TAMPA - There's more to scouting than radar guns and stopwatches. And for colleges, that holds true when it comes to recruiting and scouting at events.
I figured I'd write a quick, short blurb about this because of how overlooked and underrated it is to make a serious effort to get player GPAs.
College baseball programs have recruiting budgets: airfare, rental car, hotel, gate admission, scout packet/programs, food, gas and everything else is as common for a college coach's budget as it is for a participating families budget. And because baseball isn't a big money sport like football and basketball, sometimes those recruiting budgets in college baseball can be very thin or non-existent.
So imagine a college coach's mindset when he attends an event. As a college coaching staff, they sit down together and look at a calendar.
They meet.
They discuss which events they will attend for that calendar year.
They form a budget.
That budget is tweaked.
Reservations and travel plans are made.
They travel to the event.
They spend a night in a hotel.
They wake up early to catch the morning games.
They walk over to their field of choice and get ready to find future difference-makers for their program.
A player catches their eye.
They go to look him up in their scout packet.
They find his team, they match the jersey number.
No GPA.
No GPA?
No GPA!
These events are all about efficiency. That college coach wants to try and watch as many quality kids that can qualify for his school academically as he can. And if he can't find GPA on a player that he likes, he doesn't know if he should invest the next 2 minutes or 2 hours watching this player's game.
And nothing frustrates a college coach more than spending his recruiting budget and time on an event where they can't get things done efficiently.
Harvard, Yale, Duke, Wake Forest, Stanford and others have a higher minimum standard than your average 4 year school. They need to come to an event and circle kids in their booklets that have high GPAs and then go hunt those player's down.
On the flip side, Junior College coaches are looking for non qualifiers. They are looking for the talented kids with the low GPAs that are going to struggle to qualify for a major university.
Without the GPA info in the scout booklets, colleges don't know what they are looking at, if they can move on to another field, or if they are missing a player that could qualify for their school.
Players and parents - proactively give your travel coaches your GPA. Make sure they have it so they can pass it on to the tournament hosts and get it in their event scout booklets and programs.
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Started in 2004, Prospect Wire has become one of the fastest growing organizers of elite level high school baseball events across the country. As a result, Prospect Wire's player database has grown to over 25,000 current prospects, making it one of the largest scouting services for high school baseball in America.
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