INTRODUCTION

by Tom Keegan

The College Hockey Guide has always been somewhat of a “work in progress”.  The very first College Hockey Guide Men’s Edition,  published in 1990 was 176 pages.  Later we added women’s programs and since 1996 we have had a separate guide for women’s programs.

That first edition included full page coverage of all the NCAA men’s programs and twenty pages of listings of club programs.  Also included were several articles to assist prospective student-athletes in the college evaluation and recruiting process.

The concept was successful and now, 12 annual editions later, this College Hockey Guide Women’s Edition alone is over 350 pages.

The content growth which has increased  the size of the College Hockey Guide has been information to assist in the process of getting an opportunity to play at the college level.

This year we are providing additional resources in the areas of academics, skill and strength training, marketing and recruiting and an expanded survey of the NCAA and ACHA coaches.  After all, who better to offer advice to prospects than the coaches that may eventually recruit them.

We have also recently analyzed the probabilties of playing NCAA hockey, playing NCAA Division I hockey and finally earning a full hockey scholarship at the NCAA Division I level.  This important information follows in STRICTLY BY THE NUMBERS.

This section shows how difficult it is to advance to college hockey.  Only 3.8% of prospective student-athletes currently U14, U16, U19, high school or prep school hockey will ever play at the NCAA level.

That 3.8 % probability of playing varsity college hockey can be discouraging to prospective student-athletes.  You can however increase your chances of being in that 3.8%, or possibly even in the not quite 1% that will earn a full scholarship in an NCAA Division I program.

Over the last decade we have published The Student-Athlete and College Recruiting by Rick Wire.  Rick’s book provides valuable information in the areas of marketing and recruiting.

Rick recommends a pro-active approach which includes “player profile forms”, “highlight video tapes”, newspaper articles etc. and a full fledged marketing campaign for your product -in this case a prospective college hockey player.

There are several options for conducting the marketing campaign:

1.  Recruiting Service

2.  Family Operation

Returns from our survey of college hockey coaches indicates that the coaches prefer to deal directly with the player, avoiding recruiting services.

Recruiting services are also quite expensive, often impersonal and usually not very effective.  They will usually accept any candidate willing to pay for their service.  Cost is usually $1,000 to $3,000 for creation and mailing of profile forms to college coaches.

We feel that the “work in progress” College Hockey Guide improves every year and this edition is no exception.  If you use the information contained in the College Hockey Guide you will increase the probability of success at the college level.  Good luck!