recruit yourself especially in that division two division three level um you know coach you know coaches are not always full-time they're part-time and it's hard for coaches to come out and see you like i said i was talking about that highlight film get a good highlight film compiled together if you can um send out as many emails as you can whatever school that you're interested in send out emails
010to coaches let them know that you're interested first and then they can you know recruit you so you have to really work hard in the recruitment process next you know go visit you know go make unofficial visits to the school you know go do a campus tour maybe you know if you're not able to meet with a coach that's fine go see what the school is all about before um you know going there because you don't want to just go to the school just for sports and that's something you know it's really important you want to go there first for your major do you like the school the location there's so many things you need to ask yourself before it comes to sports obviously sports is something that's very important to you but you want
011to make sure that the school is a right fit and then seniors you know you know you're going to be doing um official visits if you're being recruited keep getting contact with coaches keep in contact with all the coaches that you're being recruited with like i said that highlight and and and the highlight video is very important keep that updated and if you're still you know still looking for someone to play you know keep that highlight film updated and keep reaching out to coaches guys that's pretty much it for me my name is skyler beckerman uh like i said i'm the assistant director of admissions at lasell if you have any other questions um please you know you can reach out to me anytime thanks skyler uh so what i want to do for all
012of you i'm going to expand and leave even more with schuyler did um because i know both of us actually work at institutions at the division three level but some of you may be sitting here have aspirations for the division one or division two and and there's differences when you look at the level competition but even the recruitment aspect and just to give a little background i've been working with the the athletic department for close to 10 years um i help them out with all their recruiting um recruiting events for prospect days uh to game day visits um we do pre read evaluation so i help assist them with that make sure we have that that partnership between admissions and athletics so a lot of times people actually think i work in the athletic department
013because i spend a lot of time in there um but i also have a lot of colleagues who work for division one and division two institutions and learning a lot more about the aspect of those institutions and what they do on the recruitment level for athletes is definitely going to be a lot different than division three so one of the differences when you're looking at division one division two institution is much of the recruitment is going to be done during sophomore junior year all right so if you're looking at like a major sport like a football basket you want to get that highlight tape together and everything else so i just want to make sure everyone's okay also i just had a little wheelie turns and i'm like oh boy something must be happening um
014so that's one of the big differences the other thing is with division one and division two you do have to go through the ncaa eligibility center so because you have to meet the minimum nca requirements in order for you to participate at that institution and then the next step would be to talk to that admissions office and figure out if you do meet the requirements and this is where that partnership really comes into play between athletics and admissions whereas the division three level you do not have to go through the eligibility center now as schuyler mentioned as a junior i would definitely recommend filling it out either way all right whether you think you're going division two division three or even division one it definitely doesn't hurt to fill it out keep in mind if
015you are looking at an naia school you do not have to go through the eligibility center it's a whole totally different organization in itself um so i would definitely recommend at least filling out but keep in mind when it comes to a division three institution you basically have to meet the requirements for that particular college or university now the other thing you got to think of too is scholarship money all right division one and division two institutions are able to award athletic scholarships whereas division three cannot now i do know during my years and i've been doing this for 16 years that i've gotten so many families who will come up to me saying well there's a way you can do it there's a way you can work it in the financial aid or the
016merit scholarship and the answer that is no no division three institution can award any type of athletic money um and flat out so any any school that is doing it is actually breaking nca rules um whereas division one division two and this is and i'm glad skylar touched on this with the number one if you guys didn't remember it's the grades because the first thing that any coach will do is go to admissions office and tell me what type of merit money they're going to get now if you're not familiar with merit scholarships this is based on your academic performance every single school has it lasalle has it western new england has it um they want to know that first and here's the reason why and this is me being transparent i always like to
017let students and families know uh how exactly it works behind the scenes so the reason why coaches like to look at that first because they can save that athletic money and then they can use it for someone else so they can build that team and that's why doing well inside the classroom is extremely important the last thing a coach wants to do is worry about you inside the classroom all right if you're coming in and you're a little bit on the lower end that's more work for them to do they want to make sure they have someone in there who's responsible who show off and who's doing the work the other thing is there's a lot of tidbits that i've learned over the years from our our coaches as well as from uh some of
018the division one coaches i know pretty well it's interesting some of the things and and i know lasalle probably does the same thing but students you got to be aware of what you're doing not only at your athletic events if you're doing any showcases because your character is going to play a huge role in the decision a lot of coaches usually will take the concept saying you know what i don't care how good you are if you're going to be really rude to our students our faculty or even your mom and dad i know a couple coaches who said i based the character on how they treat your mom and dad all right i know there's some parents here and probably nudging their kids saying i told you so um so they look at all
