(upbeat instrumental music) - Without further ado, I would love to introduce our wonderful panel of high school and college athletic experts here this evening.

So panelists, when I say your name, you can just go ahead, and put your hand up so everyone knows who you are.

So our first panelist is Lilly Leppert, a senior at Beal City High School.

Lilly has committed to play basketball for Mid Michigan College this upcoming season.

So thank you so much for joining us today.

We also have Chad Brown, who is a senior from Hemlock High School.

He is committed to play baseball at Central Michigan University for next season.

Thank you Chad for joining us.

We also have Dakota Cochran, who is a red shirt junior from Shaker Hearts Ohio, and a linebacker for the Central Michigan Chippewas Football Team.

Thank you very much, Dakota.

Jade Kaufman as well is at the Mt.

Pleasant High School Freshman Basketball Coach.

Also a former student athlete at Mid Michigan College.

Angela Pohl, the Athletic Director at Hemlock Public Schools, and the 1998 Female Athlete of the Year on the inaugural women's soccer team at Clemson University.

Thank you so much Angela for taking the time to join us.

And finally we have Dan Fodrocy.

Yes.

He's the president of AREN, or Athletic Recruiting Education and Navigation.

They're an organization providing consulting services to student athletes and their families to help guide them through the college recruitment process.

So again, welcome everybody.

Thank you for joining us.

And Dan, I actually wanna bring the first question to you.

Oh, I'm sorry.

We do have one more panelist as well.

Satori Griffin.

She is a graduate of Mt.

Pleasant High School, and a former college athlete at mid-Michigan College, and Central Michigan University as well.

So now we have everyone on the panel covered this evening.

So Dan, I'm gonna bring the first question to you just to kind of get us going.

Can you explain a little bit about the different opportunities, and types of athletic scholarships that are available for college athletes?

How do they typically break down across the different divisions, and the different associations throughout college athletics?

- Yeah, thanks.

I appreciate you guys having me here.

That's a really long question with a lot of answers to it.

College recruiting has become so convoluted, and the recruiting process is so long now leading yourself to a point where you get to scholarship opportunities is sometimes two or three year process, as sure as some of these panelists can probably speak to.

But the reality is getting yourself to a point where you get an athletic scholarship or even getting any form of financial aid really comes down to just like in the movie or the show that we were just watching.

The episode is fantastic by the way, talking a little bit about making you find out what's the right fit for you.

So for anybody listening, understanding levels is probably the most important thing that you can do when you're considering a college, when you're considering what school you want to go to because each one of them are gonna have different amounts of opportunities with athletic scholarship.

But what is one of the bigger misconceptions that I'll just say right off the bat is that it always has to be athletic scholarships.

And I think for people to understand that as a college student athlete, your goal is just to get school paid for, and by any means necessary.

So if I have an athletic scholarship, fantastic, the football team is paying for it or the basketball team or the baseball team, awesome.

But if the federal government's paying for it, if the school's giving you money because of your academic aid, a lot of times people will, I'm sorry, all the times people will put together a package together for you so that you can make sure that you can have all your expenses covered to the best of your abilities.

So when you talk a little bit about financial aid, scholarships, academic grants, it's whatever I can do to put myself in place to have zero out-of-pocket cost.

So athletic aid is awesome for the schools that give out, and some of 'em give out full scholarships, some give out partials, and as we move into the future of college athletics, even the biggest schools are gonna give out partials.

I don't need to go into that can of worms unless you want me to a little bit later.

But what can I do to position myself so that I pay $0 to go to Princeton or to go to Duke or to go to mid-Michigan or to go to Saginaw Valley?

That is the key.

And when you think about, there's really three areas that I just discussed, athletic aid, some of them give it out, some give all the way up to full scholarships.

The federal government gives you money based off of your financial status as a family, you don't have as much control over that.

But then the final pieces of the academic aid that you can create and give yourself by getting a 4.0 high ACT or SAT score.

So try to fill those three buckets is a huge part of the recruiting process.

And then finding the schools that fit within that, and which levels they you know, fit into and how much a they can give.

That's when you kinda get a little bit longer down the road.

You start to ask those coaches, "Well hey, what is the scholarship opportunity from athletics?

