It is clear that if you are passionate about your sport and are an athlete with big dreams, explaining the opportunities to study and compete in the United States could be the most exciting chapter in your athletic and academic history. That’s why we at MAE want to offer you in this blog post a unique perspective on college sports that can enrich your journey in unimaginable ways. We show you what U.S. universities can offer you in terms of athletic scholarships and their recruiting process.
How to be recruited by a track and field coach and get a scholarship
It can be difficult for track and field athletes to stand out among more than 600,000 high school athletes and get the attention of college coaches.
And according to NCSA College Recruiting, “only 4.8% of those athletes will compete on an NCAA college track and field team, and only 1.9% will compete at a Division 1 university. Recruitment of track and field athletes also occurs at the international level: about 9% of all international student-athletes in NCAA D1 compete at a track and field university.
Every athlete preparing for an athletic scholarship who wants to get to the next level must go through the college athletic recruiting process, although we know that these types of processes are usually very competitive, with a high level of demand.
The fact is that, in order to be recruited by a athletics program and get a scholarship, student-athletes not only have to perform at a high athletic and academic level, as we have well specified in another of our blogs, but also understand how the recruitment process works o “recruiting”.
The selection of track and field athletes, as with any other collegiate sport, is highly competitive, leaving many wondering when and where to start. Knowing how to get recruited for college athletics will allow you to gain an advantage over others who are not as familiar with the process.
So, here we teach you the main steps in the process of obtaining an athletics scholarship, with tips for track and field athlete recruitment, deadlines and key features.
A key guide to knowing how to get an athletics scholarship
Beginning of the process
The recruiting process for athletes begins at any time during the high school years. There are no restrictions on requesting or receiving admissions materials, such as college brochures and pamphlets. Our recommendation is to start the process a year and a half in advance of the university in order to get the best possible offers.
Details about what athletic trainers pay most attention to in future athletes.
As specified on the NCSA College Recruiting website, here are 4 ways to stand out in this process:
- Valid and accurate data. In the case of runners, coaches prefer fully automatic timing (FAT) to the use of manual timing or stopwatches. For throwers, on the other hand, it is important to use accurate tape measures and specify the exact weight of your discus, shot put, javelin or hammer throw.
- No assumptions. Coaches do not want to see projected or estimated times. Indicate your best times/mark the specific events in which you achieved them.
- Sports career. Coaches want to know how long you have been competing in your event: have you started running recently? How long have you been running hurdles? Did you start in high school, middle school or even earlier?
- Accessible information. They want to see contact information, GPA and transcript, test scores and your athletic resume in one place; coaches don’t want to waste time searching for or requesting this information. We recommend doing something similar to a portfolio.
Tips for prospective student-athletes
One of the tips we give you from MAE is that you do not wait until the last minute to go to the United States with an athletic scholarship, but if you have it in mind, get informed in advance so that you can gather all the necessary documents and take the relevant exams within the established deadlines. Please contact us for more information about all the steps.
We also recommend you to visit the NCSA College Recruiting website, where you will find a lot of information about the college athletics recruiting calendarThe most important thing to know is which division is right for you, what is the role of the coach in this process and some more tips on universities and goals.
You can also find tables of brand standards depending on one division or another. For example, for the 60-meter dash in the NCAA Division 1 league, the highest score is 6.69s and the lowest is 6.88s, while the same in Division 2, the highest is 6.83s and the lowest is 7.05s. Thus, you will be able to find some guidelines to know if you have similar marks and you can apply for one of the many scholarships in athletics for your college career.
The University of Missouri, the University of Maryland or Harvard are some of the universities that offer you their established marks depending on the modality, as well as the University of Tampa and California Polytechnic for Division 2. For standards and Division 3 equipment, you can find MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Caltech.
Don’t forget to prepare yourself well with this guide and ask us all the questions you have about how to obtain an athletic scholarship in the United States. We will help you with whatever you need.
