On Monday evening, Rockdale High School head football coach and athletic director Jacob Campsey held a recruiting seminar for RHS student athletes.
The event covered basic such as how to manage your social media, test score requirements and statistics for the likelihood of a high school student becoming a professional athlete.
A big part of the presentation was RHS head softball coach Meghann Infantino talking about her experience as a college athlete.
Infantino was an NFCA All-American in 2015 and 2016 while playing softball at Blinn and winning numerous honors while at Tarleton State University in Stephenville in 2017 and 2018.
During the weekend prior to the seminar, she caught up with a former coach at TSU and asked them for some advice for high school athletes hoping to play at the next level.
Her former coach advised kids to “annoy coaches with e-mails’.’
“And make sure to make them personalized,” Infantino said. “Coaches don’t want kids whose parents do all their work for them.
“Because they’ll interact with a kid through e-mail but once they meet you in person, they’ll realize that this isn’t the actual kid they’re recruiting.”
RHS coach Ryan Montalvo, who has previous experience coaching with Division III Texas Lutheran University, also talked at the presentation.
“When you get an offer from a college coach, your first question should be ‘is this a commitable offer?’ ” Montalvo said.
He went on to say that so many times, kids will assume a coach showing interest is automatically a college scholarship offer, which is not the case.
Following Campsey’s presentation, Montalvo and coach David Monroe answered questions from inquisitive parents of student athletes.
One parent asked about the legitimacy of websites that offer to post a kid’s highlights for a certain price.
Montalvo said that some websites are a money grab for companies that look all a r ou nd t he globe for prospective student athletes and that the RHS coaching staff handles putting together highlights for student athletes on Hudl, cutting out the middleman.
The seminar also placed a lot of emphasis on the fact that while kids may have their hearts set on being Division I athletes, there are many opportunities to be had at Division II and Division III universities.
Coaches were also quick to point out that although Division III schools don’t have athletic scholarships, many of them have quite a bit of grant money that they can reward to athletes who have good grades in high school.
Campsey told The Reporter earlier this month that he wanted to hold the event to inform the kids and their parents/guardians about the recruiting process and what to know.
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