What's the scholarship opportunity for my academic grants?"

Then obviously the federal piece is really kind of just controlled by your family.

- Excellent.

Thank you so much for that Dan.

Appreciate it.

I'm gonna turn to the athletes at the table now.

We will go ahead and start with you Lilly.

So in the film that we see how Ashley sometimes struggles with dealing with communication on the court, and with her teammates and coaches.

So for you, and I'll open this up to all the athletes at the table as well, how do you handle team communication during a game, and what do you do when you start to feel that communication potentially breaking down?

- I think it might be kind of hard to communicate during a game because it gets so hectic, and it might come across wrong to your teammates.

So I think after the play, like once the play stopped, just saying, "Oh kick the ball out next time.

You know, I wasn't trying to yell at you, but it could just get hectic in the moment."

So clarifying afterwards, and making sure that the point gets across, but not in a bad way.

- Dakota, I wanna talk to you.

Was there a moment in your life where you realized that you wanted play college sports or you felt like I'm going to be a college athlete, this is something I really want to do.

Can you kind of talk me through how you came to that realization?

- At the moment when my mom said that her biggest goal in life is just to see me graduate college and her explaining her loans that she owes still to this day, and knowing that I already don't have the financial sustainability as it is, that's when I knew I had to do something to get school paid for free.

So when that moment hit, I realized I had to lock in, and do well on grades and mind craft to get a scholarship and that's what happened.

- Excellent.

Anybody else have any thoughts on that as well?

- You actually saw it in that video.

I thought it was fantastic.

You saw the ability for the young girl to communicate at the end.

And I think when we're talking about the student athletes, and the reason I didn't comment before is because you said only for the athletes.

I did ride a stationary bike this morning.

So I think that puts me in the category of an athletes.

So I feel like I can answer the question.

But the reality is communication is so important both in playing, and in recruiting as well.

So for anybody that's interested in it.

But then just in general in life, like we're here today, like your ability to communicate is everything.

And especially in the world that we're going into where AI and technology is just ramping everything up for you to communicate and for even you know, for Lilly to mention that, how important messaging is, is just critical.

And I hope everybody understands that whether you're here, whether you're watching this, moving forward, like we have to keep ramping up communication, and I think the recruiting process is fantastic for it because it forces communication.

You saw the young lady who was sitting there with the Cal coaches, and they're talking about why they want her, why they think she could play, and she was like engaged and in the mix, right.

And then here, Dakota's telling us, this story just a quick hot second ago where he is talking about you know, communicating with his mom about the reason why he wants to play college ball.

Like I think it's so critical for us to keep enhancing communication in a world where we're constantly decreasing communication.

So it's just, I thought that was a really good point.

But messaging matters, right.

So our ability to get more kids playing sports, I'm a really big advocate for it.

Like I think every kid should play sports, and I'm not saying it should be mandatory, but you just hear those two stories right there, and when you start building in communication, I mean I still talk to Angela this day.

I worked for what, 10 years ago, Angela is 10 years ago, I worked for you or whatnot?

And we still talk every once in a while.

Okay.

And I think it's just so important for us to keep emphasizing the communication piece, and really touched on a great thing like messaging matters.

Like no one wants to talk to somebody who's mean to them all the time, right.

And maybe she's not saying that per se, but when you learn this stuff in sports, how to work through challenge, and how to work through situations where you know, maybe you guys lost, and you have to motivate somebody to play a little bit better the next week.

You know that's a tough situation.

I'm sure Dakota will be in it like they got a new coach, and learning how to communicate with his new coaches is a huge value piece for him.

Not to mention the scholarship, and and other opportunities.

And so I just wanted to kind of chime in.

I can't stress enough how important communication is in recruiting, and how important it is as student athlete and then how that more than anything is gonna carry over to your life, especially with the world that we're heading into with AI and technology taking over, which is really in some ways kind of depressing communication.

- Absolutely.

Yeah, thank you so much for adding that Dan.

Angela, do you have any thoughts on that now as somebody who has been out of the college athletics world for a few years, and now is in an administrative level working with high school athletes.

How the role of communication plays in the development of young athletes?

