Many high school student-athletes aspire to play at the collegiate level, but often don’t fully understand the recruitment process. A couple of conferences on island will be held this month aiming to educate local prep athletes and parents. “It’s funny.
Many high school student-athletes aspire to play at the collegiate level, but often don’t fully understand the recruitment process.
A couple of conferences on island will be held this month aiming to educate local prep athletes and parents.
“It’s funny. It was a number of years ago. I was on Kauai with my brother golfing,” said speaker Chad Kartchner. “I stayed a week longer — a little longer than I anticipated. Decided to go around and speak to some of the local high school athletic directors at the schools. … Talked to them about what we do for high school athletes and they had some real interest. From there, we started building a relationship.”
“We’ve been back to speak at the schools a number of times. We’ve actually been to almost all the islands,” he added. “We’ve spoken to a number of schools for the past six or seven years now.”
Athletic Quest, an organization comprised of current and former college coaches that works to help high school athletes get college scholarships, will be hosting the seminars.
The first meeting will be Monday, Jan. 25 at Kapaa High School and the second is Wednesday, Jan. 27 at Kauai High School in Lihue.
Both will begin 7 p.m. and are free and open to the public. Those interested from Waimea High School and Island School are also welcome to attend.
“Less than 1 percent of high school student-athletes that will go play their sport in college are those NCAA blue-chip elite athletes. You’ve got a big gap here,” Kartchner said. “Especially when you come to the islands, the biggest problem is most of these coaches never come to the islands to recruit because they just don’t have the budget. They know there’s great athletes, but they just don’t have the budget to come find them.”
The intent of these meetings is to share information to local student-athletes and families about the process in hopes of maximizing their recruiting chances.
“Especially an island like Kauai where’s there’s only (four) high schools, there’s just not the population base to justify the trip,” Kartchner said. “So, we started doing recruitment seminars to educate as a way to educate families about the college recruiting process and to help them really get a reality check about what college recruiting is really all about.”
“You can’t just sit back and hope the right coach is going to come find you. And you can’t just sit back and skate by in your classes, pull a 2.5 GPA and hope that you’re going to get recruited and play college athletics,” he added. “It’s great when we see that light come on. We’ll see kids work harder in the classrooms, see their GPAs climb and understanding why that GPA is going to create opportunities for them, as well as their athleticism.”
Kartchner, a former NCAA Division I basketball player at Charleston Southern University, will not only speak of the ins and outs of the college recruitment process, but also offers personal experience.
“I was a kid that was did not get recruited. It happens all the time. This is why you need to pay attention because I almost missed that phenomenal opportunity to go to college to play my sport and to get my (education) payed for,” he said. “For me to be able to pass this message on to families is very personal for me.”
