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We all do it. We sit on the field, in the stands, in the gym. We watch our young kids compete, improve, show promise, and we fantasize about that day when our talented little goalkeeper/point guard/running back will be a college athlete. At that point, we just hope someday they want it, too.And when they express an interest, we pour resources into that fantasy. By resources, of course, we mean time and money: private trainers, travel teams, club fees, recruiting showcases, recruiting services. There is nothing wrong with the fantasy, by the way. Its a good one. Collegiate athletics often provides young people extraordinary, character-building, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. But it comes with some realities that only begin with the process of getting there.The statistics are not hard to find.* According to the NCAA, 8 million kids are participating in high school sports.* Only 480,000 of them (6 percent) will eventually compete in collegiate athletics at an NCAA program.* Only 56 percent of those athletes will receive some level of scholarship assistance, and that amount averages less than $11,000 per student athlete.The myths, meanwhile, are not hard to bust.* Its all about the scholarship. Full-ride scholarships are not the norm in college athletics. Only six NCAA Division I sports offer full scholarships for athletes who make the team: football, mens and womens basketball, womens gymnastics, volleyball and tennis. The rest of the NCAA sports are called equivalency sports, in which each team has a set number of scholarships (11.7 in Division I college baseball, for example), and those scholarships are divided up among the players on the roster at increments determined by the head coach. That means some kids might get half of their tuition paid for. Others might only get their books covered. Some get nothing but a spot on the roster.* College programs will come looking for you. In reality, even the strongest, hardest-working, most talented kids on your high school team likely arent going to catch the eye of big-time college programs without a lot of legwork on your part.* If youre good enough, youll get your pick of schools. Often, kids who are being recruited are not choosing among the colleges they are most interested in attending, but among those who are most interested in them. And equally often, those choices are limited.And if you are a parent of a kid who truly, honestly wants to be a college athlete, one who has already demonstrated he or she is willing to put in the work and the effort to achieve that goal, keeping it real is the best thing you can do.I think as parents, we have to be realistic about where our kids fit in, said my friend Shari, whose three kids have been recruited by colleges in the past five years. It was a very different story for each of them.Indeed. In our house, our experience was shepherding a hard-working kid who was a successful high school athlete to the best opportunity he would have to play baseball for another four years. Because lets face it, considering the minuscule number of college athletes who end up playing professionally in their given sports, that is what we are talking about here. A chance to play for four more years.As a family, we put in a lot of labor, setting him up for exposure by signing him up for showcases and individual recruiting events at specific schools. He joined summer teams that might maximize his chance to get seen.He emailed coaches, sent videos. We created a spreadsheet to keep track, along with a nice one-page reference to his stats, academic achievements and goals. We suggested to him that if he was interested in a school, he should check their roster on the website and see how many of the guys on the team were his size. (A reality check for our 5-foot-9 right-handed pitcher.) We reminded him to follow up. We encouraged him through the frustration of not getting a response from a school he really liked, or the coach who said he didnt get a chance to come out and see him throw after all.?And on the odd day that he didnt throw particularly well, we tried (really hard, in my case) not to say much at all.We watched him for signs that maybe this wasnt what he really wanted. But he kept working. And he kept wanting. So we kept going.Thats not to say we did everything right. But we did it with a sense of reality and appropriate expectation that this was going to be hard, and it wasnt just going to happen because it was what he wanted.My son ended up at a Division III school, where he has indeed gotten his opportunity to play -- an opportunity initiated by a contact from his high school coach and barely any of the stuff we did. And sometimes, that is just how it goes.Sharis oldest son, a football player, used a recruiting service that matched him up with a Division I-AA school that was a fit for his academic profile. Her middle son is a Division I swimmer at a school in the Midwest after getting a late start in the recruiting process. And her youngest daughter, a swimmer and high school senior, began making lists and sending out letters to coaches in her sophomore year.You cant sit back and wait to be discovered at a meet or a tournament, Shari said. In a lot of instances, like 99.9 percent of the time, unless you are a star athlete who gets a lot of press coverage, you have to be very