- Yeah, I had a conversation this morning with Mr. Brown here, a couple seats over about you know, your network and building your network with your coaches, with your parents, your parents friends.

As a part of the recruiting process, knowing people and knowing people that know people can help you move the needle.

It's kind of like they say with your resume, to get your resume to the top.

It's the same with recruiting.

To get your resume, your athletic resume to the top.

It's about who you know, and what relationships that you can leverage to help you get to where you wanna go.

I'm doing that right now with my son who's a junior in high school.

We're starting that process right now, and I am picking up the phone calling all my college friends and saying, "Hey, you know.

Send an email to your coach.

Might you know, nudge your coach to take a look at 'em."

So yeah.

To Dan's point, communication, your network, relationships, how you carry yourself wherever you're at, those coaches, they pay attention to that, they really do.

So that's important, to carry yourself, be respectful with officials, adults, fans and your teammates.

So yeah.

Thank you.

- Excellent.

Thank you so much for adding that point Angela.

Appreciate that.

Yeah, communication a huge aspect.

And you touched on this a little bit earlier, Dan, related to communication, technology and you know the ever evolving, it started with social media a few years ago becoming a huge part of a lot of athlete story, and now you're talking about the role of AI.

So I wanna talk specifically to Chad here.

You know, you're a senior getting ready to play college ball.

So how has technology impacted your performance, and your experience both as a high school athlete and as a college recruit, and would you say overall technology has helped you or has it been more of a challenge in your journey to get to where you're at right now?

- It has definitely helped.

So there's this, I'm a pitcher right.

So there's this thing called track cam, and it tells you your spin rate, your speed, like kind of how your ball is moving, and being able to look at that, and really just kind of like study it is, I think it's really beneficial because you know what you need to work on as far as like you need a certain amount of spin rate to be like an elite pitcher.

and you need a certain amount of speed to also be the lead pitcher.

So I think it definitely helps as long as technology keep it advancing.

- Like technology has also created this really tough, Chad just brought it up.

I mean, who's to say he's not an elite pitcher, right.

And maybe he is, but I think we also now have all this technology in front of us and it says, okay well you know Bryce Underwood throws or runs the 40 in this.

So I either have to be this to be like them, and that's also creating these comparison challenges that I really hope a lot of young people especially, but parents are the worst at it by the way.

And I talk to parents mostly like, you gotta stop comparing the data though because there's a lot of factors that come into Chad, and his ability for spin rate because he is also tall.

Well if... How tall are you Chad?

- [Chad] About Six, six.

Okay, six, six and your a pitcher on the mound, your ability to create leverage on the mound, and create spin rate is different than a kid who's five, nine, right.

So the kid who's five, nine can't become six, six, and I'm, I'm going to his point about how important it is and he is right.

But you also have to balance it.

Like okay we can look at this, and like we can look at data but some we're becoming so data driven, and so technology driven that we're forgetting about the basic fundamental piece of just developing and getting to my ceiling is what I talk about all the time, right.

So again, for anybody that watches this or the people here, like your job as an athlete is to get to your ceiling, and I don't know what your ceiling is like.

I was really fortunate to play at a really good program, and I played with a guy by the name of John DiGiorgio, who played in the NFL and picked off Tom Brady and made a lot of tackles.

John DiGiorgio's ceiling was here, and mine was here.

Okay.

And fortunately for us, we both got there and we won a lot of games, and then he went on to have a great career.

So I think it's really important, especially for the athletes here, but anybody listening like, you also have to be very careful with all this technology and data because it'll mess your mind up.

Okay.

And I'm a football guy, but I watch a lot of sports.

So the NFL combine just goes on, and guys run forties and guys do pro agilities, and in high school it's the same thing.

And it's like okay well, I get calls from families all the time, like "I have to run four, four or else."

and I'm like, says who?

Likes, what are you talking about?

But we get in our mind with all this data, and technology.

So Chad is 100% right.

But you have to balance it out with what is your ceiling.

And that fundamentally comes down to people that you can trust, that can tell you what your ceiling is, your high school coach, your club coach, your travel coach, or like in Dakota's instance the college coach.

Okay.

And and all the rest of the college athletes here.