019that because they really want to make sure they bring someone who's a leader who's a team player you may not be the best person on the team but they want to make sure that you have skills that you can develop and that you can take control and you can be that leader on and off the field or on and off the court inside the classroom that's what they truly look like and i've heard stories of how some of the coaches went to go watch a particular player and why everyone's in a huddle this player's off to the side and they were like why are they not part of the team and that's what coaches really were looking for now because skylar mentioned a lot of good points like if you have a highlight tape make
020sure you send that into the coaches because honestly that's the especially now that's the only way coaches are going to be able to determine whether you're recruitable all right now with with this highlight film you don't want to make it lengthy they don't want to watch a 10 minute film of you all right if they're going to do that they're going to watch you actually play but if you get less than a two minute clip and um it's got i think i i think you played baseball at the cell so i'm going to give you that as an example like depending on what position you play like if you're a pitcher they're going to want to see speed they want to see your uh form if you're a position player they're going to want to
021see how you're hitting is that what you're feeling you're throwing you're running you're speeding like they're going to look at everything through this highlight film that's what they really want to grasp they want to see like all right is this someone that is going to be um really instrumental to our team the other thing you have to give me one you guys could be the best player at amherst or you could be one of the top players but then if a particular institutions like i'm sorry we're not interested it's because you're not a terrible player it's because you also have to look at it maybe that position is full i can tell you right now like if we have anyone that's coming to look at western women for men's soccer we cannot take another goalie
022okay same thing for football i can't take another quarterback so the position could just be full because these coaches usually have a plan of how many students are usually looking to bring in per year by position one year week they could bring in 10 athletes another year they could bring in four it varies year by year but the biggest thing you want to make sure you do is get in communication with the coach fill out the recruited questionnaire send in your highlight tape and then they take it from there utilize the admissions office utilize skyler utilize myself send us your highlight film and we can forward on to the coaches because we both have really good relationships with the coaches and i i joke around in fact while skyler was presenting the mental cross coach
023was just trying to call me so we have that good relationship where we know if they get an email from us they potentially could open that up right away so you want to make sure you get that film together now if some of you guys are sitting down like i better see i never got that film try to do some practice drills get something but also keep in mind when it comes to division three it's all open tryouts for division one division two it's very difficult to be a walk-on i don't want to say you can't do it i just know it's very very challenging and that's the other thing you want to make sure you're realistic i can't tell and i know skylar probably got this too where i can't tell you how many
024times i would get a student that comes up to me saying i want to play for umass amherst football team and they look and they're like 100 pounds wet all right you got to be realistic i don't know if that potentially could happen and especially if you're a senior coming up thinking you have aspirations to play like their recruiting has already been completed they're already looking at following years because they already fill that roster they already got those commitments so you really want to make sure that you're realistic in that as well so um if anyone has any questions please make sure you put in the chat uh skyler and i would be more than happy to help you out um the other thing i want to want to do too is uh um so
025at the division three level how much influence do the coach all right this is actually a really really good question the coaches basically let us know who they're interested in all right and when they let us know where they're interested in this is where we try to spend a little bit more time but i can tell you the coaches are not the ones that will make that decision all right and i'm going to give you a story and i love telling stories so i was in one high school and i had a a student he was in my visit and he was he was being rude he was interrupting and i said what's going on he said well i don't need to listen to all this because the baseball coach already told me i'm getting
026in i said that's funny because i'm the one that makes that decision all right so they won't have an influence so much per se saying all right this is a student i want i don't care what their grades are we want to make sure we can get them accepted in the end the coaches realize they all they want to find someone that's going to retain they want to find someone that's going to be successful at the institution um follow up with a lot of the admissions offices or with your coaches and see whatever institution you're looking at as far as whether or not they do pre-evaluations or what they call pre-reads um because this might give a student and the coach a good idea where someone stands for admissions because the last thing you want
027to do is go through the whole process with the coaches the coaches love you you love the coach you love the institution and then also you get that letter you're saying denied and you can potentially set up goals with each institution and like i said every single school is going to be different and you're going to hear that it's all going to be like it depends it's different um but like i said they won't have the direct influence saying all right this is a student i'm interested in i want to make sure we get them accepted it's more uh saying all right we know you're interested in that student let's do what we ever can to to admit the student in some cases it doesn't work out unfortunately and that's where uh take skylar's advice
028as far as look at the community college because many of them do have athletic programs where you can become recruited again i do know i get a lot of the questions about post graduate years what they also call pg years for a student academic-wise to be honest i would not look at a pg er that's just my personal opinion i'm not saying it's going to be the right or wrong answer but i really feel pga years you can develop more as an athlete if you have the grades but if you're a little bit lower end you're better off going to community college doing the athletics to build up those academics so not only you have a better chance to be admitted but you also can have a better chance to be recruited and potentially play
