dacoach1428

welcome aboard ...

I would start in the thread titled: "Perfect Game Showcases"

 

He might be a softball, basketball or football coach Pops!...I know...some of us feel the baseball forum is the only one

 

He's baseball .... from the HSBBWeb ... I saw his moniker over there.

 

:xyzthumbs

 

Thanks

Thanks for the warm welcome. I am definetly baseball but I am also an assistant football coach at my school. I was just curious about this National Scouting Report that is really trying to sign my son and several of my other players. Was wondering if anyone had used them. They seem like a racket to me.

 

I'm not a proponent of scouting services because 99% of the work you can do yourself...but of the many one's out there, NSR has good reputation.

Here is a thread he has started in here: http://thisboardrocks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=75530

 

There is an active NSR representative in WNC who works hard for the softball. They seem to do much better in that sport. They don't seem to be as well organized in baseball, and I'm not sure that their services in baseball are even a good fit for this state.

A little background info:

In many states, there are a limited number of D1 programs and the programs that do exist (NAIA/D2/D3 etc) have extremely limited recruiting budgets. A state line Montana doesn't have a single D1 baseball program. Programs like NSR served a purpose, hooking up players with programs.

National scouting operations where the players actually compete have reduced the out-of-state need for NSR inside the sport of baseball. There probably isn't a better scouted sport nationwide (Perfect Game/Baseball America, etc).

Then you look at North Carolina. NC has, per capita the most D1 & D2 programs in the nation for any state. The opportunities here are great - much better than any of our surrounding neighbors. The problem then is just being seen "in-state".

With Junior State Games, the Impact baseball events and Perfect Game coming into the state (along with NC hosting "East Coast Pro" every fall), if a player will participate in those events he'll be seen ... mainly because the coaches in NC want to see the players.

An operation like NSR just doesn't fit into the way baseball works in NC - it might with other sports or the emerging sports. NSR isn't attracting huge numbers of prospects in baseball either. I checked out their web site after I saw your question. Here's the numbers:

197 Candidates.
13 candidates total who have committed in 2005 (NCAA, NAIA & Juco)
13 candidates from NC
2 NC players who have committed (1 NCAA, 1 NAIA)

At least 1 of the NC players who committed also participated in the Junior State Games.

13/197 = 6.6% success ratio so far (admittedly, it's early - still time to sign).

Per a participation study by the NCAA "Less than three in 50, or about 5.6 percent, of high school senior boys interscholastic baseball players will go on to play men's baseball at a NCAA member institution" If you factor in the number of JUCO and NAIA programs the percentage national will probably approach 10 percent.

The numbers just don't look very promising for NSR. I know several who have committed that are listed with NSR and they played for high profile programs and attended showcases or went to college camps. I don't believe that NSR was instrumental in any of those signings at all.

 

NSR's Role

I appreciate this thread and see it as a terrific opportunity to shed light on our side of recruiting. Here are some thoughts to consider:

1) While we have eight scouts total in NC and SC, three of them work in baseball. They also work with prospects in one or two other sports. We are presently looking for scouts to cover the Charlotte, Greenville/Spartanburg, Raleigh and Eastern NC areas with baseball as their major focus. We are in no hurry because it is more important that we build our reputation with the right people aboard and by getting excellent results for our prospect-clients than to rush in without the right person in place. Like everything else, this is a people busiiness.

2) While it is true that at present we are stronger in softball (thanks for the compliment), we continue to do well with the baseball prospects we enroll and promote. Frankly, we are not interested in setting up shop and just enrolling kids for the sake of it or to simply capture a dollar. If we do not sign quality kids and help them to get scholarships, we will not last long. During the Early Signing Period in November, we had baseball clients to sign NLI's with South Carolina, Florida State, Erskine and Brevard among others. That's a wide range (major DI to NAIA), but it speaks to the fact that we look to enroll well-rounded student-athletes, not necessarily the top athletes.

3) Across the board our clients have an average GPA of 3.6 and 1050 SAT. We scout each prospect in person, often multiple times, get a coach's recommendation if possible, find out about the kid's desire to play in college, his grades and we observe the prospect's parents, too. When we put a player in front of a college coach, we are actually promoting a package that includes the parents. If parents are non-supportive, openly complain about or yell at game officials, coaches or other players, we back off because we do not want to pass that situation on to a college coach. Our reputation hangs in the balance. If a kid and parents appear to fit the profile we search for, we set up appointments to interview the prospect in their home with his parents present and participating. After providing educational information regarding recruiting rules and guidelines, helping the prospect to register with the NCAA Clearinghouse and discussing how the recruiting process works, we might then introduce the parents to our promotional programs. In the end, we are much more interested in enrolling the right kid and family, a "package" college coaches will be attracted to, than coming in making a bunch of baseless promises, taking their money and leaving in a cloud of dust.

