As students and parents start to wade into the college athletic recruiting process, they’ll soon see all kinds of advertisements, websites, and offers from athletic recruiting services. All promise to help you with getting an athletic scholarship because, they’ll tell you, they have access to people and information that you don’t. And as the wading starts to feel like drowning as parents begin to realize how much college costs and how many colleges are actually out there, paying for a recruiting service doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.
Is it?
The following is a list of questions to ask college coaches during in an interview whether on a college visit, at a game, or at a camp. These questions won’t be relevant for all sports or all colleges. For example, 
(Updated for 2021) If you want to play on a college softball team, you should probably be looking in California, Pennsylvania, or New York. However, if you’re looking specifically for Junior College teams, you should be focusing on Illinois and Texas. The states with the most D1 softball programs are California, Texas, and New York. The D3 college softball teams are concentrated in Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts.
50–that’s the number of colleges you should target if you’re interested in getting to play at the college level. Too many? Think I might be exaggerating a little? Or maybe I don’t have a clue as to what I’m talking about? Give me a moment and I’ll explain my madness.
Nobody likes wasting their time and college coaches are no exception. So when you start to contact college coaches, be sure that you are prepared. If nothing else, what sort of impression do you think you make when the coach has to inform you of basic facts regarding the school or finds out that you aren’t qualified to play on his team?
(The list of D2 softball colleges is at the end of the post.) Of the three NCAA divisions, D2 is the smallest for softball. The advantage of playing at a D2 college is that they still offer scholarships unlike D3 schools. While the number of scholarships may be fewer than those in D1, D2 softball college programs will likely have less intense demands on players’ time than D1 schools. This means players may be able to consider doing something else other than playing softball and attending class while in college.
I’ve already listed four of the nine things that you can do that will improve your chances of playing baseball at the college level in a