029um but that was a very very good question mike thank you so much and scott i don't know if there's anything else you want to add at the moment you covered it so it's it's definitely one of the like skylar said it's like a game i mean it's for the coaches it's they're evaluating so many different athletes uh so many so many different positions and they know what need in order for them to become successful and that's what you also have to be patient don't be afraid to flat out ask the coach where do i stand in your recruiting process i mean yeah yeah i'm just going to say that ask these questions to the coach when you when you know when you send in when you meet with the coach ask these questions write
030them down before you go in the meeting with a coach ask how many how many players are on the roster how many they're trying to keep how many are at a certain position you know these are these are all things you need to know because you want to play obviously that's like that's the goal you want to play so i mean you don't want to go to a school where you're not you're either not going to play you're not going to play your scene a year you you want to play that's that's the main priority here obviously yeah no which is honestly which is so true um and i was actually just thinking of something i was just going to branch out oh yeah yeah so another thing um and i know some parents on
031on here as well students make sure you're having that conversation the coaches want to hear from you now admissions is different i mean skyler and i are willing to listen to anyone whether it's a parent grandparent brother sister we're looking to listen to anyone but when it comes to recruiting the coaches are trying to recruit you the last thing we'll do is talk to mom and talk to dad all the time and not hear from little johnny um they really want to make sure they hear from the student because communication is key community especially times like now like communication gotta stay in communication with the coach even after if they said that hey we have a roster spot for you uh we're really interested and then often two three months go by and you have
032no communication with the coaches they're probably gonna go start looking somewhere else because you didn't acknowledge and it's not so much acknowledging saying yes i'm verbally committing it's not that it's just saying i'm still interested i'm still trying to make up my mind because for a lot of division three institutions the coaches know they're not gonna pressure you to make that decision because ultimately may 1st is when you're supposed to let us know that you're going to be attending all right so it's just making sure you really truly stay in communication with that coach let them know that you are still interested and to be honest and i know there's some colleges and universities out there that do this where the coaches like well you need to let me know by february 1st whether you're
033coming and technically they're not supposed to be doing that but they're really trying to form their team and and you can give a verbal commitment but i can tell you a verbal commitment to a coach is going to be different than a verbal commitment to us in admissions because we we look at a verbal commitment like all right great but we know the commitment really happens when you put down that tuition deposit that's what skyler and i both know like all right you're coming so because things can change i mean we have four players that all suddenly got recruited by division two school so it changes on and off and then and you never know any other questions skyrim and i love to talk oh yeah especially with sports oh yeah yeah we're both sports
034lovers uh so that comes out so any other questions so there's no new questions coming in on the chat i'm just i'm looking at that now um but if you guys have anything else you want to just keep chatting about we've got until about uh 4 45 5 o'clock somewhere in there is when we're going to wrap up so feel free to fill the time if you want or we can wrap up yeah no one of the other things too now if you guys are still looking at um we had another question at the division [Music] you want to answer yeah um how professional is it you know sometimes it could just be a just a video just take your iphone out and you know i'm a baseball guy i played baseball in college so
035like you know if you play shortstop just get some grounders you know you know use your iphone i know with football they use you use um they use huddle they're always videotaping for football so i know football always has film um but whatever sport you're playing you know it could be easy as an iphone you know um i'm typically not like i don't maybe don't put music on there maybe it just it just needs to be a little bit of film so they can see kind of see what you got yeah you don't have to you don't have to show but and honestly there's a lot of vendors out there that are charging a lot of money to put it together skyler's right like you can nowadays you can easily get film with your iphone
036use the imovie app and and shorten it up and everything else and you can easily send that um and like i said you just want to make sure it's quick because the coaches i mean i i've even helped out the coaches where i got filmed and i looked at it and i'm like two ten minutes they'll probably look at this for like a minute minute and a half and then they're done they're not going to wash the whole tape there's so many that they have to go through i mean they're that recruiting process and and so forth so yeah it doesn't have to be very professional it doesn't if you want to make it like a movie or whatever yeah go feel free to i don't know if it's going to be really necessary another
037great question and whoever's here actually if you want to put in the chat we're kind of curious to see what sport if this is if you're a student like what sport do you play or if this is mom and dad on here um what sport does your your son or daughter play more curiosity than anything and this is a typical zoom i have actually had crickets on my facebook okay so that's that's that's that's tough obviously you won't be able to get that that in game video but like i said even if it's you know if you go out to a field or or you play you know play basketball if you get into a gym just a short video maybe shoot shoot some hoops take get some swings in the cage whatever you can
038you know get just get some video if you can for right now and make sure you uh provide your coaches uh information whether it's club or whether it's the high school um one thing i've learned with a lot of these coaches is that man do they know everyone um and how they get a lot of their students they they usually use their network and and uh i know one of our our swim coach has a network in california so she does a lot of recruitment in california for swimmers um because she knows she knows people out there and so especially around new england um i know like for baseball a lot of the legion ball and everything else like our coach the sales coach they're gonna know um definitely perfect woman's will cross all right
