Watch This If You Want To Play College Baseball

Hey, what's going on everyone? So I want to talk today about recruiting, college recruiting. It's that time of year where high schools are starting up all around the country and college baseball is going on right now. And so I want to give you some advice because I work every single day with our Antonelli baseball players when it comes to college recruiting and getting our players to find schools that fit them academically, athletically, and socially. And we've sent over a hundred players to colleges to play over the last bunch of years that we've been around with Antonelli baseball. And so the landscape has changed over the last couple of years with COVID and there's a lot of changes going on in college baseball when it comes to roster sizes. And so I want to give a quick word of advice. There's a lot of advice that I can give and that we give to our players all the time. And we actually have a playlist if you want to go check that out on recruiting. But I want to make more videos on this because I'm getting these questions a lot. And the thing I want to talk about today is your target list and essentially your target list, which every player has to do. We recommend that players start to do it their freshman year of high school. I know it's early, but I think you need to start to think about it and start to put a list together. And these are the schools that you feel you can fit at athletically, socially, and academically. And for young players, the academic part of it and the social part of it is a way that you can start right away. The athletic part of it, a lot of times you're going to need somebody that has experience helping players move on to the next level that can help direct you and say, this could be a good fit for you athletically. This might not be a good fit for you athletically. But regardless, you have to start to put this target list together. So start to think about, I would start academically. You have a pretty solid idea. Most student athletes and their parents have an idea of what type of student you are. You can look at your GPA. If you've taken any test scores, you can look at your test scores. You can start to look at information online. You can find this information anywhere. You can go to just Google and search it and figure out admission rates. And you can start to figure out, okay, what schools do I think I fit well at academically? Again, you can start there first. Really, really important to start this early. Now what I like to do when it comes to a target list is I like to break it up into three different parts. And so I have my reach schools, I have my realistic, and then I have my safeties. So a reach school would be something where, I don't know, I'm a good student, or maybe I'm a really good student, but this college is really selective. It's very tough to get into, and it's probably going to be really difficult. But I'll put it on the list, and I'm just going to put it in my reach where I'm probably not going to get in there, but you never know. Maybe I do. Then you're going to have your realistic, and these are the ones where you feel somewhat confident that you should fit into. Now there's going to be some schools on that realistic that maybe you don't get into, and there's going to be some that you do get into. So you can break it up there as well. And then safety are schools that you know, you're almost positive that you're going to get in there academically. And so that's where I would start off. Now after that, you can go into the social aspect of it, and you can start to think about, do I want to go to school close to home or far away? Do I want to go to a big school or a small school? Do I want to go to school in the mountains or in the city or in the beach or wherever? So socially, where do you think you feel comfortable? And sometimes for young students, that's tough to really understand. But one good way to do it is you visit schools, start to go on college campuses, walk around. One thing I tell our players all the time, I say, I went on a bunch of visits to schools. And when I went on those campuses, I got a feeling right away in my gut if I thought it was going to be the right fit for me. And so I stepped on schools, I stepped on campus at University of Virginia and Georgia Tech. I'd been to Boston College's campus. I went to University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. And I went to all these places. And some places, I felt like, yeah, I could see myself going here, right? University of Virginia, I could see myself going here. And there were certain schools like the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. I got on campus. For some reason, I was like, I can't see myself going here. I felt it right away. And then my last visit was to Wake Forest. And the second I got on campus, I was like, this is where I want to go. I felt comfortable. Now, I'm not saying just base your decision solely off of what your gut tells you when you step on the campus. But that's a big part of it. So start to get on different campuses. And you'll be able to feel what it's like to be on a campus that's huge, right? That's 40,000 students versus a campus that's much smaller that maybe is 1,500 or 2,000 students. And everyone's different. Some people want that big feeling of a big campus and some want smaller. And so get on campuses and try to visit schools. And you'll get a good feel for that. So that's my next tip of advice. And then the last part is the athletic part of it. Again, you're going to need somebody that has some experience, that has sent players off to schools, that have helped them through the process, and they're going to be honest with you. The biggest issue that I see is that people don't want to be honest and advisors or whatever you want to call them. Even coaches, your high school coach, your travel ball coach, right? A lot of people, they don't want to tell you the truth because they don't want to make