[Hiring] College & Athletic Recruiting Counselor @Texas Sports Academy Main

Role Description

We are looking for a College Advisor who will own the college pathway for our high school student-athletes from the first conversation about target schools all the way through signed acceptance letters.

• Own the College Roadmap: Build a personalized college plan for every high school student in the program. Map target, reach, and likely schools based on academics, sport, and family fit. Update the plan every semester as grades, test scores, and athletic offers change.
• Guard NCAA Eligibility: Track every student's NCAA Eligibility Center status from 9th grade forward. Audit core course requirements, GPA on the NCAA sliding scale, test score timing, amateurism certification, and registration deadlines. Catch problems years before they become problems.
• Coach the Essays and the Story: Sit with students on personal statements, supplemental essays, and athletic resumes. Help them tell their actual story instead of the one they think colleges want to hear. Edit, push back, and re-edit until the writing sounds like them.
• Quarterback the Recruiting Side: Coordinate with Texas Sports Academy coaches and outside club coaches on athletic recruiting timelines. Help families understand the difference between D1, D2, D3, NAIA, and JUCO pathways. Translate scholarship offers and letters of intent into plain English for parents.
• Run Family Meetings: Hold structured check-ins with each student-athlete and their parents at minimum once per quarter. Walk them through where their kid stands, what's coming up, and what they need to do next. Send recap notes after every meeting.
• Prep Students for Tests and Visits: Build a testing plan for SAT/ACT including registration dates, prep resources, and retake strategy. Coordinate official and unofficial campus visits. Prep students on what to ask coaches and admissions officers.
• Real College Advising Experience: You have walked at least one full cohort of students through the college application process from junior year through enrollment. You know what an early decision agreement actually binds, why a senior year transcript still matters after acceptance, and what makes a financial aid appeal land.
• NCAA Eligibility Center Fluency: You can pull up the core course list, the sliding scale, and amateurism rules from memory. You have personally registered students with the Eligibility Center and shepherded them to a final certification. If you have not done this before, this is not the role for you.
• Deadline Obsession: You build systems. You live in spreadsheets, calendars, and shared trackers. You catch the kid who forgot to send their official score report two weeks before it becomes a crisis.
• Strong Writing Coach: You can edit a 17-year-old's essay without rewriting it in your voice. You know the difference between a draft that needs five more passes and one that's already done.
• Parent Communication Skills: You can deliver hard news to a parent — their kid is not a D1 prospect, their target school is unrealistic, their financial aid package is what it is — without losing the relationship.
• Athletic Background: Personal experience as a college or competitive athlete, or as a coach. You understand the training schedule, the recruiting cycle, and the headspace of a student-athlete because you have lived it.
• Comfortable With Athletics: You understand that our students are training 3+ hours a day and that their college decision is shaped as much by where they can play as by where they can study. You respect that and plan around it.
• AI-First Mindset: Must be comfortable using AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity) as a core part of daily workflow — drafting parent emails, summarizing student records, prepping family meeting briefs, tracking deadlines, and turning unstructured conversations into structured action items.

Qualifications

• Former College Coach or Recruiter: You have sat on the other side of the table evaluating recruits. You know what coaches actually look for in film, transcripts, and character.
• Independent School or Athletic Academy Background: You have advised in a setting where students are not on a standard bell schedule. You know how to make a non-traditional transcript legible to admissions officers.
• Financial Aid Depth: You can walk a family through merit aid, need-based aid, athletic scholarships stacking rules, and outside scholarships without flinching.
• Test Prep Background: You have run or taught SAT/ACT prep and can build an in-house testing strategy without outsourcing it.