039so uh so yeah so that scarlet's completely right just go out there um do some drills like your normal bills just so the coaches have a better better way just to evaluate the one thing is it's this is definitely a very very difficult time and it's not only as hard for you as athletes but it's hard for the coaches and this isn't going to be a year where i think the coaches are going to be taking a risk on a lot of athletes based on what they hear from the coach and what they like the minimum fill them they might see or maybe they saw you play as a sophomore or beginning of junior year and they basically have to fill to do the evaluation based on that um but the one thing is is
040just keep an open mind just if for some reason you like i think uh scarlet said like pick the school first for the academics do not pick sport the last thing you want to do is transfer around i can't tell you how many times i have had students come in and say yeah i want to play football and they had nursing in mind as a major and i said we don't have nursing they come to the institution they say yeah i'm transferring because you don't have nursing i'm like all right so you came here for the sport um you really need to figure out the academics because god forbid if you get hurt like what if injury i mean one of our best football players had two knee surgeries and his career was done after
041two years but he picked us because one of the programs and he knew that was his first priority um so you always want to make sure you find that fit first as far as the academics financially is also another another when we when we say find the best fit it's academically athletically socially and financially now that may be different for each of you i know mom and dads are like yeah financial but then you have some of you that know athletics is number one this is where you need to talk as a family because you have to be realistic of the total cost that you want to make sure like yes this is the coach i like to play i get along with the team um i love the academics i feel the career wise
042this is going to get me where i need to go i'm a western new england grad so i i haven't left um i think schuyler i think you're a lasalle grad right yeah we loved our institution so much that we hey so um but definitely that's like the one of the most important factors is just make sure you get that feeling make sure the academics because even at the division three level athletics is going to be so much different than the high school level you're going to have more work to put involved um there's a lot more strength training a lot more condition that starts over the summer i'm sure when skyler went in he had to do a whole summer workout routine before he even started college and the coaches expect that and that's
043the other thing like even being recruited and the coach says like all right we're gonna have a roster you still have to earn a spot on the team i've heard students because they came in like yeah i already have a spot they didn't do any of the workout routines and there they are with the conditioning their last and i mean you you still got to earn your spot you still got to prove the coach that you are a leader on and off the field and that you're willing to do whatever you can to put that work in and then once you're there it doesn't mean you're going to be on the team all four years either i've seen kids get recruited their freshman year didn't put the work in and they got they get cut
044here you know you have to put you have to put the work in now and you put out the work in while you're there um one of one of the biggest advice that i would give um to a high school uh student who wants to play in college is start hitting the gym now because that's that's when you get to college you might be the strongest person on your team now when you get to college everyone's everyone is just as strong or stronger in you so that's that's usually my biggest advice for for an athlete coming in is make sure make sure you're coming in really you're really in shape yeah that's actually an excellent point to be honest thanks for brian i didn't play soccer because i plus i looked at the team they
045were too good so yeah i'm not riding the bench for for four years so any other questions before we wrap up deirdre i don't know if you have any other questions so you sneak in there pop up in there all right so i think we're gonna wrap up now college thank you for taking your time and sharing a lot of valuable information with all of our viewers um it's really great appreciate it and if people want to have more questions to get in touch with you you should just go to your web uh the college website easy enough to track you down or do you want to share from your website yeah is there a way i can chat i don't think i can put anything in the chat no you should be able to
046um actually maybe i don't know if you can chat that might just be for me if you want to send me your email address where it says private chat on the far right hand side i can copy and paste that into the chat there you go there we go i feel it feel free to contact schuyler myself scholar will put his in there as well um feel free to contact us because i mean we have that relationship with the athletic staff but we also can help you and guide you through the process i mean the whole point of this process is supposed to be easy you're supposed to have fun and i think what's happening is a lot of colleges that a lot of people think of like the very selective schools and like this
047is very stressful this is overwhelming it's not supposed to be like that and skyler and our job is basically to help you through this process we want to make it easy and our goal as admissions counselors is to figure out how do we emit you right that's our goal like we're trying to really figure that out and and demonstrated interest does help it doesn't necessarily help as far as like oh it's definitely going to get you in but at least it lets us know that you're interested and i'm sure skylar goes to bat with his students i mean he has a travel territory i'm in charge of all the amherst uh students and i've worked with a lot of them in the past and and deirdre i've worked with for years um and they know
048that that we really truly want to help you our goal is not to figure out how now you always figure out how do we get you in and we see a student that gets excited about the institution and excited about all the possibilities that they feel the fifth and like all right let's figure this out let's let's try to get you in so 40 more appreciate it all right so i think we're gonna wrap it up now but again thank you for your time i know you guys are busy especially this time of year and thank you for having us yeah thank you so much have a good one our students will be heading to your institutions in the near future hope so thank you all right guys have a good one