Since our goal is to create an athlete-centered meet, we keep asking ourselves how we can deliver better value to the elite athletes who race with us. One avenue we have identified is granting athletes in-person exposure to college coaches. Other than our various state meets and post-season competitions, track and field athletes do not enjoy as many opportunities to showcase their skills in front of college coaches as much as other athletes do.
We are hoping to remedy that with our event. By bringing together a critical mass of great athletes, we can also entice a critical mass of college coaches. Facilitating these potential connections for all participants - regardless of socioeconomic status - is a laudable goal that we hope to advance.
To that end, we will be partnering with Andrew Novelli and Right On Track beginning with this year’s edition of our meet. The partnership is simple. Andrew leverages his acquired data and relationships to promote the meet to college coaches. We create an event that showcases elite athletes to college coaches. Such exposure then draws even more athletes into the fold, thereby improving the quality of our meet. Everybody wins.
As we near closer to the event date, we will post the “Athlete Profile” link on our website and across social media as a free opportunity for those wishing to compete at the college level. These profiles will then automatically be populated to the phones of any college coaches attending Distance Night and help facilitate the recruiting process between student-athlete and university.
Andrew describes his business of helping student-athletes as such:
Right On Track provides personal recruiting coordination for high school cross country and track and field athletes aiming to compete at the college level. By educating families and utilizing innovative recruiting methods, Right On Track is able to better position student-athletes to outwork their competition, reach their collegiate goals, and optimize their scholarship opportunities. Our track record extends to colleges and universities all across the country at every division.
Andrew Novelli has personally coordinated the recruitment of 270+ student-athletes to collegiate athletic programs all across the country while working directly with some of Illinois’ most elite distance runners and track and field athletes. He successfully created "Athlete Profiles” for Illinois Top Times in 2016, making it the only HS track meet in the country where college coaches can gain free and direct access to the competing athletes' email addresses, cell phone numbers, GPA, ACT/SAT, etc to better facilitate the communication between their university and potential collegiate student-athletes.
We are hopeful that this emerging partnership will add another layer of value for kids participating in our meet. Soccer, basketball, and football players all have access to showcases where they can demonstrate their skills in real time to a mass of college coaches. We are hoping to build such an opportunity for elite, Midwestern distance runners moving forward.