Blosser NCAA transfer mid-career highlights college soccer recruiting issues

By Charles Boehm

Most of us are well aware that the recruiting process for big-time college sports has been a cutthroat competition for decades. NCAA football and basketball programs are beloved, and sometimes highly profitable, components of higher education in the United States and the hunt for top talent grows more intense every year.

What’s shocking is the extent to which this mentality has spread to all other sports – and the accompanying effects on the lives of young players and their families.

A few days ago my Potomac Soccer Wire colleague Will Lynch and I sat down with Spotsylvania, Virginia product and current NCAA star Kara Blosser, who recently decided to transfer from North Carolina State to the University of Georgia.

Kara, her mother Keri and her former club coach, Pete Cinalli of the Fredericksburg Area Soccer Association, graciously shared their time and their thoughts regarding her situation. I came away with some sobering insights into the process college coaches and talented young players must navigate these days, often as early as age 13.

“As the college prep director, I meet with every U14 team and do a 40-minute presentation to the parents about the process of being recruited, and do a question-and-answer session,” said Cinalli, FASA’s assistant technical director. “At the end of it, they’re almost in shock.”

Ambitious players already know they must join a competitive club which allows them to play regularly in high-visibility tournaments and showcases – to say nothing of the Olympic Development Program or high school play – while also maintaining good grades and decent test scores. Jobs, other sports and normal teenage social life are usually sacrificed, along with large chunks of parental time and income.

But nowadays, all this must take place by the outset of high school, or even sooner.

Cinalli, whose workspace is adorned with framed posters of FASA alumni who’ve ascended to a variety of NCAA programs great and small, takes pride in helping former players continue their careers in the college ranks. Yet he sounds a note of caution at recruiting’s constantly-increasing pace.

“Talking to these [college] coaches,” said Cinalli, “now they’re looking at freshmen. Normally they wouldn’t even start looking at kids until they were a sophomore, and start offering them anything until they’re a junior. Now they’re looking at freshman, and offering stuff to freshman and sophomores.

“That’s scary. That’s scary, because a kid that’s a freshman in high school, do they really know what they want?”

Kara Blosser chose NC State more than two years before her high school graduation, based mainly on a strong rapport with Wolfpack coach Laura Kerrigan. But in the winter of her senior year, Kerrigan called to inform her that she had resigned in order to spend more time with her two young children.

“They told me I could look at other schools, but they were still going to grant my scholarship,” recalled Blosser. “What do I do? I’d been so set for so long. Girls are getting signed so early now. They start recruiting, like, freshmen and sophomores now. So everyone had already recruited all their people.

“I’d already been verbally committed for a year and half.”

Blosser excelled on the field and in the classroom at NC State. But she never really connected with Kerrigan’s replacement, former Fresno State coach Steve Springthorpe, and the Wolfpack’s poor results helped prompt her to seek the exit this past fall, with the reluctant support of her family.

“It was taking the Kara out of her, and I could see. I was getting as frustrated as she was. So to know that she couldn’t go to the next level with the stipulations that she was going to be under, I said OK,” explained her mother, Keri. “It’s hard to pick a school without considering the coaches. The [team], that chemistry changes every year, regardless of where you’re at. The only constant is really the coach, and then to have the coach not be who you thought it was going to be, that’s the hard thing.”

Though harsh rules made it effectively impossible for her to transfer within the Atlantic Coast Conference, Blosser was in a uniquely empowered position when she chose Georgia over a host of other top-flight programs last month. A proven performer over two seasons of top-flight NCAA competition at NC State, the 20-year-old knew what type of environment she was looking for and what type of personalities she preferred in her coaches and teammates.

But she vividly remembers the high-pressure sales tactics she experienced as a high school recruit.

“I think it’s insane that they start this early. Because a 15-year-old doesn’t know what they want in four years – and a 15-year-old could also become a horrible player, or not have the same capability as they would later,” said Blosser. “Some kids haven’t even developed into a player yet.”

She recounted one campus visit where an assistant coach highlighted the school’s sponsorship deal with a major shoe and apparel manufacturer. Noting Blosser’s indifference, the coach admitted that when many 15-year-olds and their parents heard that part of the pitch, “their eyes would light up.”

The recruiting battle tends to dominate the lives of college coaches. Cinalli was stunned when a top coach called him on the eve of his school’s NCAA tournament quarterfinal match just to hash out the logistics of Blosser’s upcoming campus visit. And when coaches have invested so much time and money on luring a player, they often push hard to close the deal as early as possible.

“Going into junior year, [college coaches] were just putting deadlines on you,” said Blosser. “They want to get their recruits locked in.

“So many coaches are saying, ‘I’m going to pull your scholarship if you don’t commit in a week’ – and I think if a coach puts a deadline on you like that, then they clearly don’t care about you as a person. Because it’s four years of your life and you shouldn’t rush a decision like that.”

It certainly isn’t a decision to be made when adolescence has barely begun.

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What’s your take? We’d like to hear from you, especially if you, your child or one of your team’s players has experienced the college recruiting process. Register your feedback in our comments section below.

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Sidebar: Long Odds, Low Payout

Precise, up-to-date statistics about college athletic scholarships are difficult to track down, due in large part to the NCAA’s infrequent surveys and the organization’s reluctance to publicize them. But the numbers we do have are undoubtedly discouraging for aspiring student-athletes and their families.

In March 2008, the New York Times examined the results of an NCAA internal study compiled over the 2003-2004 academic year, and found that “NCAA institutions gave athletic scholarships amounting to about 2 percent of the 6.4 million athletes playing those sports in high school four years earlier.”

Reminding readers that such scholarships are not guaranteed for four years and are often carved up among teammates rather than awarded as “full rides,” the Times also noted that “there was the equivalent of one full NCAA men’s soccer scholarship available for about every 145 boys who were playing high school soccer four years earlier.”

NCAA men’s soccer programs can hand out a maximum of 9.9 (Division I) or 9 (Division II) full scholarships per academic year, while women’s programs can award 14 or 9.9, respectively. (Compare this to the 85 full rides available to top-flight college football teams). As a result, soccer programs are more likely to divvy their limited scholarship funds into partial awards, some as small as $2,000 per student per year.

Does your child possess the talent and dedication to win that lottery? And does the jackpot even justify the price of a ticket?