We're so excited to be here in the spirit of growing good humans. I am Laura Barr. I'm the owner and founder of Emerging Educational Consulting, and we provide one-to-one mentorship for students from the beginning to end of the college application process. And we really are, we wake up every day to help support. Raising good humans and what I have found in this process is that we cannot do this alone. It takes a village. And so I am delighted to introduce Lauren Williamson. Fun fact.
She was my son's college counselor while she was at East High School. So, I have a big warm welcome in my heart to have you, and I'm so excited today to talk about just this idea of like, what does it mean if you're an athlete in college. And Lauren, why don't you just introduce yourself really quick. I know you have your own practice and maybe tell us a little bit about that and then. Let's go from there. Sure. Thank you Laura, so much for having me. My name's Lauren Williamson.
I'm the owner and founder of Williamson College Prep that works with students on selecting the best fit, both academically, socially, financially, and athletically. College for students, mostly working with students in high school. I originally was a school counselor in Denver Public Schools for seven years where I kind of started my practice and my work with.
Students and loved the post-secondary planning process so much that I, switched sides of the desk and started working more with students on the post-secondary planning process. But my background in athletics has never left me. I was a swimmer growing up myself. I swam at the division three level in college and then coached at the division one level. And when I was at East High School, did some high school coaching as well.
So when it comes to students thinking about their athletic opportunities in college, I have the perspective both from working with high school athletes as their coach, working with the school as the school counselor, and supporting them through the recruiting process as a division one coordinator and coach in helping students engage in that process. Well, that's amazing and what an incredible gift you bring to that.
I'm just gonna dive in right away, one of the questions that, especially when I get clients, it's like, well, I wanna play in college. How do I know if I'm D one, D two or D three? Totally. I think this is a pretty common question because how can high school students know they're not in college? They just kind of know where they fall in perspective to some of their peers and their high school competition.
You'd be surprised at how many students I work with that I ask, are you letting your coaches know that you're interested in playing in college? So I usually start there with students and have them speak and share their interests, their passion in the school. Sport with their co, with their high school coaches so that in college they can get an understanding from the coach's perspective of maybe what the coach has seen.
Oftentimes when students are participating in club sports, the coaches sometimes are networked, for example, in diving, diving is a really, really tight-knit community from club to collegiate. So if a coach is aware that a, a high school diver is wanting to dive in college, there may be a network that that student can leverage. Outside of really communicating with the coach, One of the things that I love to recommend that students do is cast a wide net from the beginning.
We want students to entertain all possibilities, we want them to try on lots of different hats to figure out what's the right fit for them. But part of the reason that casting a wide net with kind of division one, division two, division three is important is not only are students sometimes trying to figure out which division makes the most sense for me based on my competitive level, but there's variation within the division levels.
So sometimes a student might be being recruited mostly at the division two level, but maybe a really high tier D three school is coming after them. Similarly, if a student's targeting D one, it doesn't mean that D three won't be right at certain levels. So by casting a wide net, students can really find out quickly where they're receiving feedback from coaches and lean into that and continue to follow the communication as it goes. That's great. What about, what about this idea?
So what you, what I heard you just say is like keep, start early, like cast in that early with the coaches that you already have, your high school coaches and let them know, cause there's this networking. What about communication with coaches at colleges? How does that work? Definitely. You know, one of the big things that students struggle with at the beginning when they're wanting to be recruited is this concept of getting recruited.
Even just the terminology and the language of I want to be recruited indicates that the student's gonna be able to take a passive role in the process. And that is not true. in fact, when you look at the data, about 7% of high school athletes. We'll go on and play in college. So that's a pretty low number. And often time I find that athletes kind of fall out of their, their opportunities in college because they don't realize that they need to take an active role in their recruiting process.
So as you mentioned with the emails or with contacting coaches, this is a huge place where students can play an active role in being part of their recruiting process. So what I typically recommend is when students are beginning the process, they hop onto athletic websites.
