16u & 17u Gamers, Welcome to the Gamers College Selection process. The goals of this process are to: 1. Help you identify colleges that are a good fit. 2. Teach you how to "recruit yourself" into targeted baseball programs 3. Along the way, help you become responsible for your college selection We want you to end up in a college situation where you will succeed -- first as a student, second as a young man, and third as a baseball player. Baseball can be an important part of your college experience. But, it is only one part of it. There are a lot of college resources now up in the Clubhouse section of the Gamers website. Remember, you need to log-in first -- user name: Gamers 2012, password: stlgamers. These guides are a good place to start: For 17u Gamers (2013), you needs to start on the following 3 things. (Note - for now, 16u Gamers do not need to do anything yet, except understand the process) 1. Read the notes and familiarize yourself with the resources on the Gamers website. Also, your high school probably has some good resources on college selection that they can help you with. Set up an appointment with a counselor and tell them what you are doing. They can help. 2. Complete your player profile. We have a template for you to use. So, here is the process for the profile:
- Open up the file in Adobe Reader. The Profile template must be opened in Adobe Reader for you to fill out the form. That is why you need to download it in step 1 above.
- When you are finished filling out the Profile form in Adobe Reader, Click File -- Save As, and save as a pdf file on your hard drive. You can print out copies of that file.
- Then, Attach the file to an email, and send it to mark.gallion@gmail.com.
17u DEADLINE FOR THIS IS OCTOBER 1.
3. Start your college list selection process. This is a "process". Your list will change a lot over the next 6 months. But, you need to start the process now.
The Gamers website has lots of college lists. There are also lots of lists on the web, in school libraries and bookstores.
Coach Whiteside already sent a form for you to fill out.
But the basic process is this:
Do I know what I want to study in college? If so, limit your selection to school that are well know for that area of study.
Do I want to stay in state? Do I want to be within 4 hours? Do I want to be further than 4 hours from home?
What kind of college environment do I want? Big school vs. small school? Urban vs. Rural?
What is my academic profile? If you are a top 10%, 30 ACT, 3.8 GPA then you should probably look at academically selective colleges where that is the norm. If you are a 2.8 GPA, 20 ACT, then you needs to select less academically selective schools.
What is my baseball profile? You can make a lot of progress is you just break the college baseball landscape into 3 categories:
1 - elite college programs (top 25 ACC, SEC, Texas, etc..)
2 - large D1 programs (top 100 program, schools like Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, St. Louis University, Missouri State)
3- Small D1's, D2's, D3's, NAIA. There are hundreds of these schools. This is where academic fit, geographic fit, etc.. come in.
REALITY CHECK !!! --- Not many players in the Midwest region have the skills and physical profile to compete at the elite D1 level.
17u DEADLINE FOR INITIAL COLLEGE LIST -- OCTOBER 1.
Finally, I wanted to emphasize to you that Coach Whiteside is an incredible resource for you in this process. He knows more about the process that anyone in the area, and he is better connected with literally hundreds of college coaches and pro scouts across the country. Coaches from Harvard to Stanford, and everywhere in between.
Please follow the process in a timely fashion, meet deadlines and ask Matt for help a long the way. You will end up with a positive outcome.
Mark Gallion Director, St. Louis Gamers 314 406-3196
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