You got to trust the people still to go we're too data driven, too much technology driven, we gotta bring the pendulum back.

- Satori, I wanna talk to you for a moment here about...

I see you've been on several teams throughout the course of your high school and college career, and we know people come and go.

People graduate.

You know moving schools, moving organizations.

In team chemistry is such an important part.

We saw it in the film, and we see it not only in athletics but also just in life in general.

How do you maintain team chemistry as your teams that you're a part of are ever evolving, and what are some of the piece of you might give to young folks as they continue to meet new teammates, and get involved in new teams maybe with new styles of play, new coaches, whatever that might be for how to not not just fit in, but how to take a leadership role on an ever evolving team?

- I would say like maintaining chemistry just by like continuously like reaching out, staying in contact with people even if like they do end up being on a different team or transferring out, and that's how you maintain contact.

But I would say just like come in like you have to like if you wanna have a leadership role, you have to like you to speak up, you have to stand out, you have to like want to be here, and people have to notice that, I would say.

- Excellent.

Thank you.

Anybody else have anything to add about team chemistry?

Anything that sticks out to you in your time?

- I played at Mid Michigan for a couple years, and I feel like we did a really good job of doing stuff outside of basketball.

Whether it was team dinners, team bonding activities, going to other sports games, and watching stuff together.

Like it's really important to get to know your teammates on a different level other than basketball because that really helps you connect, and communicate during the game.

- Wonderful.

Thank you so much for that.

Appreciate it.

So Jade, we're gonna talk to you real quick about your role being a coach.

I know you're a freshman basketball coach at Mt.

Pleasant and we see a lot of what coaches do on the court, on the field, you know that the role the coaches play in the athletes' lives there, but we know that many athletes have relationships with their coaches that go beyond just the court.

Can you tell me a little bit about what that looks like, and how do you support your players?

Not just on the court, but also beyond that as well?

- Yeah.

I just think as a coach it's super important to like value your players' lifes outside of basketball or any other sport that you're coaching them in.

I coach middle school also in the fall.

So when they're playing volleyball in the winter, sometimes I'll go surprise my athletes at their volleyball games just to show that like, I do support them outside of basketball.

Also making sure to keep up with like their academics.

I've coached girls that have played travel volleyball, travel soccer.

So just always checking up to making sure that they're accomplishing in those things, succeeding and just showing that I care so much more than just the sport that you're playing for me.

And there's, I just think that it's good for kids to be able to know that I'm there for them just more than basketball.

Like I'll text girls separately wanting to get in the gym or just like asking how they're doing constantly.

I just think it's super important.

- Excellent.

Thank you.

Dan, I wanna talk a little bit about the recruitment process, and how that works in thinking about students, and their families getting started in this process.

So can you talk a little bit about what are some of the steps a student athlete or their family might take if they are looking to get noticed by a college program, be recruited.

And similarly, can you talk about what are some of the most common mistakes athletes and their families might make throughout that process?

- Great question.

And I think real quick, I just wanna go back to what Satori said about you know, coaches now are in this really weird place in my opinion that they do so much for the kids now, and they get criticized more than ever.

And I think when you go back to when I played air quotes back in the day, right.

I mean I played in the '90s and the early 2000s, our coaches didn't do anything for us, and no one ever criticized them or questioned them.

And I think it's really for us parents have to be a little careful kind of pushing the line too much because Satori really, like I've never seen so many coaches do stuff for their players.

We didn't do any of that.

You know, nowadays, and I can't speak for Dakota, but I know a lot of these big time programs, they do so many things like in camp, right.

Like you guys will do events at night or something like that at the end of the day, like we never did any of that.

It was meetings, football, and then go and get ready for tomorrow, and no one ever complained.

And now these parents just like, just like Satori is saying like, the coaches are so involved, they're having kids over for dinners, and then the parents call and say, "Why isn't my my son or daughter playing?"

I think we parents have to be careful with that.

We're walking a very fine line where we are getting too involved.

Okay.

I just did a great session on this with some coaches in the State of Michigan and we talked about the parent in the huddle.

Like I don't even know if my dad ever talked to the coach or my mom might have because she was, she was crazy.

