Don't Leave your Child's Future to Chance

by Mickey Clayton

Coaching and parenting are both extremely difficult jobs and while some aspects of the two are inter-changeable, many important ones are not. I have been a Division I Head Coach in women’s basketball and a Division I Head Coach in men’s basketball, as well. I have won championships in both. I coached on the traveling team circuit and coached my three daughters. That is a whole different story in itself, believe me. I also played collegiately.

I have since retired but I get asked a lot of questions about the game and the recruiting processes.

Here are just some of my thoughts and I would love to hear yours, too.

As an traveling team coach, it amazed me the number of times a college coach would ask, “…who else is recruiting him/her?” 

Why does that matter? Does that validate to you the individuals talent level because state college is or is not recruiting them?

Advice: Do your homework, coach. Get ahead of the curve, often times a student and their parent remember the first offer and first college contact.

True stories: My institution signed a 7’1 kid who was a playground legend who attended a church school, without athletic sport teams. He had TWO offers and played in the NBA when he left our school. 

Another MEAC school signed a 6’10 high schooler, who had NO college offers. He led them to a conference championship and is currently playing in the NBA.

INSiiGHTS televised a game with a running back who eventually ended up leading the state of Georgia in rushing. At the time of the broadcast he had no offers. I personally called three institutions who didn’t follow up. Now several SEC schools are recruiting him. Perhaps they have been watching our games

Advice: Never put all of your confidence in the coaches, always be involved in the process. 

True stories: I had just stopped coaching collegiately and had far more confidence in coaches than I should have. When my daughter was a senior, my youngest daughter told me she had found a box that was full of letters from college coaches addressed to her sister. Being young she didn’t think anything about it until she found out that we never received those letters from the colleges and that the Coach subsequently had thrown them away.

There were two All-State selections from a record setting program. We had been unable to break the code to reach them. Much later, it was revealed that the coach was saving them for another school and was blocking all communication from other institutions. That particular University decided not to offer either of them. 

I received a phone call telling me they were going to sign with a small NAIA school because no one had extended an offer to them. I got there immediately and was fortunate to be able to sign. One ended up being a 4-year starter for us and the other a 3-year starter and both graduated.

Advice: Don’t believe that if you’re good enough coaches will find you. There is some degree of truth to the comment but don’t leave it all to chance.

True stories: We were able to recruit a high number of kids because we received information about a kid and sometimes from the family and sometimes from the student, themselves.

We signed one young lady who was in Sports Illustrated as a part of a segment they called, Faces in the Crowd. The segment showed various sports accomplishments of people from all over the country. She had scored some mind-boggling number of points in a game and stated she was coming to our institution. At that point in time, we had never heard of her. We researched the potential student-athlete and offered her a scholarship. She started for nearly three seasons and graduated.

Parents, do not leave it to chance.

Contact potential college coaches - do it the right way to get your child in front of coaches.

Find out how, with a tried and true system, developed from our experiences.

Click here for information on our R.E.A.C.H. Program

Our template is proven to work for children of all sports.

The writer, Mickey Clayton (@MickeyClaytonFL) has served for over forty years in athletics at Florida A&M University. He currently owns and operates an on-line sports talk show at www.INSiiGHTS.com (@INSiiGHTS) and is the Executive Producer of the weekly television sports show, INSiiGHTS High School Game-of-the-Week.