We have been contacted by NCSA( Next College Student Athlete). They sound good, very nice and professional, and state they can help with College Recruiting. My boy is only 14( and in 8th grade), so I'm wondering : Isn't this a little early for all this, or should be begin down this road?
Has anyone delt with NCSA? Or a similar organization? Any advice would be appreciated.
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I’m not a fan of these services. A parent and a quality travel team coaching staff with contacts can do a better job of zeroing in on the right colleges. Regardless of my opinion of these services is your son at the point where he has something to show a college coach will notice? Typically at fourteen it’s only a handful of D1 prospects across the entire country.
When my son played 17u (first season post soph summer) the coaching staff sat down with each player and their college list. They had an honest discussion about each school. The coaches provided additional recommendations. Services and consultants typically don’t have this level of contact and knowledge about a player.
Absolutely no reason to use them.....especially not at 14.....they will do nothing that you can't do yourself. As RJM said.....baseball contacts and a good travel org will do more than any recruiting service can ever provide you....and save you some $$$
Great advice from RJM and Buckeye.
Use your funds in a better way. My son's BFF owns a training facility. These kids are studs with great skills going into HS.
I happen to really like the NCSA site. I would not use them for recruiting, however. Also, I wouldn't use them until your son is entering his Junior year of HS and you know the top D1's are not knocking down your door. If he's a top-end talent he will be found through his play. I can't recall the pricing of the site but I would recommend just getting access to their database. Sure you can find all the information they have publically but they have tools that help you zero in on desired schools and for us, it helped us map out our strategy. Coaches will "look" at your son's profile which is equally cool and useless.
I do think that NCSA is just mostly a company looking to separate you from your dollars but there is some stuff that is helpful (if the price is right for you).
Lots of legitimate complaints.
Proceed with caution.
Thx folks! That what i needed to know! (And suspected)
Do you have the disposable income? If so then yes it is convenient, but if you are cheap/frugal/pennywise or rather just want to stretch your dollars to buy more baseball gadgets to anger your spouse, then a little digging here can get you the same information/guidance. Your kid's travel program should he helping too. If they are not, then your kid needs to seriously reconsider leaving for an org that can. HS summer travel is about recruiting and it can be pleasant enough but the camaraderie I enjoyed in preteen to early teen baseball just does not exist. Luckily my kid and I had a good preteen early teen experience, yes there was drama at times but also lots of hysterical and fun moments. I am terribly disappointed my Spanish vocabulary did not expand nearly as much as my waistband...Ay dios mios.
Check out www.keepplayingbaseball.org to understand the process.
They have some good content.
Everything you need to know about the recruiting process is here and will be answered by someone who has been through it already. Read the timeline at HSBBW, read through threads, and then see what happens in HS. Best advice is "make a plan and work the plan"....once he makes his HS team.
Best of luck! OMG love, love, love 14 YO's... a bunch of gangly giraffe's with crackly voices.
As soon as I signed up for my son’s free profile on NCSA they started calling me. And calling me. And calling me. Incessant about having a call consultation with me. Once they learned I wasn’t calling them back, the emails started coming. And coming. I finally replied and said “listen, if you want me to consider your services, wrap them all up in an email to me with specific pricing and I’ll look it all over and let you if I’m interested.” The emails stopped and I never heard from them again.
Stick to this site and any parent/player that will share their story with you. You have time. Read everything you can get your hands on for free first. That’ll take a while. Be a sponge and be resilient.
In addition to asking questions here, go to games. Ask player’s parents how their kid ended up at the school. Ask where else he considered. They will tell you about the experience in college. Most parents enjoy talking about their kids. I got a lot of information this way.
When researching schools:
http://www.hsbaseballweb.com/rosters.htm
https://keepplayingbaseball.or...ege-programs-online/
Bottom line, start developing a plan and work the plan.
@DanJ posted:As soon as I signed up for my son’s free profile on NCSA they started calling me. And calling me. And calling me. Incessant about having a call consultation with me. Once they learned I wasn’t calling them back, the emails started coming. And coming. I finally replied and said “listen, if you want me to consider your services, wrap them all up in an email to me with specific pricing and I’ll look it all over and let you if I’m interested.” The emails stopped and I never heard from them again.