4) I am the NSR licensee for NC and SC and it would serve no purpose for us to approach helping kids, or running a business, in the fashion that was anything other than being above board. We have seen scouting companies come and go over the years with little genuine interest in the kids. Their primary goal is to make a quick buck. That's why they are not around any longer. This is a calling for me personally and I take seriously the work of helping kids realize their dreams - and, I insist that my scouts share those priorities. Twenty-seven of our prospects (in a variety of sports) signed or committed during the ESP. We are very proud of that. You will not find any other scouting organization in the two states who can boast those numbers. There's a reason for that - we work hard at it for the kids.

5) All of our current baseball clients who did not sign in the ESP are either considering offers or making visits to campuses around the region with an eye toward signing in April. Each kid has a personal recruiting coordinator who is there to help, within the rules, anyway he or she can.

6) We do not claim to be the final answer in recruiting. In fact, we believe our role is to compliment what a student-athlete has going, albeit on a much wider scale than what the parents could conceivably do. With a Web site that gets over two million hits per month, a network of 200 scouts around the country and digitized videotape available for any coach in the country to see on his office computer or order at no cost, monthly E-mails to every college baseball coach in the country and an assortment of other interlocking ways we reach college coaches, we are the difference between fishing with a cane pole, cork and worm attached and throwing a net out into the water. In fact, we get E-mail requests from college coaches every day, and from every level of play, looking for specific prospects to fill their needs. Parents simply do not have that sort of access to coaches. Besides, how seriously do you think a college coach considers information that arrives from Mom and Dad? With the competition as stiff as it is today, a prospect needs to be on the recruiting radar screen early. Yet, even if they get the info in the coach's hands, they are severly limited in when and how they can communicate with a coach. We do not have the same limitations.

7) We often lend advice, but we do not direct a kid. Mostly, and this contradicts one of the earlier statements in this thread, we do what parents either cannot do by NCAA rules, do not have time to do, or do not know how to do. For instance, while someone mentioned that with all the camps happening now that there is not a great need for NSR, I heartily disagree. It's my experience that coaches, regardless of the sport, typically go to camps to see kids they already know about and to verify things like speed, size, skill, attitude, or whatever criteria it is they are focusing on. While they do sometimes discover talent, coaches most often go to see for themselves if a kid they've gotten info on is the real deal. If there are 150 kids at a camp, how will one deserving kid stand a realistic chance unless coaches have some prior knowledge about him?

8) NSR is not for everyone, but we are just right for a lot of people. We serve an important purpose for those who do grasp our value to them, their kid and their circumstances. When parents want their kid to get wide exposure, to receive more options,to have a professional recruiting coordinator a phone call away, and to gain an advantage over the kids they are competing with for scholarships, we are there to help.

9) The truth is that we do not get kids scholarships. They get scholarship offers on their own as a result of their skill, grades, work ethic and character. But, if coaches don't know about a kid, how can they get recruited? We provide a level of assistance that they cannot get elsewhere. Our job is to give our clients the chance to be evaluated by a lot of coaches across the region and country, not just the ones who show up at a combine or tournament. That approach gives a kid a long shot to be seen that day, but what about later? What about the coaches who did not see the strong at-bat, the great defensive play or the great inning on the mound? Where is that kid then? That's where we can help by providing the kid a constant means for college coaches to evaluate him.

10) A major reason you do not see a lot of kids as "committed" on our Web site is that although some have verbally committed, it would be disingenuous, not to mention a potential breach of NCAA rules, to list a kid as committed when he or she has not actually signed an NLI. A prospect-client who has "verballed" would have to call me, as one did last week, and tell me to put "copmmitted" by his or her name on our Web page (www.nsr-inc.com) just so college coaches would stop calling. In that case, the kid had agreed to sign with an in-state college in April and didn't want to consider other options. Fielding calls from interested coaches around the country was uncomfortable.

The business of high school scouting and recruiting is unlike any other. As scouting service representatives we are constantly scrutinized and second-guessed by people with good intentions whose foundation in recruiting is typically limited to a season or sport. There is a broader picture which deserves attention and discussion. In truth, there have been major and subtle paradigm shifts in recruiting the last five years that have gone relatively unnoticed or ignored altogether.

The sticking point is this: too many onlookers use as a frame of reference what occurred to them when they were in high school or college a number of years ago as the basis for stating what is happening in today's world. It's not unlike an automobile mechanic trained in the fifties telling a customer that he can repair a car that is today operated by an entirely different set of standards and mechanisms. In our business, we see great coaches who do a superb job on the field teaching skills, motivating players and winning games. They are irreplaceable and, to me at least, genuine heroes. However, they do not always have a clear understanding of recruiting. They cling to the old paradigm that says, "If you are good enough, a college coach will find out about you." There is some truth to that - a coach might. But with competitiion being what it is today for scholarships (see the good stats quoted before), a question begs to be asked: How does a kid stand out?

Thanks for time and ear. If anyone would care talk more about my thoughts and our company or to share opinions, feel free to send me a private E-mail. All of you are serving a great purpose here and I appreciate what you are doing. The more we know, the more we can help kids.

Alan Parham, Executive Director, NSR Carolinas