you feel bad. And they say, yeah, I think you could play there. Even if they don't think you can play there, right? And so that's a huge issue. And so I try to be as honest as possible. And it's not taking shots at players. And sometimes players get upset when you're like, it's just not a good fit athletically for you, right? Like I said, we've sent over 100 players to schools. And so I always tell the kids, I'm not 100% right on this every single time, but I feel like I'm, I don't feel, I've got a pretty good idea that we're right a lot more, way, way, way, way, way more than we're not right, all right? And so again, for like someone like me and our coaching staff, like we've seen so many players go to these schools and we know what those schools are looking for. We can compare you to past players and say, you know, this guy had this skill set and this player is nowhere close to that skill set, right? It's nowhere close. And so you get a good feel for who can fit where. The other thing is I've coached in college and I've coached at the division one level. And so I know, I know what it would, what I would be looking for as a recruiter. And I'm not saying that, um, you know, I've never recruited for Vanderbilt before or for wake forest before, but I have recruited at the division one level. I talked to coaches all the time. I've seen tons of players. And so you need to find someone that has the experience, but then also will be honest with you and isn't going to just tell you what you want to hear. That's the biggest thing. And I see that a ton, everybody. I see so many players that will come to me and say, well, my coach said that I can play at, you know, X, Y, Z school. And it's so, it's, it's so far from where they can actually play. And then I find out that their coaches, they just tell everyone they can play where, where they think, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds great, man. You can definitely play there. That's not helping the player at all, just wasting time and money and effort and energy and all that stuff. So you've got to find someone that can be honest with you. Now, with all of that being said, the main reason I wanted to make this video was because your target list has to be big. It has to be really, really big. And so the big, one of the biggest issues I see with players is they come up to me and they're like, you know, I explained this all to them and I say, you know, get me a target list and start to build it. And eventually players come up to me and they're like, I want to go to Boston college or I want to go to Vanderbilt. And I'm like, okay, terrific. And so do like hundreds of thousands of other players around the country, right? It's like you need a really, really big target list and you need to cover, as we said, realistic reach safety schools. And you should be looking at different divisions. You can have division one schools and division two schools and division three schools. And maybe you're someone that's interested in JUCO or maybe you're someone that's interested in NAIA, but you have to have this, this really broad list. And everyone wants to make these lists that are so small and they're so, you know, you have three schools that are exactly the same and we, there's no variety there. And so again, you have to cover everything because there's so many players. Here's the two things I'll leave, I'll, I really want to leave you with. And the reason I'm saying this again is because I had this conversation with a couple of parents a few nights ago is that there's so many good players in the country. There's so many players competing for the same roster spots and there's less and less available roster costs right now, which is, I've been doing this for a while now and everything changed a few years ago when COVID hit and college rosters were able to get basic, a couple of things. One, players were able to get an extra year of eligibility. So everyone got that year back. And so the freshmen that were coming into the program, right? So those, those 12th graders that were moving up into the program to be freshmen, they came into the program, but the seniors didn't leave and the juniors didn't get drafted a lot of them. And so these, the rosters got huge and NCAA allowed more players to be on the roster. And so instead of having 35 guys on a roster, some schools were having like 50 guys on a roster. Some schools were just recruiting it with taking everybody. And all of a sudden now we're getting, we're getting cut back to where rosters are getting back in line than what they used to be. And where do all these players go? All these extra players that had all these extra, this extra year of eligibility, right? There's too many players now. And so players are getting cut. Tons of players are getting cut from college programs and tons of players are transferring because they're saying, wow, I can't play here because there's so many more players from the choose from now because those rosters got expanded and so they're transferring to other schools. And so a lot of colleges now aren't recruiting as many high school players because they're trying to, they have too many players. They're trying to cut their own players, right? And then not only are they trying to cut their own players, but now you have all these players that are getting cut that are wanting to transfer. And so colleges are saying, well, I can get a young player right out of high school or I can get this player that showed that he already could play college baseball and he was successful. Or maybe he was at, you know, NC state and he couldn't play there because they had so many players and he ended up getting cut, but he's good enough to play there. They just had so many good players. They couldn't. So instead of me going out and get taken a risk on a high school guy, you know, if I'm a little bit lower level than NC state, I'm going to say, let me try to get this NC state guy because that guy can jump right into my lineup and