Things I wish I knew about playing college baseball

That was awesome. Did you feel College baseball takes up alot of time. Less studying and social life? I heard its hard to play baseball and take a hard major like engineering...?

Congrats on the ride , glad you shared your story, will give others a shot at their dream.

I'm really glad you posted this.  As a parent just starting this process with my 2015 this is a great lesson/teaching tool.   Thanks.

As a father of a 2014 who will be playing in college next year. i would love to hear about what was the toughest part of playing college baseball, what is a typical day/ week in season and out look like.

Son is all in to playing, just would like to get a prospective from a player who was not at a school he was being recruited at. We have one source locally we know but otherwise that part is all a bit of blur still 

Thanks for this thread and congratulations on gaining a college education.  I too was the first in my family to go to college. 

Welcome Coach Smith to HSBBWEB + thanks for sharing!

Great post! Thanks.

Watching my son and his friends play in college the thing that I did not realize (and I think a lot of top HS Sr's probably also) is how competitive college baseball is. There are only 9 guys on the field and the best 9 play. These are the best 9 in the coaches opinion, no one else. Lots of college players are typically the top kids in a region and when they get to college they suddenly are the youngest of other top kids from other regions. 

The other thing is how prevalent injuries are in how they create opportunities and at the same time take them away. A player may be sitting on the bench, but you never know when that opportunity is going to happen and you HAVE to take advantage of it right then and there, if you don't then someone else will. Also an injury may close one door and open up another. The season is actually pretty short and intense and an injury can take you out for the entire season when you consider how long it takes to get back into playing shape. 

The time demands on the player on intense and I don't think some HS Sr's realize how disciplined they have to be when considering school, homework, workout, practice, travel considerations. It is a grind. 

The size and power of the college athlete is incredible. Most incoming Freshmen have no idea what they are up against once they walk on the field with fully developed Jr's and Sr's. 

Finally it is a once in a lifetime experience that only a few get to enjoy (and endure) My son is making friends for life, many comeback and watch games, follow the team on the Internet, and stay involved with the program after they are done. It really is a life long fraternity that continues for life, once you were an ex "name the team" you will always be one and welcomed home when you come and visit. 

You are part of a pretty small and special group of individuals. 

I will tell you this from a parent's perspective, division I baseball is a cut-throat deal in some places.  I have a son that went to a division I school this year and will transfer to a division II next year.  If money is an issue, then very few players are getting any significant scholarship money at the Div I level.  After signing with the Div II school, my son will save his dad about $56,000 over the next four years because of the athletic and academic package he was offered.  Several of his present team members will lose their 25% athletic scholarship at the end of this season.  So then it's play for free or transfer. 

Read all the articles about/by the current coach.  Is this guy a jerk, or someone you'd like to play for.  Did he cut players in mid-season?  Did he have good things to say about his players when they lost?  Does he blame losses on the weather, seniors, or others?

We were so lucky.  Many of son's friends ended up at bad places.

Sultan, in my son's case that is all to be deteremined. He is first year HC although he was pitching / recruiting coach for 9 years there previously. He was the one that spent last summer following my son before his offer. I can definitley see how that should be on the to do list of a recruit though.

LA,

I was a Civil Engineering major at a Top 25 baseball school.  It was tough but I had a great academic advisor and an understanding coach.  Keep in mind that college baseball is a job.    You lift at 6am, go to school all day, practice/scrimmage/condition from 2-5 daily, get your own late BP in from an hour or 2, eat dinner and then go study.  It is a lot of work and juggling but I wouldn't have traded it for anything.

I've seen kids pick their dream school (often since they were a little kid) over the right school and not get on the field. If a kid wants to go to a top ten school he better be sure he has the talent to compete to be on the field. Even then half that choose that school will be wrong. "I have a chance" is a better choice than "All I want is a chance."

LA,

Except for a handful of programs Engineering and hard science majors are pretty much excluded from D1 ball. Ivy's, Stanford, and a few others. (not sure where Redbird went). You just can't get in the afternoon labs and still make regular practice, plus the study load, combined with travel, etc.

I think the # 1 thing about pursuing a college baseball opportunity is understanding how different it is from anything you've experienced before.

