Expanding Beyond the Sport

You spend your entire life being told that you are a one of a kind athlete, you are one of the best athletes on your team and people love you for it. You build your entire friend group, ideas, and culture around being the person who is good at sports. This is your identity

What happens when you don’t perform? When you are no longer the best athlete on the field, but actually the opposite. 

This happens to hundreds of athletes transitioning from HS into college. No longer are they the best player on the field, everyone was the best player from their high school. When this happens, their entire identity is shook. With a foundation built upon the notion that you were always the best player, you have lost your identity. This leads to many problems such as further on the field problems and mental issues. I am going to discuss my experience and why shifting your perspective can not only increase your experience playing the game but increase on field performance

Validation vs. Fit

Everyone dreams of making that Instagram post… “I have committed to some giant football program”. You get comments and likes from everyone and you get featured on new clips and its all great. But then when you step on campus, you realize that it was nothing that you expected, or even want from a football perspective and school perspective.

A big trend that we notice here at RecruitSync within college recruiting is that people are only targeting the large blue chip schools, most of the time, this is not fueled by the fact that the player is at that skill level or they like the school, the player likes the idea of telling people that they are apart of that program. This often times leads to a player being stuck at a program where they have no chance of playing, and are at a school they don’t like because they only picked it for the football.

We talked about this topic briefly in a past blog, but we feel that this might be the most important aspect within recruiting. The smart player thinks about what he wants out of a college experience, this includes academics, what majors they have, social life, location, size of school, and also football. There are so many colleges and football programs out there outside of the Big 4 Conferences, colleges that will give a players everything they are looking for in a college/football experience. It might not look as “sexy” posting it on social media, but I promise that it is worth it in the long run.

At RecruitSync, we understand how stressful this journey can be for athletes and their families. If you or your child need guidance, have questions, or just want someone to talk through the options with—we’re here to help.

Feel free to reach out to me directly at jared@recruitsync.net. I’d love to support you in any way I can.