3 tips on what to do during the summer before you go to college:

• Update the coach regularly throughout the summer before your freshman year


• Get fit!


• Maximize your chance to walk on if the coach has not already offered you a spot on the roster

A sign once posted at Princeton walk-on tryouts read:

If we don't know you, don't come out.

The message is loud and clear: make yourself known to college coaches before you arrive on campus.

Say you?ve decided to attend a particular school and desperately want to be on the team. Though you?ve self-recruited vigorously, the coach hasn?t offered you a recruited position. Instead she?s suggested that you come to walk-on tryouts.

Make no mistake about it, this is not an ideal situation, but it's also not hopeless. You must continue to self-recruit so the coach knows you well by the time you arrive on campus. The coach?s familiarity with you will help distinguish you from the pack during tryouts.

College coaches place a premium on the few precious weeks of preseason they have to prepare their teams. Most coaches want to spend these practices working closely with the players that they know will be on the team. Freshman recruits are invited to preseason practices. There are no tryouts for recruits.

Most coaches conduct open tryouts during the first preseason week, in the morning or afternoon when they are not working with their core group of players. Recruits do not participate in tryouts. For walk-ons, however, tryouts represent the proving grounds; tryouts are a make-it-or break-it situation for walk-ons.

What does it mean to walk onto a college sports team?

A walk-on is an athlete who must try out to make a college team. Athletes who haven't been offered a roster spot -- and therefore aren't "recruits" -- typically have to go to open tryouts.

This is a situation that should be avoided at all costs. Walk on tryouts are famously unfair. Players often find themselves having a very limited opportunity to prove their ability. Instead, you want to show up on campus knowing that there's a place for you on the team.

What does it mean to be a "recruit?"

A recruited college athlete is someone who is guaranteed a spot on the team when she arrives on campus as a freshman. Recruited athletes don't have to "try out" to make the team.