Before attempting to become a recruited athlete, you need to ask yourself whether you have the athletic ability to compete and the desire to play at the college level (after all playing sports in college is a huge commitment of time and effort). If your answer is yes to both, prepare to play ball.
Your first step, especially if you are a second semester junior, and certainly if you are a first semester senior vying for a scholarship in Division I or II schools, is to register with the NCAA Eligibility Center website, www.eligibilitycenter.org. Your registration informs the NCAA that you’re a prospective student athlete. After you register, you will eventually submit your final transcript and standardized test scores, along with your registration fee, to the NCAA. It will then give you the final NCAA Certification to play college athletics.
The NCAA is divvied up among three divisions: Division I (consisting of 333 schools, with many awarding athletic scholarships, including such schools as UCLA); and Division II (consisting of 292 schools, many of whom also award athletic scholarships, including such schools as UCSD) schools require that you register with the NCAA early in your junior year of high school. Division III schools, on the other hand, (consisting of 444 schools, with no scholarships at all, and including the likes of Occidental College) have no eligibility requirements with the NCAA; each school sets its own athletic and academic requirements, which are usually far more rigorous than the NCAA’s.
Unless you’re a consensus All-American, chances are you’ll have to take the initiative to position yourself with the various schools (especially Division III schools). First, you’ll need to do a bit of research to discover which schools have teams for your sport. A good place to initiate this research as well is at the NCAA website, http://web1.ncaa.org/ECWR2/NCAA_EMS/NCAA.html Once you enter the NCAA website, click on ‘Sports,’ on the menu bar, and select men’s golf in the spring sports section. There you will obtain a complete list of programs, as cited in the above paragraph, for Division I, II and III schools.
Approximately 40,000 male high school seniors play golf (many high school sport participation numbers can be found at www.nfhs.org). Assuming, based on your handicap, you’re among the top 5% of US high school players in the country, you now know you’re 1 out of 2000 in the recruitment pool. Spanning across all NCAA Divisions, you next discover there are 776 schools (289 Div I; 210 Div II; 277 Div III) with men’s golf. If you select 60-70 schools to contact, you’re doing well if you hear back from 10-15 of them.
Your initial contact should include a cover letter outlining your skills and interests in the school, along with your sports resume (containing a brief summary of your academic record, extracurricular, athletic accomplishments and key personal statistics). If you take a look at Brown University’s Men’s Golf site: http://www.brownbears.com/sports/m-golf/2009-10/M_Golf_Questionnaire.pdf, you’ll find many of the same questions there. A school’s website is often the most direct path to the coach. Another might be through interested alumni scouting for their alma mater’s team.
Should you ignite an interest, the coach will probably want more information from you: recommendation letters from your coaches and opposing coaches, which address your ability, attitude, and potential; newspaper clippings and website references; a schedule of upcoming games or competitions (should they wish to scout you); and, possibly a DVD of recent performances (or an uploaded video to You Tube).
If coaches like what they see, you might get on their top 25 lists. This can be measured by whether coaches call and email, or invite you for campus visits paid by the school (which are carefully monitored by the NCAA). If successful you will gain a National Letter of Intent (NLI) or Likely Letters (neither of which are used by schools with no formal athletic scholarships, such as the Ivy League). Virtually all the schools are looking for candidates who are academically qualified, have the athletic ability, and are a good fit for the team and the school. You should be looking for the same fit. Fore!