But the reality is like now, like us, me myself, me and my wife are the same way.

We feel so entitled sometimes to reach out or email the coach.

But a lot of it is the coaches open that up, you know, because we wanna be involved, we wanna be engaged.

And I caution coaches to be extremely careful with that.

You know, your job is to coach and develop, and they're gonna do that.

You know, having them over for dinner, and all those things are fantastic, but let's make sure that we're creating good boundaries, especially for parents.

Okay.

Because I think our coaches now do more than ever, and they also get criticized more than ever.

I'm sorry I had to throw that in because that was a really good point.

That was a phenomenal point to talk about.

You know, but the reality of the recruiting process needs to start with one thing.

And we need to get back to this.

We've gotten away from about 10 years ago this switched and pivoted.

Okay?

And it's kind of why I started an entire company around it.

10 years ago, the high school coach or the club coach in many sports or AAU, and many sports was the first point of contact in the recruiting process.

Okay.

Now, the kids and the families are.

Okay.

And if we wanna correct recruiting for anybody that listens to this, go talk to your coach, and say "Where can I play at the next level?"

And I don't even care when you do it.

You could be an incoming eighth grader, a ninth grader, you could played JV last year, you could play varsity, you could be the best player on your team just like that young lady was from the video.

Okay.

But you need to sit down with somebody who's seen you develop every single day.

Where can I play when I get to my potential, when I get to my ceiling, at least here in high school or in club or in travel.

But the problem we're having, okay.

Is there is a lot of people that start services unlike mine, but recruiting services and they say pay me, and I'll then help you through the process.

Okay.

And I'll tell you where I think you can play.

And oh by the way, I see you once a year.

Right.

And I've said this before and I'm really adamant about this.

In the game of football, I can't speak for the other ones.

There is nobody including Nick Saban who can evaluate a player better than me.

Okay, nobody.

I can see talent.

I can see movement skills.

I can see your trajectory.

I saw a kid today who was eighth grade going into ninth grade.

He's a really good player.

But the reality is, I saw him once and I'll never see him again.

Okay.

And his high school coach is gonna see him every single day for the next five years.

Okay.

And we've lost that connection.

The high school coach should be the first person you're talking to.

Where can I play?

Your travel coach.

Your club coach in sports like volleyball or softball or baseball.

Those are critical.

Okay.

Obviously the guys can talk to that.

Chase can talk to that about how important that is in baseball.

The high school coach is valuable, but not as valuable as the travel coach, and the club coach.

So the reality is you need to go back there.

And that's actually leads to the biggest misconception.

Kids don't understand their level, and they're wasting too much time.

So someone pays, you pay somebody money and they say, "Okay, I'm gonna get you recruited to Clemson to go play for Coach Sweeney because that's where Coach Angela's favorite program is.

Where she's an alum from."

Okay.

Or "I wanna be, I think I'm gonna help you get to Duke, and go talk to Coach Shire."

Okay.

Or "I'm gonna get you to Tennessee basketball."

And then the reality is, you should have been focused on these schools where your high school coach, your club coach, your travel coach who sees your trajectory could have put your focus here, but then by the time you come back they're all gone.

Right.

And I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions that we have to correct.

And there's a way to do it, and I try to help people with it.

Like there's a way to do it where you're engaged because we're all more aware now because of technology.

But then you fall back onto the trust of your high school coaching club or travel.

Okay, your coaches.

For them to guide you in the trajectory so that you don't waste time and money, and I can't stress this enough to people.

Like more valuable than money is your time.

Your time is so valuable, and there's, I beg people all the time.

Okay.

"Why are you going to the Badger camp?

When have they ever talked to you?"

"Well it's been my dream."

"Great.

My dream was to play for the Wolverines.

I was not even...

Barely good enough place Saginaw Valley."

Okay.

And I parlayed that into a great career, and then a great post career, and now a third post career.

So people, the biggest misconception is that you have people find this stuff, and do it for you.

Okay and the cool thing in that show was when the coach would say, "Hey, we're gonna make a list of these schools."

But then the girl got involved, the young lady got involved and said, "Well, I don't wanna...

I wanna get out of LA."

Like that's awesome.

Good.

