Recruitment
By Maddie Kreiger | IG: @Maddie.Kreiger
Being a student athlete is one of the hardest things to do. You have to be able to balance school every day, practice, workouts, and a social life. Being a student athlete is one of the best things that has ever happened to me, but it is also one of the hardest things I have ever done. Not only is being a student athlete hard, but trying to get recruited to play your sport in college adds 2x the stress.
My high school lacrosse career started in 2020. This meant that COVID was very prevalent. During my freshman spring season, we still had to wear masks and couldn’t really do any team bonding. This caused my freshman season to be a bit wonky and very different from what other seasons would come to look like. Ultimately, my freshman season was positive, not only because I personally played well but also because that was the year I decided I wanted to try to go to college to play lacrosse. Since my freshman year, my life has consisted of sending emails to college coaches, going to every tournament and showcase that I possibly could, training almost every day, talking on the phone with coaches, creating highlight videos, and continuously updating stats and my recruitment profiles.
Now that may sound mostly fun and exciting, and for the most part it was, but unfortunately there is a side of recruitment that isn’t talked about a lot, and that side is the anxiety and fear that comes with being constantly evaluated. To be an athlete trying to get recruited in college, you have to be able to take criticism, constructive or not, accept rejection, accept coaches ghosting you, be able to not constantly compare yourself to other players, and ultimately build tough skin. Now, a lot of that is easier said than done. Since my life from freshman to junior year basically consisted of trying to get recruited, it's hard to always be able to not fall victim to the negative side of recruitment. I found myself numerous times feeling that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t deserve to play in college, or that this girl was better than me or that girl was better than me. Recruitment challenged me every single day on numerous levels. Now, after going through recruitment and being able to look back, talking about what I struggled with is easier, but during that time, talking about my fears and anxieties about being recruited seemed like I would be accepting defeat or becoming weak. I was ultimately a kid who had to make grown-up decisions and deal with adults constantly evaluating me, and it flat out caused me to be very anxious.
As I sit here now after having committed to Detroit Mercy to play DI level lacrosse, which is something that if you had told me freshman year, I would have never believed you, I am able to sit here and say that the recruitment process is flawed. The recruitment process asks 15 to 16-year-olds to think about what they want for the next 4 years after high school; it asks them to focus solely on recruitment if they want to go to a high level of lacrosse; it asks them to be okay with adults ghosting them without giving them a reason as to why they don’t want them to play for their teams; it asks them to be okay with rejection and just “move past it"; it asks them to be okay with getting told no over and over again; it asks them to be okay with high levels of anxiety and fear. In the adult world, all of this is considered normal and part of day-to-day life, but when you are 15-16 and barely know about yourself as a person, it feels like being okay with all of that is close to impossible.
Ultimately, I am, of course, thankful for all that my recruitment process gave me. I believe that the stressful parts of it taught me some very valuable life lessons, and I believe that the good parts gave me a wonderful school and team that I will be with next fall. Although I am thankful for what my recruitment process gave me, I am also critical of the process. I believe that to help protect the mental health of young athletes, there needs to be more transparency between coaches and players, more teaching on how to deal with recruitment, and ultimately, there needs to be more talk about how to maintain mental health with recruitment and that it's okay to talk about your fears of the process.
