Target Schools
The advice is usually the same: pick a few safety schools, a few dream schools and a few target schools!
Safety schools aren’t hard to get logically. These are your doomsday schools. If all else fails what are 3-4 options for yourself? For a lot of kids this usually means some kind of a D3 smaller school. These are harder to accept emotionally, however. If you go D3 you somehow limited your potential - or at least that is how a lot of student-athletes and families may feel.
Dream schools usually take care of themselves. Michigan, Duke, Alabama - all examples of the dream big or go home American spirit. We love an underdog in this country, and deep down inside every person who has ever played sports, there’s something in their blood that whispers, “If I just worked really hard maybe, just maybe, that’d be possible.” But, the odds are not in your genetic favor usually for this.
But, Target schools are a little different. I define a target schools as the kind of schools that, if you continued to modestly and incrementally improve in the same way you did the previous 12 months over the course of the next 12 months, where might you end up? Target schools are where you’re statistically likeliest to go academically and/or athletically. For many athletes and control freaks, accepting the odds is not in their DNA - again, we like to beat the odds.
Target schools require you to be the dreaded “R-word” in recruiting, REALISTIC. A lot of coaches are afraid of leveling with families and players about this, but I’ve found, more recently, they greatly appreciate the candor so long as you deliver it in a respectful manner.
As long as you have your feet in the dirt, you can have your head in the clouds, but there’s a lot of space in between the two that you shouldn’t forget about.
Brendan