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 help you navigate the craziness that is the college recruiting process. 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.

Before we start

Before we get into this month’s topics, I wanted to remind everyone that they should now be able to access their Sports Recruits account. I would encourage anyone who has not already done so to log onto their account and begin exploring the SR platform.  I would also suggest that everyone update their 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 yet 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 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 we 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 contacting the financial aid office. Just about every school you apply to 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.

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!

1. 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.

2. 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 immediatelyrewarding, but which pay off in the end.

3. 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

4. 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).

5. 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.

Monthly Help Links from Sports Recruits

• 8 Reasons to Connect with College Coaches & What to Say

• Sports Recruits-Building Your Athlete Profile

Additional Resource Links

• US News and World Reports: Understanding Financial Aid for College: A Guide

• Financial Aid-My College Guide

• EMindful-The Power of Patience: 5 Ways to Develop Patience

• Intelligent Change-How to Develop Patience

College Commitments

• Riley Rolfert – Thomas More University
• Rylie Niemeyer – Western Carolina University
• Lauren Link – Eastern Kentucky University
• Claire Cress – Morehead State University
• Piper Farris – East Carolina University
• McKenzie Carle – Bellarmine University
• Sarah Deaton – Wittenburg University
• Maggie Molnar – Taylor University
• Maria Dilts – Johns Hopkins University
• Ivy Hoffman – Thomas More University
• Maddy Ehrhardt – Wilmington College
• Anna Taylor – Cedarville University
• Claire Cavacini – Centre College
• Ella Mann – Centre College

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.