contribute right away. And I don't have to take this young puppy, you know, freshman and try to develop him. And so there's less spots and this is having a trickle down effect from the division two, one level to the division two level, the division three level. And it's getting super competitive. It's more competitive than ever before. And so playing college baseball was always difficult and now it's even more difficult than it was just a couple of years ago. And I don't say that to discourage players or to make you feel like you can't do it because you can do it. There's tons of players that are playing college baseball every year and getting recruited, but you just need to know that it's harder. It's harder now than it's ever been. And I see it every day. I talk to coaches every single day. And so you need to have a large target list because having three schools on your list, the chances of those three schools all wanting you, right, those three schools that sit there and say out of all these players in the country, man, like I just pray that that one kid chooses my school. Are there a few players like that in the country? Yes. But 99.99% of them, that's not, they're not in that boat. And so you need to have a large, large target list. And this goes without saying, actually, I need to say it because, you know, we started saying this to our players also, everyone wants to sell you on, Oh, there's a spot for everyone in college baseball. Everyone can play college baseball. That's not really the truth. Not everyone can play college baseball just because you want to play college baseball doesn't mean that you're going to play college baseball. There's not, you know, there's tons of high schools in the country. There's not that many colleges that have baseball programs in the country. Okay. It's, it's less than 10% of high school players go on to play college baseball. And so, um, if you think that you're just gonna, you know, everyone plays and I want to play, so yeah, I can play, but I don't have to work that hard. Like I'm just, you know, I want to play. You are competing with players from all over the country. Players that are trying to take your spot. And if you want to play, you're going to have to work for it, right? You have to bust your butt and you have to do things on and off the field. And if you have the attitude of, well, I just, you know, I want to play, so I'm going to play, but I'm not going to work for it. You're not going to play. There's too much competition out there because again, we have 200 players in our program and I see certain guys that are like every day doing everything they can. Like they, they will, they are literally training every day to be a college baseball player. They're putting everything they want, they have into it. And then I see other players are doing nothing and both players say, oh, I want to play college baseball. Yeah, that's what I really want. Well, I've seen both extremes and if you're on the extreme of, I'm not doing anything, I just want to play, but I'm not doing anything. Good luck to you because there's so many players that are, that all they want in life is to play college baseball and they're working 24 seven on it. Good luck competing with those players. So see what you're doing. Are you putting forth the effort or you're just saying, oh, it's just going to happen because somebody told me that there's a spot for everybody. Everyone can play college baseball. There isn't a spot for everybody. That's the bottom line, right? Just because you play travel ball or just because you have someone helping, you're paying someone to help you, you know, an advisor to help you get into a college and know, oh, they're going to help me because they have connections. Like take your connections and you know what to do with them. You better be fricking good. Like now I'm getting fired up right now because I don't care about connections. Like can connections help you? Yeah, but you have to be good. Like just because someone has connections, if you can't play and you're not going to put forth the effort, you're not, you're not going to get a spot. Okay. So it's not where I intended this to go, but now I'm getting fired up because I see this happen all the time. I see this dude that's like telling me he wants it so bad and he's busting his butt and then I see this other guy that says, I want it so bad. He's doing nothing. He's doing absolutely nothing and he just thinks that, you know, he just, and this isn't just for baseball, it's for softball too, it's for any sport, right? They just think like, oh, you know, someone else is going to do it for me. I'm going to pay this company to help me do it or I'm going to play on this travel team and they'll help me do it, but I'm not going to do anything, right? Like no, that's not how it works, right? You have to do the work. You have like, they're not just, this isn't like the candy store where they're just passing out. Oh, you have $5. Here you go. Here's your candy bar, right? That's not how it, that's not how it works. Like you have, you have to earn it. You have to earn it. You, you have to get some college coach to say, I want that kid right there. I want him to be part of our team. That's how it works. So hopefully if you're someone that's not putting forth the effort, you better start putting forth the effort because I'll tell you this also, there's tons of guys that want it 24 seven, they're grinding away every single day and they never get the play because why? They just, they're not good enough. They're working super hard, but they're not good enough, right? So hopefully that makes sense. It's competitive. That's the bottom line. It's competitive. It's more competitive than ever. If you really want to play, you've got to do the work on and off the field, right? Don't just expect other people to do it for you. That's all I got. Let me know if you have any questions in the comment section below. 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