"What do I have to do to get a softball scholarship?" We hear this a lot. There are two main components to being successful: (1) you need to proactively promote yourself to college coaches; (2) you have to be brave and ask the tough questions.

First, you should know about DI teams, for example, are only allowed 12 softball scholarships, which they can distribute among their players as they see fit. In other words, if the coach wants to give one player a 25% scholarship and another a 75% scholarship, that counts as 1 full athletic scholarship against the limit of 12.

Often, however, teams don't even have enough money to fund all of them. So you may very well come across a DI team with only 5 scholarships.

What should you do?

The scarcity of college softball scholarships means that you have to be very strategic in how you go about positioning yourself to get one. Here are the two things you absolutely must do to get a scholarship:

1. Promote yourself - To win a college softball scholarship, you have to actively promote yourself to college coaches to convince them that they should give you one of their limited number of scholarships.

2. Ask the tough questions - Once a coach knows you, you have to ask The Question: if you go to that college will the coach give you a softball scholarship?