College athletics recruiting expert Mike Dunlevy, Director of Regional Recruiting of St. Augustine, Fla.-based NCSA (Next College Student Athlete), is coming to Roanoke Catholic School on Monday, Jan. 22, at 6 pm, to hold a free meeting for all RCS parents who have a child who might be interested in playing a sport in college. Please contact athletic director Matt Peck, 540.982.3532, if you plan to attend.
Dunlevy was introduced to the school by Roanoke Catholic parents Al and Cathy Connelly (who also serves as the Celtics cross-country and track coach). They credit NCSA with helping their senior daughter Samantha get a $24,000/year scholarship (which will cover 75% of her college expenses) to University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky to run cross-country and track.
Al writes the following:
“Our school does a terrific job in educating our student athletes and many receive academic scholarships. But for those students that want to participate in college athletics in addition to receiving an academic scholarship, sometimes getting noticed is the issue.
This was the case of my daughter, Samantha. Cathy and I were getting very nervous about why Samantha wasn’t getting noticed and receiving attention from colleges. She was in her junior year and based upon our experiences, colleges should have been already contacting her. That is when we reached out to NCSA (Next College Student Athlete) out of Chicago.
For a fee, she was able to: have a running coach assigned to her (telling her where she was able to play in college, what times she needed to run to get to Div. 1, Div. 2, etc.); attend online workshops; learn how to effectively talk with coaches through the process; and learn how to develop a profile with her academic and athletic stats and give her a platform to reach college coaches.
The amount of attention she received was staggering. She had her profile viewed by over 100 coaches and was followed by 44. I can honestly tell you, we never would have known about most of these universities/colleges that were interested in Sam, if not for this program.
Our sophomore son Danny has already be contacted and followed by 9 schools – University of Pitt, UNC, University of Chicago, University of Penn, and University of Memphis. This has helped us get Danny focused more on academics as well as his running.
Again, I am not the expert in this, but think that this could be a valuable resource for Roanoke Catholic to use in conjunction with all of the assistance on the academic side. The fee I paid is very small compared to what Samantha has received in an academic and athletic scholarship.”