There's usually something called an athletic recruit questionnaire, and it'll walk a student through some of the main data points that college coaches are interested in collecting and interested in seeing from a student in that sport. This is really good when students are just. Beginning cuz sometimes they don't know what types of statistics they should be providing to coaches or showcasing to coaches in follow-up communication.
So if students start with those athletic recruit questionnaires, not only will they get into some of the databases of coaches, but they'll also just gain more understanding of some of the information that they wanna be sharing in their communication. Now I wouldn't stop at the athletic recruit questionnaire once that's finished, the most important step is to send an email and try to reach out and contact coaches. And when students are thinking about do doing this, I offer them a few tips.
The first is that coaches get hundreds of these emails every single year from perspective recruits, some of which are gonna be great recruits and some of which are not. So you need to find ways to connect with the coach and also to encourage a response. So to initially connect with the coach, I'm always trying to think about how can we make sure that the sublet j line of your email gives important information.
Things like your class year, things like your position perhaps on the, in the sport you're playing in, and also any kind of like highlights from your career. Maybe you're the state champion, maybe you place top end districts. Maybe you're competing at the Olympic trials. You can drop those into the, the header of the email. Also, students tend to go straight to head coaches, and many times assistant coaches are the ones that are dealing with initial recruiting contacts.
So making sure that you're mindful of how many coaches there are on the team, and including all of the coaches, if you're not sure who to include, will make sure that that email gets to the right person. Once you're then into the email, you wanna be concise, but you wanna give. Important data. So anything that's pertinent for your sport, anything around your academic progress that will show you shining and put your best foot forward.
Whether that's your gpa, whether that's the rigor of your course load and your schedule. These coaches wanna know that you can cut it academically in addition to athletically. And at that end of the email, making sure that you ask a question that prompts the coach to really follow up at some point. And we can get into. Kinda timelines in, in a minute.
but when we talk about a question saying things like, based on what you're seeing from my GPA and my academic progress, plus the progress I'm making ac athletically, do you think I'd be a good fit for your program? Can prompt a coach to go forward and have some follow up with that student?
Wow. That is just, it's just so much information and it just, it brings me to kind of like thinking about my own practice is often I will have students who enter our practice and they haven't even told me at that time that they were thinking about being an athlete, otherwise I would've referred them to you in the first place. Right? But then I'm like, already knee deep in and they say things like, well, I wanna play in. In college.
And, I know that this idea that like, once they realize that it's not like they're just sitting there and they're gonna be recruited Yeah. Is really the way that it works. Is that, I mean, is are you saying that, that that is just not the way that it works? It does work like that for maybe 1% of the top athletes. Right? So, and we see that in movies. So I think that's where it enters into our consciousness and where students, you know, if, if something comes to us, it's easier, right?
We would all love for people to come knocking on our doors with all of the incredible opportunities that are gonna make us successful within our lives. But oftentimes it just doesn't work that way. We have to put ourselves out there and most of the athletes. That I work with will go through this process of putting themselves out there to coaches, and making sure that they're building relationships because coaches are not just looking for the top athlete.
They have to also look for students who can communicate, who can be team members, who are coachable, who are going to be resp. Responsive to a poor call on the field. And so some of those personality traits will come through in some of the initial contacts and and communication that happens between the coach and student.
And I say coach and student because I'm sure we're gonna have lots of parents listening, in, and parents out of the goodness of their heart really wanna help their students to figure out and navigate this process. But this is a place where, The coach and the student communication is paramount. Coaches do not wanna be talking to parents in the majority of situations.
Once you get into financial aid and questions around that, perhaps the parent steps in, but initial communication should absolutely between be between the coach and the student. Do you think it's a detriment, like as far as advice, is it like hands off, don't do it like it could hurt the situation? Is that something you've seen? I have seen it hurt the situation. I've seen it where parents sometimes just can't help it.