Like don't go play for UCLA then.

And obviously she didn't.

That's what goes so great for her.

So we need to make sure that we're doing a really good job of trusting the people who will put us in the right position for time and money.

And time is more valuable than money.

That's the biggest misconception.

And that's the first thing you should do is talk to your coaches.

- Wonderful.

Thank you.

Dakota, you got something to add there?

- [Dakota] To add onto that, I feel like as a student athlete you and your family, or in my opinion, for the recruiting process, I feel like you first should make a list of deal breakers and what you actually want.

So for me, personally, when I was going to college, my deal breakers was like too far away from home because it was only me and my mom.

So I had to be able to visit her.

I had, but another deal breaker was like not a deal breaker, but like another thing that I wanted was to make sure I'm going to actually play like not saying right immediately, but actually play.

Like I didn't want to go to like try to go to Florida, and waste three years of my life, and only play one year.

Like that's not realistic.

Like a lot of people sell their dreams to get to a place, and they're wasting time like you said.

And time is of essence.

I'm a big believer in don't waste time.

So that was my thing.

Come in my freshman year, and get playing time as fast as possible by any means.

So that was one thing.

Like you said, it was somebody that told me like you can go D1, and like I didn't believe it at first, but like once it happened it was like, Wow.

And then like now another person's telling me you can go to the NFL so.

- What Dakota just talked about is what I call the rum springer of recruiting, which all of you should go Google that, and figure out...

Does anybody know what a rum springer is?

Anybody here?

You know what a rum spring is?

What's a rum springer?

- It's that little period of time where folks in Amish communities get a chance to experience the world outside of the community.

- Yes.

They do that to challenge whether or not they truly wanna be a part of the Amish community.

Not just for fun.

It's not for fun, okay.

They might have fun, but it's to challenge what they truly want.

Okay.

We don't use that word enough, and it's why I'm a big advocate of the D1 or bust mindset.

And if you go on social media, you'll hear a hundred people say, "Don't have the D1 or bust mindset.

Go wherever you are wanted."

That's wrong.

Dakota is right.

Go where you want to go.

It's your money and your time.

Okay.

So I hope this gets plastered across social media, what he just said, not what I'm saying by the way, what he just said.

People are not focusing on what you want enough.

And maybe I don't want, I'm not speaking for Dakota, I'm gonna say this is a story about Johnny.

Okay.

Maybe Johnny's in the exact same scenario, and you don't get the Division 1 opportunities, and maybe you should go into the trades.

Maybe you shouldn't put yourself in debt by going to Saginaw Valley.

I got a $500 scholarship, okay.

At the time it cost about $10,000.

All in to go to Saginaw Valley.

Do the math on what we had to pay.

I got a little bit of financial aid, not much.

My parents made too much money, but not enough to cover the whole thing.

And I had to find a way to pay for the rest of it.

Okay.

Nowadays, is it $20,000 to go to most schools?

I mean that's a pretty fair number, right.

You're not gonna go to many schools.

I can't speak for everybody and not pay $20,000.

Dakota is 100% right.

I hope everybody hears this.

You need to challenge what you want.

Don't do what someone else thinks you want.

Don't do what the colleges want you to do.

No offense.

And Angela worked at Saginaw Valley just like I did.

We were a business.

We needed students to come there so we would stay employed.

Okay.

It's about what you want.

You have to challenge that every day.

And if you don't find what you want, start pivoting.

Okay.

If that young girl didn't have opportunities out of California, maybe she still would've taken it, I don't know, but maybe she would've decided not to play basketball, and we're not doing enough of that.

We're not guiding young people enough to say, no.

What do you truly want?

And then go do that.

Don't do what I want you to do.

She didn't even listen to her mom or dad.

They wanted her to stay in California.

She went to the East Coast.

I actually applaud her for that.

And she's gonna be fantastic.

Her life's gonna be great, and her family's gonna be fine for it because in a couple years she'll be back as we all know most.

And like Dakota said, most people are gonna move back or at least go back and see his mom.

What you want, and chasing that for your next step for young people, I cannot stress that enough.

It's getting lost.

Us old people, adults are telling you what to do.

That's the biggest mistake you can make.