proactive, get your face in front of these coaches. And once you do that, its follow-through, follow-through, follow-through.And still, theres no guarantee how things will turn out. The week after my son decided where he would be going to school, the coach stepped down. My son went anyway. Sharis oldest son went across the country for his opportunity to play football, but his college career was limited by injury. He still loved his college experience.It is a tenuous thing, the opportunity to be a college athlete. Shari was right when she called it a gamble. Shes also right about this:I think kids end up where they were meant to be, even if its maybe not where they thought, she said. But I think thats true whether they are an athlete or not.A reality that trumps fantasy every time. Morgan Tiller Jersey Store . -- Adam Snyder returned to the San Francisco 49ers this season because the offensive lineman thought it was his best opportunity to win a championship. Richard Bell Jersey Store . 24 Baylor in a Big 12 clash between teams trending in opposite directions. Andrew Wiggins made 10-of-12 from the foul line and scored 17 for Kansas (14-4, 5-0 Big 12), which capped a stretch of four straight games against ranked opponents unscathed. https://www.chinacheapjerseys.net/cedric-killings-jersey-store/ .ca! Hi Kerry, Its another day and here we are looking at another dubious hit to the head. In this case Blue Jackets forward Brandon Dubinsky elbowed Saku Koivu in the head about a second after he dished off the puck to a teammate, knocking him unconscious. Dennis McKinnon Jersey Store . The incident occurred at 19:56 of the second period of the Kings 4-2 road win over Edmonton on Sunday. Nolan punched Oilers forward Jesse Joensuu in the jaw in front of the Kings goal during a scrum. Bill Baumgartner Jersey Store . Louis Blues teammates who would also be participating in the Olympics, Alex Pietrangelo felt right at home, no different in some ways to the travel experience of any old road trip – save for the length of the journey, that is. There was not one single complaint from the boxer, corner, promoter or crowd when Anthony Crolla dropped a tight decision and lost his WBA lightweight title to Jorge Linares in Manchester on Saturday night.Crolla fought the fight of his life and when the final bell sounded he could barely walk or talk, so total was his commitment and draining his exhaustion. It was an odd end, strangely muted considering the closeness of two of the three judges: all three voted in favour of Linares, one of boxings surest operators, and two separated the fighters by just one and two points respectively. It was close, but in many ways it was not even remotely close and that only happens when the best fight the best.It was mesmerising at times watching the brilliant Linares think his way out of corners, counter punch with such speed that trying to count the shots is nearly impossible to the human eye. Crolla, who was defending his WBA lightweight title, kept the first 10 rounds close with a bold performance aimed at breaking the spirit of Linares. It was a good plan but Linares was brilliant, the fighter with all the gifts in front of a sing-a-long crowd led in appreciation, and worship of Crolla from ringside, by Wayne Rooney and Ricky Hatton.There was talk of a rematch in February or March next by Eddie Hearn, the promoter who has guided Crolla from boxings obscure fringes to main attraction at the No. 1 fight venue, but that result is easily foretold: Linares would win again, sorry to report. Crollas chance of beating the Venezuelan was in this fight when he had momentum.Linares had been out of the ring for 11 long months with an injured hand and the home crowd would play their part. There was simply nothing more Crolla could hhave done and he can shake off his stiffness this week with pride.ddddddddddddThe fight with Linares, a world champion at three weights, was a huge risk for Crolla and its announcement put an end to all talk of a partial unification with WBO lightweight champion Terry Flanagan. The Flanagan fight was draped in plenty of cash -- there was an offer of ￡700,000 for Crolla from Flanagans promoter, Frank Warren -- and perhaps Crollas thinking was that beating Linares would increase his financial power at the negotiating table for a Flanagan fight in the future. That advantage has gone, but the fight remains.The defeat now means that in three consecutive September Saturdays five British boxers have lost in world title fights, three were stopped and two lost their world titles, which reduces the total number of British boxers currently holding a version of the world title to 11. The figure, still a record high, includes welterweight Kell Brook, who looks unlikely to ever make the limit again after his trip to middleweight to fight Gennady Golovkin.Hearn, however, was right when he added: It shows the world that British boxers are not afraid to take big fights; they have all dared to be great -- Kell (Brook), Liam (Smith) last week in Texas and Ant tonight. They all went for big fights.Before the end of November Anthony Joshua, Ricky Burns, Tony Bellew, Billy Joe Saunders, Flanagan and a couple of other British world champions will try and defend their titles and end the losing sequence. They will not all succeed, but it is doubtful if any will lose with as much dignity and pride as Crolla. ' ' '