5 ITEMS TO PREP BEFORE CONTACTING A COLLEGE COACH

1. A Well Written Email

Be concise, write well, and proofread. Those are high on the agenda of any written item, whether that’s an email to a coworker, a cover letter for a job application, a school essay, or (hopefully) the email to introduce yourself to your future college coach.

2. Unofficial Transcript

Your grades matter! This may determine right away if you are a good fit or not for the college, or if you are eligible at all for the school based on your GPA, test score, and course load. Also, this may determine if you’re eligible for academic scholarship from the university. It can be enticing to a coach to know that he can package you with more than solely athletic scholarship money.

3. ACT / SAT Score

Often there is a sliding scale between your GPA and your test scores that will determine if you are eligible for admission into a school. It is an inverse correlation: the higher your GPA is, the less high your test score needs to be, the lower your GPA is, the higher you may need to score in order to be eligible for admission.

4. Reference List

You should be ready to pass along the info of a coach and parent. A college coach is going to want to do research on you. He’s going to want to have conversations with those around you to find out the things that aren’t on a resume – your character, your work ethic, your heart, motivation, personality, attitude, etc.

5. Completed Recruiting Questionnaire

If you go to your desired college’s wrestling webpage, there will be a tab with either “Recruiting Questionnaire” or “Prospective Student Athlete” on it. Fill it out! This puts you in the coach’s backend software, and allows the coach to search you in that software, set up official visits, and do other necessary paperwork for the recruiting process.

Article written by:  Jason Welch (3x NCAA DI All-American & Head Coach of San Francisco State University)