In the blink of an eye, your swimmer goes from a 5-year-old struggling to make it across the pool to a club swimmer in high school hoping to swim in college. You have guided your child through many steps along the way, but how do you help them through the college recruiting process? There is limited advice out there and some of it is confusing. It takes hours upon hours to wade through it all and to research the options.

I experienced all of this when my youngest son wanted to swim in college. I spent hours helping him research schools and conferences to see where he would best fit. I kept thinking “why hasn’t anyone done this already?” I was so bogged down in spreadsheets that I would have happily paid someone to compile them!

Once we had a reasonable list of schools, we wondered when and how we should contact those coaches. Again, I wished I had a guide to walk me through the process.

Once my son was done and had signed a National Letter of Intent to swim in college, we felt great relief that the process was over! My son said “Mom, this was so crazy and you were so organized through the entire process, you should help other people do this!”. I realized he was right – I sincerely wanted to help others avoid some of the frustration we experienced. We will share our stories and experience along the way and hopefully save you from making some of the mistakes that we made.