Listen to Dakota.

#ListentoDakota.

Is the hashtag still a thing?

I don't know.

- Thanks Dan - [Angela] If I could add to that just for one second.

Yes, please.

- To be convicted in what you want.

You know, my son wants to go down the road, right.

He wants to go down the road, he wants to stay home, and work for the family business, but I'm taking him down South because he's a golfer.

You know, you get a lot more opportunities to golf down South.

We're gonna find out, does he really wanna stay home by exposing him to something that he's not sure he wants.

So I think that there is some value in convicting yourself in terms of what you actually do want.

- And you do that by challenging them, right.

And that's exactly.

- Individual sports, you have an opportunity to evaluate yourself by going online, and taking a look at stats.

And you can make decisions, and you can understand where your place is.

It's not D1 or bust.

I'm not taking them to D1, right.

Because the scores aren't there.

So I think in individual sports you've got opportunities to self evaluate, and see what's realistic for you.

- Angela, I wanna stick with you for a minute because we've spent a lot of time talking about how to get you know, how to get yourself noticed, and how it go through the recruitment process.

But I think we all understand not every high school athlete is gonna play college ball.

Not every college athlete is going to play professionally, and even those who play professionally, that's a limited time in your life.

So what are some of the pieces of advice you would give to folks who want to remain involved in the athletic scene, even beyond whatever high school, college, professional career might be like, and how, how have you seen some folks in your life do that?

- Well, that's a big question, and it could go in a couple different directions.

So I'm gonna just say a few things.

First of all, most of your athletes with exception of football players are getting noticed in their travel organizations, and they're going to exposure camps, and perspective camps.

And so that's... And they're making connections with coaches, and Dan, can speak to this as well, and even some of our athletes here, I know Chad went through the process as well, you know but playing in college is a great opportunity.

But if you're not college material, a lot of universities have club, and intramural programs that are very valuable to enriching, you know your college experience.

And then beyond that, obviously there's adult leagues, and you know, that you can participate in which is a lot of fun as well.

And even going to the next level, I have a nephew or a second cousin that's a basketball manager for Clemson right now.

So there's opportunities to stay involved with athletics by participating in game day management, athletic administration.

You know, working as a graduate assistant in programs.

So there's many meaningful ways to stay involved, and be around college athletics, and still have that satisfying feeling for sure.

- This is a billion dollar organization operation, whatever you want to call it that is even outside of the playing field, right.

I mean I just did a great piece for my members about the first Woman Division 1 General Manager down at College of Charleston.

Okay.

Like there's opportunities for people outside a plane and here's the deal, like maybe I just talked about like Division 1 or bust type thing.

Maybe you don't get what you want.

I can still go work for the Chippewas.

Okay.

Maybe you don't get those opportunities.

I can go work for the Badgers.

Okay.

I can be in their personnel department.

I mean the amount of people that they're just influxing between both genders in all sports in the personnel departments alone.

And then you don't have to worry about getting hit.

You don't have to worry about getting injured.

You don't have to worry about losing.

You're like, "If I'm on the digital marketing team for the Badgers, if they lose who cares?

Like no offense, we'll just come up with some new content tomorrow.

That's our job."

But they have influx so much money into it, and so many opportunities that first off, there's just crazy money available for people, careers in everything.

Angela touched on it, events, marketing, but even within the programs themselves, like the massive growth in the off the field departments, not even just coaching anymore.

We have some coaches on the panel, and obviously these players might have an interest in coaching, but you could rise up the ranks, and be a general manager, and never play the on the field nowadays.

Okay.

And that is, you're talking a really cool opportunity.

It's like playing fantasy football or basketball or baseball or whatever.

And nowadays they're all really young doing it.

I mean most of these general managers, these schools are like in their '20s, okay.

So you may finish up playing, you may go coach at one year at you know, one of these schools that you're at, and then you could get in the ladder, and find yourself being the general manager of the Phoenix Mercury or the Seattle Kraken or whatever.

It's just wild now.

It's working.

So huge opportunities for kids even if you don't play.

- All right.

Well, I think that we will leave it there.

Thank you all again so much for taking the time to speak with us, and thank you to everyone for joining us today.