This objection to Christian education is born out of a fear that athletes at a smaller Christian school won’t receive the quality of coaching and development that a larger public school can provide and that their talent could go unnoticed.

Neither of these fears is justified. Parents that insist that a small Christian school could be costing their son or daughter a chance at college scholarship are ignorant to how colleges and universities find athletes.

Consider these statements:

• If your son or daughter has Division I talent, it doesn’t matter where he/she goes to high school – schools will find them. The scouting and recruitment programs at colleges today must search all high schools to find talent. The competition is fierce for the best players – no matter where they go to school. To think that a talented player would go “unnoticed” is to believe that major colleges and universities aren’t exhausting every avenue to find talent. That is a bad assumption.
• Smaller Christian high schools are often better connected to Division II and Division III schools since those schools must recruit outside of the large public high schools to find talent to stay competitive.
• The nature of college recruiting has changed over the last ten years. Students with athletic ability who aren’t sure-fire blue-chip prospects MUST market themselves with the help of their high school and high school coach. The web is full of college recruitment services that help players and parents market their son or daughter. It is more important to find a high school that has coaches who will work with players and parents to videotape, call coaches, and work with recruitment services. VCHS coaches will work with athletes to connect them to programs where they can be successful.
• Most Christian schools have quality athletic programs that include good facilities, weight rooms, strength and conditioning programs, and coaches who assist good athletes in finding a college to match their ability. They also have talented coaches who are coaching at a smaller high school not because they don’t have the talent to coach at a larger high school, but because they are dedicated to being at a Christian school. VCHS has everything that is needed to develop athletes for competition at the college level.
• Parents often over-estimate the athletic abilities of their son or daughter. That statement may seem harsh, but according to NCAA statistics, for instance, only 2.9% of all boys high school senior basketball players will fill a freshmen roster position at any level of NCAA college basketball. That means that your son must be better than 97 out of every 100 senior basketball players in the country to make an NCAA roster. The percentage of seniors that would actually receive scholarship money would be far less than that. (See chart below)