As an athlete, recruiting can be the best part of your career or the worst part of your career.

The summer before your last year of high school is when recruiting starts to get heavy. You get offers, coaches coming to your games and mail and phone calls from coaches of all levels of college basketball.

Not all players get the same exposure as everyone else, mainly due to the summer team you are on and where you play tournaments at.

If you do not get the same exposure as some players, you may have to get your name out there and send some emails to coaches and let them know who you are.

It’s not easy promoting yourself to coaches, but if your future depends on it then you will do whatever it takes. You may get some replies, and you may not get any but all you need is one person to take a chance and recruit you to their school.

With recruiting comes a lot of stress sometimes, having to travel on visits, find out about schools, and get opinions from other people are not always easy.

Recruiting normally goes something like this. You go to a tournament with your summer team to compete and get exposure to college coaches. Knowing coaches are watching, you may want to play to the best ability you can, so they see the best version of you.

During the summer the college coaches are generally not allowed to talk to you face to face at most tournaments, however text messages, phone calls and emails are all okay.

After responding back and forth to the coach you may get asked to go on a visit at that university.

Once you have scheduled the visit, you and your family will travel there and meet the coaching staff and the team.

Also, while you are there you will most likely receive a tour to see the university and talk about potential majors, so you can get a degree when you are done with school and basketball.

On that visit you may play with the players, or just visit with the coach and possibly receive an offer.

Most likely that doesn’t happen just once, it may happen three more times, or even more than that. The hardest part about it all is sitting down with your family and deciding which place is the best fit for you and your favorite.

Coaching staff, players, and universities have a lot to do with where a player may pick to commit to spend their collegiate career.   

“Getting recruited was stressful but it was also fun,” said Kinzer Lambert, a junior at Missouri Southern. “Seeing all the coaches that want you to play for them made me feel like my hard work payed off.

“I had a hard time picking a school before I had an offer from Southern. But when I took my visit at Southern, I knew it was home.”

Recruiting is a difficult time for any athlete’s life, but in the end its worth it as long as they find the place where they belong.