High school season is ending - what now?

The high school season is winding down for fall athletes. So what now? What can you do while you're in hibernation over the winter to make a college team?

It may surprise you to hear that, as far as recruiting goes, the season ending is actually a pretty good thing. Now that you don't have practice or a game after school every day, you can spend that time hanging out with your friends, playing around on Facebook and promoting your latest accomplishments to college coaches. Believe it or not, marketing yourself to college coaches can actually be as fun as the other two things.

If you have a good strategy, marketing yourself to college coaches is easy. It doesn't take that much time and the rewards are huge.

Since you'll be inside a lot over the coming months, take some time to start formulating your list of colleges. As with normal college admissions, you should have a list of about ten safety, match, and reach schools. The next thing to do is check out college teams' websites and really learn about them. You can find out a lot about teams just by checking them out online. Let's dissect one team website for the most important details.

Today's lucky college team: Emory University's men's soccer team in Atlanta. As you learn about the team, take a few notes. Here are the key details to look for and where to find them:

Homepage: Note the team colors and the mascot (Eagles.) They've listed Emory's national ranking sixth and their record thus far this season 13-0-0! What a year.

Roster: Emory clearly draws most of its players from the Southeast and East coast. This means that the coaches probably go to recruiting events in those areas as well. Just because you don't live in that geography doesn't mean that you can't make the team. It does mean, however, that you'll have to be a little more creative in how you get coaches to see you play. More importantly, Emory currently has 10 seniors on the roster, which means that they are probably in the market for a large recruiting class.

Coach Bio: We learn that Sonny Travis is new to Emory, but is a well-established, successful coach with over 300 career wins. He coached mostly in the Southeast, so his recruiting network is probably there as well. He also coached at Virginia Wesleyan for a long time, so he's probably a pretty stable coach who won't ship out of Emory right away. This is important because it means that your career, should you play there, won't be disrupted by a coaching change.

Captain Bios: Looking at players' bios will help you figure out if you have the right sports pedigree to be successful on this team. Jordan Edelman played for Albertson Red Storm, which is a great club that won the East New York state championships. This gives you a sense of what kind of players Coach Travis looks for.

Box Score: In a recent 1-0 win over the highly rated University of Rochester, Emory played 14 different players. That's an interesting statistic if you're concerned about playing time. Other than a goal a minute before halftime, it was a pretty close game against a very competitive opponent.

In 10 minutes or so, you can get a pretty decent sense of what a team is all about. If you like it, great. Add it to your list of colleges. Also keep track of the details that you find interesting. This way, you'll remember what's unique about each college team -- which will be very useful when you start to contact coaches.