This picture was taken in late August. That’s my son Jack competing in a cross country event. Lo and behold, that’s me in the background. The picture prompted me to write 
about the role of parenting in recruiting. It’s something I will write on from time to time here. My wife Nancy and I have six children. All of them have the potential to be college student-athletes. Jack, a 10th grader, is the oldest. Five girls, his sisters, follow him including five year old Gracie who is projected to be 6′4″ (excuse me, there are a bunch of D1 coaches knocking at our door - hey, you can’t offer kindergartners, Coaches!”)
As a local TV News sportscaster for 23 years, I saw plenty of overbearing parents who hurt their kid’s college sports chances. I also saw plenty of level headed ones too. As my kids grow up I am determined to put into practice what I saw from the level headed parents.
The role of parents is obviously very important in recruiting. First of all, it is important you help guide your kids to find THEIR passion when it comes to sports. You can’t live through them. When Jack was younger I had him throwing left handed. I thought it would be great for him to be the next Jamie Moyer. He could pitch until he was 45 and send me retirement money (just kidding!) Turns out, Jack wasn’t crazy about baseball. As a parent, I understood that and helped him find his passion. It was running. He loves to run. As a parent, I want what’s best for Jack and what HE wants to do. Here is a sign your child has found THEIR passion — this past summer I never once had to tell him to go run. He went on his on every day because he loves it.
As an 8th and 9th grader, Jack was a decent runner. As a 10th grader he has really improved and told me he is now thinking of running in college. He likes the idea of being on a D3 team because he treasures the friendships he has now in cross country. He is warming up to the idea of going to a small college and majoring in his beloved history. College sports are not all about D1. There are great opportunities out there at all levels.
As a parent, my role is to encourage, support and hold him accountable in all of this.
His times are not college caliber yet, but he knows where he has to be. Some of us have kids that are bonafide college athletic prospects in 9th grades. For others, it takes longer. The key is to encourage your child to steadily get better. That’s what Jack is doing. His high school coach says his attitude, work ethic, and team spirit are outstanding. She says his times are steadily getting better too.
I am holding him accountable by making sure he is writing academic and athletic goals to posting them on his bedroom walls. His best cross country time is 18:50 which is not going to cut it in college. He knows that and has a goal of 18:40 this week in a meet. His eventual goal is to get down into the 17:00’s with terrific grades. As a parent I want to encourage, support and hold him accountable in getting there.
As parents, make sure your kids have their goals written down. A person without written goals is like a game bird hunter who goes into a field, shoots a shotgun blast, and hopes a game bird flies into the shot pattern.
Academically, kids have to understand they are “on the academic clock” starting in 9th grade. I had a cross country college freshman runner tell me recently that he left academic money on the table because he wasn’t as focused as he should have been in the 9th grade. When I deliver the NCSA message I think it’s good for middle schoolers to be in the audience specifically to hear the message about having your academics ready from Day One of 9th grade.
When he was an 8th grader, I realized Jack could possibly be a college runner. That’s why I made sure he was on the ball academically from Day One in 9th grade. Jack is smart enough to make all A’s. I told him I expected all A’s this semester. Any ‘B’ means a day a week without video games or TV. As a parent, I want to guide him to have the best GPA, class rank and test scores as possible as well as quality cross country times so he can realize his dream of running for a small college and majoring in History. I’d love for him to be in a small college setting with a classroom setting of 17 students to every teacher.
As a parent it’s important you help your child be properly evaluated. I talked to a college tennis coach recently who signed a kid through NCSA. He said, “Charlie, the player was properly evaluated. That’s huge for us as college coaches!”
Also, when those questionnaires and letters come from the Ohio Northern’s and SUNY - New Paltz’s, don’t toss them. Study them. Coaches at Ohio Northern told me a kid with a pharmacy degree from there can expect to start out making $125,000 a year.
There is so much to share about parenting. I will share more on the subject as well as other topics in the near future.
NCSA Educational Speaker
Charlie Adams
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1 comments:
Both of my sons (now 18 and 22) played baseball in high school, and went on to play Legion. One also played hockey. They were totally committed and loved to play. Despite the early morning hockey games, I loved going to it all. The oldest, now out of college, went to a D1 school where he wouldn't have been able to play. But he got involved in other ways, through radio announcing and writing about sports for the school paper and eventually becoming sports editor, and, later, executive editor; he now covers sports for a daily newspaper. My second son did not play his first year at his very competitive D3 school, but he announced several games and also thoroughly enjoyed club hockey, where he ended up traveling to many schools and actually enjoying the less pressured atmosphere. At this point he is unsure what role he will play in school sports this year. My point is that while we as parents can get extremely intense about our children's college sports career, we really need to try to pay attention to what the kids want and also to try to be as flexible and supportive as possible if it doesn't work out the way we and they expected. Obviously this is all harder if you're aiming for a D1 school and hoping to get a good scholarship. Either way, hard as it may be to picture it during the recruiting process, there is life after baseball (or whatever sport they play).
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