My Golden Ticket

Hi! I'm Karlie Guimond, one of the members of All Access Athletics.​​ This project is so special to me and I'm so happy Lilly asked me to join back in 2022. While my story is less untraditonal than Lilly's, it is still different than most field hockey athletes.

In ninth grade I told my parents that I loved field hockey and couldn't imagine myself not playing past high school. I had a great role model in my friend and teammate Izzy Duseau who was doing the recruitment process at the time. The first thing my family and I did was hopped on a call with a professional from Next College Student Athlete. Next College Student Athelte, or NCSA, is a service designed to help prospective college athletes connect with college coaches in the country, almost like a social media platform for coaches to look at athletes.

It all seemed great and familiar, social media.. I could do that! But I learned quickly that NCSA was not accessible to a lower-middle class family like my own. I would get notifications that a coach was interested in me or watched my film, but I needed to upgrade to "premium" for an extra $100 or so to see who it was. All I would get is a notification saying "A D2 coach in North Carolina" has viewed your profile. Thanks NCSA, that's so helpful haha.

So we pivoted. It's important to note that other than having Izzy, I had no one else to follow. I am an oldest sibling and only person on both sides of my family to have done this process. And Izzy's family had significantly more money to work with than my own. But we got creative and designed a spreadsheet- recruits take note! This spreadsheet helped me rank my schools of interest and input the school's roster size, how long the coach has been there, their acceptance rate, and graduation rate (if you want an academically rigorous and inviting school, this stat says a lot).

Then I began to email these coaches. And guess what.. They all wanted film! But in order to get film, I needed to get out there and play. I had trained with a few club teams before but nothing was ever intense enough. You see, the western mass club scene is scarce, and most clubs go out of business in 2-5 years because the population here just isn't enough to support a business. Plus, it was SO expensive. It would start off at $1000 but before you knew it you were paying up to $2k-$3k because they would just add more and more expenses (equipment, tournaments, etc). And these clubs thrived off of claiming that college coaches would BE at these tournaments to watch you and guess what… they weren't.

Many people suggested Florida. Florida field hockey showcases are the hub of recruitment. But here's the problem.. Flying is expensive and you have to be apart of a club team to play at these showcases. So Florida was out.. But if Florida was my key to recruitment, what was I supposed to do?

After doing some research, I found College Connection, now known as Performance Sports Event. I saw they were hosting a two day showcase at UMASS Amherst and that I could commute instead of staying overnight to save money. I looked at the list of coaches who would be there and I was so impressed, a lot of these schools were elite and on my list!!

So come June 2018, in the final days of my sophomore year of high school, I went to College Connection. I was so nervous that I would not perform well in front of all these coaches and elite recruits. But I've always thrived under pressure and let my game do the talk. I had a great showcase and played my a** off. I got to play alongside talented recruits who went on to play at the D1, D2, and D3 level, and held my own.

What I also loved about CC is they had different session between play- a recruitment seminar with rules, regulations and strategies surrounding recruitment, a nutrition seminar, and a student/athlete panel to hear from current collegiate field hockey players. I got more than my money's worth at CC.

At the end of the showcase they handed out what was called "Golden Tickets" for the best players at the showcase to go play in a game at Boston College in front of even more talented coaches. I thought for sure I would get one because of my performance that weekend. To my disappointment, I did not, it went to two of my teammates (one went on to play at Merrimack, the other Michigan) who deserved it as well. I left UMASS Amherst sad, but still proud of my performance.

When I returned home after my short 20 minute drive I checked my email inbox. The time from the email was 2:20, which was about 10 minutes after our last game of the showcase. The email was feedback from the showcase and my first collegiate offer from Smith College in Northampton, MA.., basically, my back yard.

Smith emailed me in the parking lot. Smith was my first offer. I HAD AN OFFER TO PLAY COLLEGIATE FIELD HOCKEY!!!

The emails did not stop there, over the next two weeks I received many emails with compliments of my play and coaches inviting me to their program's clinics. From D1-D3, my inbox blew up! I couldn't believe it. I had an offer and many chances to continue to prove my strength and worth on the field. Blessed was an understatement. And all I had to do was travel 20 minutes down the road.

Ultimately about a year later I committed to Smith, but I'll go into that in my next post. The moral of my recruitment story is that you don't need things like club, Florida, and NCSA to find success. There are ways to do your recruitment process in a financially smart way, and still find your dream school. Your golden ticket is waiting for you, you just have to get creative :)