As much as you want to find the right school and team for you on a recruiting visit, you also want to make a good impression with the coaching staff. The first time you meet, they are going to ask you a bunch of questions about who you are as a player, and also as a person. Because these questions are all about yourself, you should be able to answer them. However, it's still good to be prepared. Here are some questions you can expect from college coaches during your first visit and how you can answer them.
1. What are your strengths as a player?
You do not want to lie with this question. If you lie and end up getting recruited, your coach is going to expect you to be able to do things that you are not good at. Also, these coaches have probably watched you in a game or on your highlight reel. They will know if you make something up.
2. What are your weaknesses as a player? What are you doing to improve that?
The second part of this question is the most important. Every athlete has weaknesses, even the best in the world. Coaches just want to know that you are aware of what you need to improve upon and that you are working hard to get better.
3. How are your grades?
Coaches will ask you this for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is so that they know that you will be able to succeed at their school even if it is very rigorous. Another is to know if you might be eligible for certain scholarships through the school. Not every division has athletic scholarships, but many different schools offer academic scholarships.
4. Why are you interested in our program?
This is your chance to show them that you know a lot about this school. Tell them something good you heard about them from a current player or alumni, something about their impressive record, or it could be something more specific about the school itself. Let them know that you have done your research before coming to your recruiting visit.
5. What are you looking for in a school?
Here, you should explain the major(s) you are looking for, your ideal school size and student population, location, resources/opportunities, team culture, etc. It will be helpful if these qualities match the school where you are doing your recruiting visit.
6. What are your goals as a player?
With this question, you want to tell the coach about what you want to accomplish while playing college sports. These could be personal goals, like scoring a lot of points or getting playing time, or they could be team-oriented goals, such as winning a championship, beating a rival team, having a better record than last year, etc.
7. How do you handle adversity?
Your coaches will want to know how you handle challenging moments. You can give them an example of a time when you were challenged and overcame it, such as an injury, coaching change, or not getting playing time. Explain how you were over to get over these barriers and why you still wanted to keep playing your sport.
8. Why do you want to play college sports?
Explain to the coach why you are passionate about your sport. What makes you love it? Why have you stuck with it for so long? What makes you want to go to practice every day?
9. What type of leader are you?
Just like all of these questions, you should be honest here. You don't want to come in your freshman year and have your coaches expect you to be super vocal when you're not that type of leader. If you are more of a lead-by-example leader, tell them that. They just want to know that you have experience being a leader on a team.
10. What activities/hobbies do you do outside of sports?
Tell them what kind of a person you are. What do you do on your days off? Coaches want to see a well-rounded athlete.
11. What other schools are recruiting you/are you interested in?
Again, you have to be honest here. You don't have to tell them what other schools have offered you; you should just tell them the school. They want to know where you are in the process and how high their school ranks on your list.
12. Do you have any questions for me?
The answer to this question: YES! Always yes. In fact, you have 37 questions!
The most important thing to remember when answering these questions is to be honest. Answer questions authentically, don't answer the way you think they want you to answer.
