Nobody likes wasting their time and college coaches are no exception. So when you start to contact college coaches, be sure that you are prepared. If nothing else, what sort of impression do you think you make when the coach has to inform you of basic facts regarding the school or finds out that you aren’t qualified to play on his team?
As you start the college baseball recruiting process, you need to know what you don’t know. And sometimes it feels like you would rather not know than try to make sense of all of the information out there. Not only is there so much information out there, so much seems contradictory. Since the recruiting process will be different for each family, you can’t necessarily make your plans based on what happened to someone else. Sometimes you just need a baseline to start with so that you can make sense of the rest of the information. So before drowning in Google search results, try these resources first.
(Skip to the end to see the complete list of NCAA D2 Softball Colleges) Of the three NCAA divisions, D2 is the smallest for softball. The advantage of playing at a D2 college is that they still offer scholarships unlike D3 schools. While the number of scholarships may be fewer than those in D1, D2 softball college programs will likely have less intense demands on players’ time than D1 schools. This means players may be able to consider doing something else other than playing softball and attending class while in college.
It would be nice if there was a formula somewhere that high school players could use to calculate their odds of getting an athletic scholarship. All they would have to do is to enter their stats, maybe their high school or club teams, and the formula would tell them their chances and even indicate how much of a scholarship to expect! Wouldn’t that be nice?
Hopefully, the previous post demonstrated that the chances of getting a scholarship to play college baseball aren’t very good. Sometimes I think parents talk about the baseball scholarship as a way to justify the amount of time and money their family is spending on baseball. Claiming that it’s all to pay for college is an easy and obvious excuse.
(In 2023, two resources have disappeared from the list of Helpful Athletic Resumes and Player Profile Templates. Given the number of resources already on the list, I decided to just replace those that have disappeared. If you don’t like any of the samples you see here, you can easily find others on the web.) There are plenty of samples of athletic resumes or player templates on the internet. After all, it seems just about every recruiting website has one posted. It’s just tedious going through all the search results to find something useful. Well, I’ve just saved you the trouble–you can thank me later.
As softball players start deciding which gold teams to aim for, they’ll start asking themselves what their chances are of getting a softball scholarship. And if they aren’t, I’m sure as parents start to pull out their checkbooks to pay for playing on these teams, they’re considering the question. After all, it would be nice if there was some financial return on all their investments in lessons, teams, and travel. However, if you’re planning on using softball to pay for college, you might want to develop a plan B option because the odds aren’t great.
High school softball players looking to compete at the highest level in college will be targeting NCAA Division 1 colleges and universities. These schools offer the most scholarships and the most competitive level of play and is the second largest of the NCAA softball divisions. A list of all D1 softball colleges is at the end of the post.
This is a basic introduction to the college recruiting landscape. I’m sure there will be many who will read this and think, “you’ve got to be kidding-how could you not know this?” Yet, you would be surprised at how many families don’t know that D3 schools don’t offer athletic scholarships or that some rules will depend on the college’s conference. Consider this a review of the basic college athletic terms that you need to know to even start the college recruiting process.