Probably all of us grew up playing recreationally and we dreamed of being in the big leagues.  As a kid, you really have no idea what all that entails, but the idea of being talented, famous, rich etc. makes for a nice daydream.  Because college ball is a more attainable goal, today's high school player is likely to have daily exposure to guys who they know are going to play in college.  It's easy to think, "I love this game, I want to keep playing."  And then there's also, "I will prove that he's no better than I am."  (The proliferating helicopter parents are big on that last one, too.  It's "keeping up with the Joneses" playing out on a field near you.)

What's missing from this picture is an understanding of the amount of work involved, the frustrations that come with the challenges, and the need for daily devotion to your chosen path in order to get there and stay there, much less to move up.

You'd be amazed at how many guys who talk about playing in college have no idea how much greater the time commitment is during school, compared to HS ball.  And surprisingly few players go into it knowing that summer is no longer play time, nor summer job time, nor even time for just a few weekends of travel ball.  The day after your team's season ends, you get to pack.  The next day, you're in some far-flung hamlet, maybe living in some gracious host family's basement and waiting for the time to come when you have to report to the team bus.  I'm amazed that every year you'll hear recruiting-team players complaining about how their coach won't let them miss a tourney to have a beach week, how they're feeling "burned out," etc.  What is it, I wonder, that they think awaits them if they actually reach their stated goal of getting recruited to play for a college team? 

I certainly encourage anyone who really wants college ball to pursue it and to find the right fit for them.  But I would also encourage someone to know themselves enough to figure out whether it's really for them, or whether it's more of a hobby than an avocation.

BTW I have a daughter who is now a professional (actually employed) musical theater performer.  People in her field are often very different personalities than your typical athletes.  Yet the paths, the nature of the opportunities, the requirements and the whole winnowing process is very, very reminiscent of what her older brother went through with baseball.  We all have to figure out where our passion lies and how we'll pursue it.  Part of that process is separating things we just enjoy doing from things we want to make the focus of our daily lives.

Very nice read GSmith

thanks for the replies . Stuck between a rock and a hardball.

Cal Tech has a baseball team with minimal wins. Cough. Wonder how they would work. ...

LA, my son is a chemical engineering major and plays college ball in his junior year.  It is very difficult.  On long bus rides when guys are sleeping, listening to music....he has his nose in a book, but he has kept a very high GPA.  When deciding on offers to play and looking at his options, he knew what his major was going to be.  So if a school, no matter how attractive baseball and the other things were, did not have or would not allow him to pursue what he would be doing for the rest of his life in the engineering field, he crossed it off his list.  In choosing a school a student athlete needs to make a lists of must haves, nice to haves and absolute don't want to haves and then start to eliminate schools from there.  I think student athletes as well as their parents need to drop the D1 persona of baseball and look at all options on the table when the student athlete is academically gifted and has aspirations of making a career in a demanding field that other students athletes could never achieve or even have the aspirations of achieving.  I am not saying that a player with D1 talent shouldn't look at those options or a player shouldn't make it a goal to be considered to play D1 baseball, the more options the better. But academically gifted student athletes who want to major in the engineering field  almost need to drop all labels of D1, D2, D3 NAIA and look at them is equal and then determine heir best career/baseball path.

I believe the hardest part of college baseball is two fold.
1. The grind:  When you  hit college your life becomes focused around baseball.  Yeah I know growing up we always said our life was baseball but now it is for real.  Practice, conditioning, study hall, weight training.  All scheduled around winning games and playing baseball.

2.  Competition:  I attended a D1 school of 4,000 in HS and still the competition was limited for playing time.  You get what you get.  All of a sudden you go to college and from day 1 it is a competition for playing time, even for the returners.  From a GB to a sprint, everything is a competition because they are drip of other position players and pitchers that can do your job.

In summary after a while you either learn to love both or you will fall out of love with college baseball.  I am not knocking either of these 2 things and believe competition is necessary to succeed. I am simply stating that as an 18 yr old kid when I entered into college these were the 2 hardest things you had to get used to.

"Things I wish I knew about playing college baseball"

In no particular order:

1) It is ridiculously hard to get on the field at any level

2) You have to do the work on the field and off the field.  No shortcuts.

2) The coach is always trying to find a better player than you

3) You are not going to like or respect all of your coaches or teammates

4) Success is difficult.  When success is achieved it can be fleeting.  Enjoy the wins. 

Two prior topics on this site that I bookmarked:

"First Year's lessions others need to know":

http://community.hsbaseballweb...-others-need-to-know

"Advice for a new collage player":

http://community.hsbaseballweb...ply=2982475074929745

Both are very good reads!

Nice post!