Connecticut High School Baseball All Stars

TO THE PLAYERS

The number one thing to push when an athlete is looking for colleges is, "does the college I am looking at have what I want". Remember the last thing to consider when you are looking at colleges is the baseball. The baseball is the easy part. After you find out the important things, then walk out to the baseball fields and check the weight rooms. Several things you should do before you make the most important decision of your life.

1. Walk around the campus.
2. Look in at some of the classrooms.
3. Talk to some of the teachers if they are available.
4. Check the list of majors that the college offers.
5. Find out the cost.
6. Don't choose your school because of the baseball program.

When you start your college hunt and begin to look over the college campus say to yourself. If I get injured and never play baseball again, this is still the school that I want to graduate from. If you leave a school after the first year because your baseball hopes don't work out, this is being short sited in the most important decisions of your life.

The next point to be made with your baseball efforts is that most of you were the best players on your high school team. In many cases you have never sat on the bench in your life. This will change when you head off to college. You will now be entering a program where every player on the team will be as good as you are. Your first year in a new program you will be doing a lot of sitting and learning, which you most likely have never had to do before. If you are a pitcher you won't be running out on the field to a position any more. This down time is tough on many of the incoming freshman athletes.

If you reach the point where your top two or three colleges have what you are looking for, the final research should be done by looking at the roster of the baseball squads. As long as you can say that the schools you are looking at would all be fine, it might help you to look at the team roster to find out how many returning players are listed at the position that you play. If you are an infielder and a team has two returning players in the infield it would be worth your while to take that into consideration. If another school has six returning players at your position you would have a tougher time breaking into the line up.

The player that becomes disenchanted with his freshman baseball experience and runs off to another school is missing the point. If you are on a college team that is starting a lot of freshman, then the team most likely isn't a very good team. If you aren't ready to earn your time on the field and learn the program you are in, then you will fail. Running off to a different school in your sophomore year because you didn't start as a freshman is not showing common sense. The player that works hard will earn his playing time in the future. If he has the talent to play.

FOR THE PARENTS

A few things to consider when the athlete begins his college search which should be followed.

1. With the number of people making an effort to capitalize on your sons college efforts, it must be mentioned that you can end up spending lots of money if you are not careful. Beginning in his freshman year if your son has baseball ability, you will no doubt be the target of lots of letters and forms about costly events. While some of these events will help showcase your sons ability, I recommend that most of these forms should go right to the trash. Save your money. Your going to need it to pay for college.

It seems like every baseball organization is running a camp or talent evalulation showcase which will ONLY cost $300 or $400 or $500. This of course is being run to (help) your son be seen by college coaches. Some summer programs are now costing $4000.00 a year which to me is a complete waste of your money.

It will be impossible to convince the people who have been shoveling thousands of dollars at people in an effort to have their sons be seen. Hard heads and thinner wallets are the outcome of most of these efforts. Over the years it has become a reality that only a very small number of the athletes have benefited from this avenue, while 99 percent have been throwing away good college money.

My recommendation to everyone is this. While it might be necessary for your son to attend camps out of state during the summer and fall to be seen by a college they are interested in from far away, save all the money you are throwing away at in state work outs.

Some where along the line the point has been lost, that it is the college coaches who go out to find the athletes they recruit. People should be reminded that these coaches spend lots of time during the spring, summer, and fall attending games to find future members of there teams. The local high school programs and summer American Legion programs run all star games which bring out the college coaches free of charge and gives every athlete the chance to be seen.

While it will be impossible to change the minds of the people who have already thrown away $10,000 over the past four years let me mention this. The best things in life are free. There are plenty of free events that your sons can take part in which will showcase his talents. In the end athletes who want to play baseball in college will find a spot, if they attend a college where they have the ability to play. If they attend a college where they don't have the ability to play all the money they spend during their high school years won't buy them a spot on the team.

2. When you son begins to get college questionnaires sent out to him be sure that it is he who spends the time to fill out these forms. While parents should be in the back ground when it comes to college hunting, it is the player who should be filling out the forms and mailing them back. It is a turn off to coaches when they find out that it was the parents who filled out the forms that they have sent out and not the players that they are recruiting.

3. Finally. I'm sure in your conversations with other parents you have run into a lot of people who have sons with so called "full rides" in college. Almost everyone I talk to is paying nothing for their sons to go to college. While we may have to listen to this, any sensible person realizes that this just isn't the case. Most schools have between 5 and 10 scholarships to give out and all teams carry 25 players, so you can do the math. If it makes people feel better to tell you that their sons are going to school without paying anything let them do it. Let's show common sense however and realize that most players are getting cuts of scholarships 25, 33 and 50 percent, and that this is a good indication that the college coach is interested in your son.