When is the right time to start looking for a sports scholarship?

You need to start as early as possible. You need to do determine what you want and what you are eligible for. We can easily determine a student athlete’s eligibility for schools and divisions and conferences, and we will give you honest feedback of where we believe you are at as well. Through research, you can determine your own eligibility, and then determine what you want and where you believe your perfect offer will come from.

It is never too early to start looking for a sports scholarship, even as early as year nine or 10. A lot of families do not want to start this process until they know for certain that their child is actually going to go. The one thing that we struggle to get across to athletes and families is that it is not about going to the US, but rather having the option of actually going.

You need to separate going from getting the offer. They are two separate things. Getting the offer is the most important thing in the whole process because if you do not get the offer, then you are not going to go.
Should you be asking the coach at all for a sports scholarship? Yes and no. It depends on when you are actually asking the coach because there comes a point when that conversation needs to happen. But you need to tread carefully. The best way we tell all of our athletes on our 360 program to ask for scholarships and the way that we go about it is, we say ask through your actions.

Going into the sports scholarship process or asking for a sports scholarship as your first point of call, is essentially trying to skip a few steps. Step one should be trying to get the coach to want you. Asking direct questions when you are in communication with a coach about what your scholarship will be or if you can receive a scholarship, is not the correct manner to go about the process.

Always ask for a scholarship by showing the coach that you deserve a scholarship. You want to essentially make them ask themselves the question through watching footage for example.
You can ask for a support scholarship by actually showing the coach new footage or new information consistently. This is probably the best way to ask for a sports scholarship because if you have got more information, videos and references online for the coach to see, then essentially you are asking for a sports scholarship without actually asking.
The more you are going to compete for that college coach, the more funding you are going to receive. If they feel you are going to make a big impact as a freshman, or as a transfer student, and you are someone that they feel is better than everyone else that they have in the squad or on the roster, you have got a very good chance of receiving a sports scholarship.
The larger the scholarship that you are aiming to get, the more of an impact you need to have as an athlete. The less of an impact that you are going to have as a freshman or as a first year athlete, nine times out of 10, the less sports scholarship you are going to receive. It does not mean that you cannot compete but a general rule of thumb, tournament time or game time equals the amount of funding that you are going to receive. If you are better than what a coach already has, that is one of the reasons why college coaches will give you a sports scholarship.
The second reason why a coach will give you a sports scholarship is attitude. Your attitude will help you get that sports scholarship and will help the coach have a reason to give you one. The quicker that you reply to the coaches’ messages or the better that you announce yourself by phone, email or Skype and the more polite that you are, will determine the amount of scholarship that you can receive. As quickly as you can receive one, you can quickly lose one.
The third factor is having something to show the coach. If you have no references, no video footage, no stats, or no profile in a centralized location for a coach to access, stop looking. You are wasting time and you are probably even hurting your own chances, because the coach is just going to feel like you are wasting his or her time by contacting them with nothing to show. Prepare your video footage, references, certificates, photos, videos, and everything that you need to show the type of athlete that you are, before you start looking for a sports scholarship.
Often this happens with people that start the process later on in year 12 or after completing year 12. If you start the process later on, you have less time to get footage and less time to put all your information in one location.
It should take you anywhere between eight to 12 weeks to actually complete your portfolio which includes your videos, references, photos etc. From the moment that you have decided to start looking for a sports scholarship to the moment that you have completed everything, and if you are extremely diligent, it will take you about 12 weeks.
You are more than likely only participating once a week in your sport. So, if you are trying to get three or four sets of footage, that is three or four games, which is three or four weeks. If you are suspended, injured or sick, then that adds to the time.
When your season starts, then you need to get it edited and you need to get references. Teachers and coaches are fantastic people to get references from, but you will find that they take forever to give you your reference. You need to follow up with them up, so give yourself that window to start. Stop looking for a sports scholarship if you are not prepared in advance.

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