They end up taking over and the student then kind of retreats from the communication. We wanna be building these students up and help them understand that they're capable of this communication, and also to make sure that they feel comfortable with this coach, because if they move forward and they go to play, Play for a team under a coach that they don't feel comfortable working with or being coached by. It's not gonna be a good athletic fit for the student.
And sometimes when we get swept up in coaches' responses to these emails, students can kind of. Cling on to the first thing that comes their way of like, Ooh, this school wants me. This program wants me. And that's why I do think it's really important, especially for students who are going to college, not just for the athletic experience, right? They're going for the academic, for the social experience to grow their individual selves. It's really important.
For parents and counselors to be guiding them through a wider process of thinking about how that athletic fit really makes sense, but also how the academic and the social fit might make sense for them so that they can be their best self. We know that the majority of athletes who even play in college, remember I said 7% of high school athletes go on to play in college? Well, of the students who play in college, only 2% go professional. Wow, that's so small, right?
So most of our student athletes are going to take the incredible values that they've gained from being part of a team, from being part of competition, and they're gonna employ them into other places in their lives as they move forward, because most of them are not gonna be going professional, but there's plenty of places that they can maximize and leverage those within their careers. And really this initial coaching communication with the student, it allows the student to.
Build better effective communication skills along the way with us as counselors or parents supporting them from the wings. That's great as a, my community knows, I often call myself a helicopter mother in recovery. So those gentle reminders are very, very helpful cuz it's like we want to do the best and we want to, and we often watch our kids. Fumble or take too long or not reply when we want them to.
And I, I imagine some of that might be related to this idea of maybe there's money involved in this also. And as you know, college has just become such a huge expense. And I think in, you know, in my practice, I really have a. Very strong opinion that parents should be very involved in the college education process because the investment is enormous. And so we include all of our parents all of the time, but we also are guiding and teaching them.
But I do, I'm wondering about the money piece because I am feeling like there's a big disconnect between people understanding sport, playing sports and scholarships. Absolutely. You know, and I feel for parents here, because you think about the thousands of dollars that go into cultivating an athletic passion for a young person, and not just dollars, but hours in time and in emotional support. It's huge.
and that's why I actually think, you know, you're speaking before about sometimes you don't know that some of your students are interested in playing in college. When I see a student who has. Spent a lot of time in their activities or in their extracurricular engagement on sports. I always ask, What they would think their life would be without that. Mm-hmm. And it's funny because before Covid, they didn't really know how to answer it.
Now with Covid, they're a little bit more prepared for that question and they have a little bit more perspective on what life can be sometimes without those engagements. But it allows them to really, Think through what, how sports are serving them in that point in their life. Because life would look very differently if you're spending 20 hours a week going to soccer practices and your weekends are on soccer games and suddenly you're in college and that 20 hours is now all yours.
What are you doing with it? That allows us to kind of help students think, think through that. But to get back to your question about the scholarship piece, Because we're investing a lot of dollars into our students' athletic engagements early on. What tends to happen is parents wanna return on investment, right?
We've put all, we've invested into this young person, into their skills, into their talents, and so the payoff can be if we get merit, some athletic or merit scholarships out of the deal when they go off to college. So the first thing that parents need to know is that there are two divisions within the NCAA that offer athletic scholarships. Division one and division two will offer athletic scholarship. Division three does not offer any athletic scholarship money.
So if a student's being recruited by a D three school, they won't see any, discount to their tuition coming because of athletic talent. Now with division one and division two, it's about 2% of high school students that will get some sort of scholarship. So again, the number is very low when it comes to the money that students are seeing. And you think like to be part of that 2%, you need to be kind of in that realm of. Coaches are coming to you, you're not going to them.
Now that doesn't mean there's no money to be had for others because at a lot, at a lot of schools, schools are not giving a full ride scholarship. They have an amount of money that they then get to distribute between their different recruits. And depending how valuable that coach sees you as being to being on a member of their team, they may give you a certain amount of money in proportion to someone else they're bringing in that given year.
