| The world of high school sports 
Where do you stand among other student athletes
looking for college sports scholarships? One way to find out is to
explore national high
school championships, national
high school records and the current year's best high school
marks. In team sports it is more subjective. Where does your team rank
in your state or region? To know how visible you are going to be to
college coaches you should explore the high school records and high
school sports association web sites. Read the sports pages of large
state-wide or regional newspapers to get an idea of who is getting the
attention.
The numbers game of college
sports recruiting
There are about 126,000 students receiving
approximately $1 billion of athletic scholarship financial aid to play
college sports. If it seems like a lot of students are getting a lot of
money, they are. However only about one in 25 high school athletes
actually goes on to compete at the college level. Of those, only about
one-half are receiving sports scholarships. That's one out of about 50
high school athletes, or about 2%, who are receiving athletic aid in
college.
How do you use those numbers? The numbers mean that competition for sports scholarships is stiff. Does it mean that you must be in the top 2% of all high school athletes in ability? No. Not all high school athletes are going to be eligible to play at the college level. Not all high school athletes will be have the size, strength, speed or other attributes that coaches in particular sports are looking for. Not all high school athletes will come to the attention of college recruiters. The numbers mean that most high school athletes will need to work for every advantage they can get in the recruiting game. That means preparing, learning and being proactive in the recruiting process.
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