Stick to this site and any parent/player that will share their story with you. You have time. Read everything you can get your hands on for free first. That’ll take a while. Be a sponge and be resilient.
Times 3 for me because my family is a wonderful and hopefully not a typical example of intrafamilial communication. Wife, kid and I signed up at different times...it was a communication blitzkreig of bandwidth breaking proportions which I now replaced the word spam with nsca in my vocabulary. A warning to those out there who have not signed up for their free goodies...webinars, guides, etc. Helpful if you do not use the resources in here but I strongly advise to use an old email and a near extinct land line or you will be NSCA-ed. They are the modern day Jehovah's witness knocking on your door on an early Saturday morning....no offense to my JW friends on here
I'll go a *bit* against the grain of the thread. I'd say large orgs like NCSA and SportsRecruits are not worth the significant money. However, there are more personalized services, either individual or niche outfits, that are both legitimate and results driven. Guys like Josh Rudd (who posts on this site) and PTW are tremendous. Yes a terrific travel team can get a lot done for you, but they often have many, many players to showcase. Outfits like the ones Im advocating are much more concierge in nature, and have personal relationships with college HC and RC's that are very important. Particularly given the challenges of last year, ones that I think will have repercussions for at least another recruiting cycle. Anyway, another perspective YMMV (as well as your $$)
@Wechson posted:I'll go a *bit* against the grain of the thread. I'd say large orgs like NCSA and SportsRecruits are not worth the significant money. However, there are more personalized services, either individual or niche outfits, that are both legitimate and results driven. Guys like Josh Rudd (who posts on this site) and PTW are tremendous. Yes a terrific travel team can get a lot done for you, but they often have many, many players to showcase. Outfits like the ones Im advocating are much more concierge in nature, and have personal relationships with college HC and RC's that are very important. Particularly given the challenges of last year, ones that I think will have repercussions for at least another recruiting cycle. Anyway, another perspective YMMV (as well as your $$)
IMHO, personalized services can provide more bang for the buck. Just get references and speak to previous clients.
They normally go above and beyond the call of duty because they get future business from referrals.
Need to understand their college coaching network.
Sorry for the ramble.
Great information folks-THX! A side note, since being on a great travel team , was mentioned several times. Well, we are on a travel team, and are enjoying getting alot of good experience, but we are winning very few games. My son and a couple other kids are the standouts, and the rest are really good kids, but their level of play, just isn't enough to get us many wins. Is this going to be an issue? Will my kid get noticed, even though his team isn't winning? Should I look to get him on a different team, or make the most of what we got( at least he is getting alot of play time). Secondly, one reason he was placed on this team is that he can catch, even though its not his best position. He enjoys it, but i just doubt, that Catching is where his future lies.
Your kid is in 14u ball, I would keep him there unless your kid has college ready metrics and wants to play P5 then go on a national ranked team. If the travel org has a history of placing kids in college and he is a prospect, then stay. If not, I would considering move to one in the fall of Soph year.
@Adams Baseball posted:Great information folks-THX! A side note, since being on a great travel team , was mentioned several times. Well, we are on a travel team, and are enjoying getting alot of good experience, but we are winning very few games. My son and a couple other kids are the standouts, and the rest are really good kids, but their level of play, just isn't enough to get us many wins. Is this going to be an issue? Will my kid get noticed, even though his team isn't winning? Should I look to get him on a different team, or make the most of what we got( at least he is getting alot of play time). Secondly, one reason he was placed on this team is that he can catch, even though its not his best position. He enjoys it, but i just doubt, that Catching is where his future lies.
When he gets to 16u and 17u it’s important to be on a quality team relative to what he’s trying to accomplish. A high school teammate of my son went to a major PG event. The mother complained they never saw a college coach the entire week. When you’re on a team losing most of its games there’s an assumption the talent isn’t there. Teams with reputations draw college coaches.
@2022NYC hilarious and horrifying all at the same.
@Adams Baseball the right travel teams made all the difference in the world for my son but we made the switch to higher profile teams after sophomore and junior years (per @RJM's post).