So, And so it is absolutely recommended that once a student knows that a, a coach is interested in them, they're co, the communication is continuing. They're having communication over time about progress in the sport. It is totally encouraged for the student to bring up with the coach that finances.
Is a part of the game here for the family, and that they are trying to understand what the opportunities could look like, how that coach distributes money within their teams, within their recruits, so that they can start kind of peeling away the layers of the onion to better understand how that individual coach and individual team is allocating funds, because it won't be the same from team to team. And so that can lead sometimes to certain schools.
We, we talked about casting that wide net, right? Like you cast it wide. Some of those schools might not come back with anything, and if you know that you need $10,000 a year to support your efforts at a certain school, then that can, learning more about how the coach is distributing the funds can help you to understand what the reality of the situation may be. Now for Division three, division one and division two.
The other thing that I really like to remind families is if the, you have an athlete who is also a stellar student. I'm talking a's B's and Cs in high school. There is, there are schools that were, will offer them merit scholarships. And so the coach can usually working with admissions, get an understanding based on the academic profile of the student athlete, what type of money will be coming their way because of their incredible achievements in the classroom.
And that can really help us student to understand, okay, here's what I'll get because. Of my athletic talents, here's what I'll get because of my academic talents. And then by filling out the FAFSA and the CSS profile, students can understand what they will get need based and kind of come to understand what the full package looks like.
Will, just a follow up question on that, will any of those negotiations happen before the admissions letters come out, or is that more when the admissions letters come out, there's that kind of negotiation. Yeah, usually coaches will have some offline conversations with, students so that they can understand what the pot looks like or what it generally looks like. You know, coaches don't wanna waste their time either, so if a student can't afford the school based on.
What the coach knows they're gonna be able to offer and what the student's gonna be paying. They wanna move in, ma, move forward and get that spot filled with an athlete who will be able to contribute athletically, but also be able to afford the college as well.
So there is some level of conversations that I have seen happening between families and students, and also with coaches hooking up families with the financial aid office to sit down and have conversations there to get better understanding of what things will really look like. Thank you. I'm gonna go back,, I'm gonna go back round to something that you also said that was, this idea of reaching out to the coaches, assistant coaches.
And, what happens when you don't hear back, especially, you know, you, you write that email, you curate that subject line, and then you hear nothing. What is the appropriate response and how should parents guide students? Yeah. So the first thing that I tell students is, take a breath. It is okay. It's like, let's take a breath. We can figure out what the next step that you can take is. there's many reasons why people don't respond to emails. One could be that they're not interested, okay?
So, but we're not gonna go there yet based off of one email. Another reason that a, a coach might not be responding is they might not be able to communicate with you yet. Students can reach out to coaches throughout the process, but there's times in which coaches can and can't communicate directly with student athletes. And it's important for students to come to understand their timeline. This does vary by sport, but all of the recruiting calendars can be fined on the NCAA website.
They're just emailing to put themselves in front of a coach so that a coach can maybe start to track and kind of take a look at their progress over time. So when a student doesn't hear back initially, I always think about where are they within the process? You know, what? What year are they in? Are we in a period where coaches can't communicate with you? Or is it a period where you can, and a lot of recruiting is happening.
So once we think through where we are within that recruiting process, the next thing we can do is think about what a good follow up will look like. So ideally, that athlete has made some progress between the first email and the second email. And I would recommend that, you know, sometimes students are like, Hey, I'm progressing every day, and I'm like, yes. That's great. That's awesome. And. We're not gonna email every day. That's a little bit too much.
But thinking about things around quarterly communication or thinking about things around, you know, if you emailed at the beginning of a high school season and you've since concluded your high school season, that could be a really touch, good touch point for you to connect with a coach who maybe hasn't responded to say, Hey, and hit reply all to that initial email you sent so that you create a. A chain of communication as opposed to a new email where they're kind of like scurrying through their
inbox to find everything, hit reply all and say, Hey, I just wanted to follow up with you and let you know updates of my progress. sometimes students. In certain sports, we'll need highlight videos and maybe they included that in their first email. Maybe they didn't have it pulled together yet, and for the second email they've got the link pulled together. They're able to include that in the email and then they can kind of move forward at the end of that second email.
