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College Recruiting: Softball Parents… Here’s How to Help Your Athlete Get (& NOT Get) a Scholarship!

The Hotshots Premier – Nelson team is nationally elite and one reason is because of the cohesion on the team… including the buy-in and support of the parents!

Parents… we gotta talk.

After a pandemic year where many events, teams and players were not able to play in front of—and be seen by—college coaches, we’re seeing a return to a more normalized summer where college coaches are watching and evaluating kids.

Good, right?

Well, yes and no.

Yes, in the fact that recruiting is returning to normal but no in how parents are, in some cases, making the situation not pleasant.

Let me give an example: over the weekend, I was at Top Gun and one of the hard-working staff members told me about an experience she had just witnessed.

She stepped into the restroom and heard a mother addressing her daughter in this manner:

“You (player) need to run everything out. Coaches are watching and if you don’t get it done in the next 24 hours, you’ve ruined your chance for a scholarship!”

Wow. Just… wow.

First of all, last time I checked this was a game and it was supposed to fun. And a great forum for life lessons learned from success, but also failure.

Pressuring a young teenager to perform because her “life will be ruined” if she doesn’t get the Golden Ticket (i.e. a scholarship probably coveted more by the parent than the kid) is abusive in my opinion. There’s a way to motivate and this sure isn’t it.

A few years I was at a banquet and spoke to a high-level DI head coach. She told me that the first thing she has to do when a new class comes in is to deprogram the kids who have critical self-views about themselves. They are the best of the best but have surprisingly strong self-doubts and don’t need to have more piled on their shoulders, especially from their parents.

This coach said it was common for parents, as soon as a kid would sit down in the car for the ride home or to the airport, to unleash on the player everything that was done wrong. After a hard day of grinding on the fields, the athlete got an earful involving the frustrations of the parent.

Because of that, I really appreciated walking out of the Top Gun Invitation on Sunday and seeing this sign which made me stop and smile. SOMEONE gets it!

There’s a write-up from anonymous college coach that is going around social media and this first-person perspective nails it on how athletes and even parents can get crossed off a coach’s recruiting list.

Here’s what this coach had to say… PARENTS: TAKE HEED!

I was at a recruiting tournament this weekend and the things that made me walk away from games where I was watching kids I was interested in recruiting were:

  1. Parents screaming from the sidelines at umpires and girls on the field (including their own child).
  2. Kids leaving the dugout. Running to their parents during the game and talking about coaching decisions, umpires, and asking for special treatment and snacks during the game from their parents. (This might sound harsh, but I don’t want a kid who runs to their parents and complains about everything and needs to be coddled during the game).
  3. Dirty looks towards umpires and talking back to umpires.
  4. Inability to recover after a strikeout, hard inning, or call they didn’t agree with.
  5. Lack of hustle. Walking everywhere and talking back to coaches or treating teammates disrespectfully.

We recruit the family and the athlete.

We recruit attitude and effort.

We recruit athletes who can recover after failure and push through mistakes.

We recruit athletes that keep working hard when things get hard or when a play or call doesn’t go their way.

We recruit grit and athleticism, mixed with knowledge of the game.

We recruit kids who don’t give up and blame others for their circumstances.

We recruit kids who run out pop-ups and don’t give up on the play.

We recruit kids who recover!

We recruit kids who lead!

We recruit kids who want to COMPETE!

If you want to be recruited, be present for every play and every action performed on the field. You never know who’s watching in the stands.

I’ll end on a positive note.

One coach and team I really admire is Nate Nelson’s Hotshots Premier 16U team which I’ve had a chance to watch several times including winning multiple championships.

He has highly-ranked and highly-recruited players going to programs such as UCLA, Texas A&M, Texas tech, Louisiana, Oklahoma State and Baylor (that’s just his current team!).

I observed this week how disciplined and efficient his players are on the field and interacted with the parents in the stands watching the game. I was impressed with how the team is run and how the parents are supportive.

It’s no coincidence that Nate’s team is nationally successful.

In this video shot at Top Gun over the weekend he talks about things like “cohesion,” and “parents buy-in.” Check it out and parents: please be supportive and as my dad always taught me: “Be part of the solution and not part of the problem!”

Brentt Eads, Extra Inning Softball

You have thoughts on this topic? We’d love to hear from you… write us at [email protected]

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