October College Recruiting Newsletter 2022

Back to Recruiting Newsletters

Welcome to the Kings Hammer October College Recruiting Newsletter! The club is excited to work with you to accomplish all of your player’s goals for this upcoming soccer year, on and off of the soccer field. Each month, we will be providing this resource to not only help you navigate the craziness that is the college recruiting process, but also provide personal development materials and resources to assist in growing individually while living a more purpose and value driven lifestyle. We hope you find value in this newsletter and we are excited to assist in this exciting process for your family!

This month’s College Recruiting Newsletter is going to dive into two very relevant topics for our student athletes: Financial Aid and Developing Patience. But before we get to those sections we want to remind everyone to that you should now be able to access your Sports Recruits account. We encourage anyone who has not already done so to log onto their account and begin exploring the SR platform. We also suggest that everyone update your profile: uploading a photo (in KH uniform) adding a student email address, and a primary position. This will ensure that your account is visible to any coaches viewing the Kings Hammer site. Click the link below for more guidance on updating your profile.

Sports Recruits-Building Your Athlete Profile

Financial Aid Opportunities

A very important factor that hasn’t been discussed to this point in the college recruiting newsletter is financial aid opportunities that are ready and available to students. We have spent a lot of time discussing finding the best school that fits you from an academic, soccer, and social perspective, but we haven’t spent much time at all talking about how you plan to pay for your college experience! While some athletes are fortunate to get full scholarships, this almost always isn’t the case. With that being said, many universities have options in place to provide students with an array of ways to make their dream school a reality by making school affordable. Whether the schools you are looking at are public or private, both types of institutions have ways to help pay for school during or after your collegiate experience. Below will look into a few different financial aid opportunities for you to think about and discuss with the schools you are interested in.

Aid From Your College or Career School – Many schools offer financial aid from their own grant and/or scholarship funds. Find out what might be available to you by visiting your school’s financial aid page on its website or contact the financial aid office. At just about every school which you apply for will offer some sort of financial aid. This can be a combination of athletic and academic aid, depending on things like your GPA, ACT/SAT test scores, as well as if you are being recruited by institutions that offer athletic scholarships (NCAA Division 1, NCAA Division 2, NAIA).
Grants – A grant is a form of financial aid that doesn’t have to be repaid (unless, for example, you withdraw from school and owe a refund, or you receive a TEACH Grant and don’t complete your service obligation). A variety of federal grants are available, including Pell Grants, Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (FSEOG), Teacher
Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grants, and Iraq and Afghanistan Service Grants.
Scholarships – Many nonprofit and private organizations offer scholarships to help students pay for college or career school. This type of free money, which is sometimes based on academic merit, talent, or a particular area of study, can make a real difference in helping you manage your education expenses.
Work-Study Jobs – The Federal Work-Study Program allows you to earn money to pay for school by working part-time. This allows you to have a job on campus that helps to pay for your schooling!
Loans – When you receive a student loan, you are borrowing money to attend a college or career school. You must repay the loan as well as interest that accrues. It is important to understand your repayment options so you can successfully repay your loan.

Additional Resource Links

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT: Patience

The recruiting process can be a tricky one to navigate, and more often than not, takes a while to play itself out. Between initial contact and gauging interest, figuring out how genuine that interest actually is (on both sides), taking visits, and finally accepting an offer and crossing the finish line, this process can take months or even years! It is human nature to want to have all of the answers right away, and for a lot of potential student athletes at 16 or 17, making their college selection is their biggest life decision to date. It is important that you understand that rushing into a decision

for the wrong reasons can lead to frustration down the road. Instead, being thorough, proactive and patient in your recruiting process will lead to more fulfillment, joy, and satisfaction with the decision that you ultimately make. Take a look below at 5 ways to practice patience on a daily basis and determine how you can add this to your toolbox of daily habits to help set you up for success!

Be more aware of when you’re being impatient (and patient) – Patience is one of those areas where being more aware – more mindful – really pays off. So, what do we get impatient about? What situations and behaviors set off our impatience? Identify them, and then be more aware of when one of these triggers might be coming up. Once we think more about what they are, we can begin to work out strategies to deal with them more patiently.
Simply enjoy the process – It also pays to be mindful in another way too. Often our impatience comes about because we’re focusing too hard on the end goal. Rather than enjoying the journey to get there, we’re stressing about achieving something that might take some time. One way of combatting this is to try and do more things that aren’t immediately rewarding, but which pay off in the end.
Take three big breaths – Take a breath. And another, and another. It is one of the simplest and most effective ways to stop yourself being impatient. It works for a number of reasons. For one, it returns your breathing to normal. When you’re stressed, the first thing that is affected is your breathing. Secondly, the extra oxygen has a calming effect on your mind and body. You simply feel more relaxed and less stressed when you’re breathing more slowly. And thirdly, it creates space. It puts a bit of distance between the thing that is triggering your impatience, and your reaction to it
Practice being patient – In many ways, being patient is a habit. Like any good habit it can be learned. And once we’ve learned it, we can improve it with regular practice. The simplest way to do this to build up your tolerance for waiting, or for disappointment. This might sound strange, but it can be useful. For example, don’t always give yourself what you want, straightaway. Make yourself wait for good things from time to time. Or lower your expectations about how things are going to turn out. This isn’t about settling for second-best or taking a cynical approach to life. But rather, it is about being honest about how the world works (and how things don’t always go your way).
Be realistic – Building on this last point, patience is also about looking at the bigger picture. Having strategies up your sleeve for dealing with those moments when you get impatient is good. But it is also necessary to be realistic and honest about what is driving your impatience. Expectations are central to this. When we set unrealistic expectations, we cause ourselves stress when, unsurprisingly, things don’t work out.

Additional Resources

Monthly Help Links from SportsRecruits

College Commitments

CJ DeBra – Youngstown State University
Riley Arnold – Ohio Dominican
Ellie Greenwell – Ohio University
Zara Graff – Wright State University
Abby Unkraut – University of Georgia
Mia Fiore – Xavier University
Victoria Zappasodi – Cleveland State
Ella Smith – Miami University
Jordan Church – Arkansas State University
Amanda Schlueter – Ohio State University
Sophie Decker – Marian University
Ruby Dunlevy – Eastern Kentucky University
Margo Roberts – Ohio Dominican University
Olivia Parmer – Marian University
Emma Morrison – Kentucky Christian University
Shannon Ott – Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Rose Vigran – George Washington University
Jill Planeaux – Ohio Dominican University
Katie Hoog – Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Laney Smith – University of Cincinnati
Millie Cluxton – College of Charleston
Mia Jackson – Purdue University Fort Wayne

Remember to post your commitment to your Sports Recruits account and send commitment photos to info@kingshammer.com so that you can be recognized for your achievements.