I do, I recommend something that can be very scary for students and I tell them from the onset, I'm gonna recommend something. I know you might not like it, but I know you can do it and I will support you and help you through it. And that is to conclude the email by saying something along the lines of, I'm really excited to hear your feedback and if I don't hear back from you in a week, I'm gonna follow up with a phone call.
And phone call is when their eyes like light up and they're like, and you know, I, I listened to a podcast once that made this make a lot of sense to me from an adult parent perspective to better understand our students in that when I was younger, We would be sitting around our dinner table with our family and our telephone that had a cord on it that was hooked up to the wall in our kitchen would ring and my mom would get up and she'd pick up, pick it up and say, you know, hello, this is the
Allison residence. And I would listen to her. Have that conversation. And so I was exposed to the, these telephone communications as I was growing up. And if you think about what we do now with our phones, you know, we answer a call and we usually leave where we are to gain some quiet, to gain, you know, some space away and some isolation. So students aren't always privy to having seen models of what telephone communication looks like.
So the way that I help them to prepare for this is we role play. We say, okay, you know, you've now written in a week. You're gonna call. You've gotta call. And so what this is gonna look like is they're gonna answer, they're gonna say hello. And you can role play it out with your student of, you know, hi, this is coach so-and-so and so, and you like launch into your spiel. And again, a lot of times coaches don't want to. Waste your time.
They don't wanna waste their time, and so they're gonna be honest in the communication that they have with you as much as they can be given where they are at that time in their recruiting process. So great. Oh my gosh. We have three minutes left and I feel like I could talk to you for three hours. So let's see. What do I wanna, oh, I know, let's do timeline real quick. So, when you talk, it seems like we're talking, maybe there's two questions.
One is, okay, you're a freshman and you know you wanna play. Then what about if you're like a senior, we call 'em rising seniors. A rising senior right now, and you're like, I just had the best season of my life. I just slammed out my summer and now I wanna play like answer that. And then we always stop on time. So I promise that to my family. So on your market set, go. Okay, so as a freshman, talk to your coach.
Start to build a list of schools that you're interested in, athletically, academically, and socially, so that as you enter, finish your freshman year of high school season, you're able to send that initial email, fill out the athletic recruit questionnaire, and start to put yourself out there to coaches in sophomore year for the Rising Seniors. If you've killed it this year, Just go for it. You never know until you put yourself out there and send an email, make a phone call.
Yes, you may get some nos, but if you get a yes, it's gonna be totally worth it and you're gonna be really proud of yourself for having put yourself out there. The coaches will help you to understand where they are in their recruiting timelines as well. And so with each additional coach you contact and connect with, you'll gain more and more insight into where your sport is in that given division at any given time. Beautiful. Lauren, thank you so much.
I think one my last thought of everything that you've said is that there's one thing going on, which is raising an athlete and raising an athlete who not only is an expert at their sport, but also has a sense of character as they are in that sport. Sport. Right? That they bring that to the table. Yeah. And then there's also that piece around raising, good humans who can manage disappointment.
Because what I have noticed is that there are so many students who start reaching out and they do get a lot of nos and nos and they're like, wait, I thought I was pretty amazing. And you know, and that's kind of rough. And I think that's something in our practice, and I know you do the same. That like part of that. Growing a good human is growing that grit for being able to manage that disappointment but never to give up.
And that at the very end you can go to the rec center and play a club and enjoy your sport. So I cannot thank you enough. You are so amazing. I'm so happy we're so blessed to have you collaborating and I was blessed to have you as a coach for my son. So thank you very, very much and we will have you back to talk more good stuff. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Talking later. Thank you, Lauren. Bye. Bye.