On Nov. 12, fifteen of North’s senior athletes committed to play college sports in the years to come. These athletes represented a number of North’s sports including girls swim and dive, baseball and girls lacrosse. Among signing night’s participants were seniors Jacob Jalove and Alyssa Assell, who signed to play baseball and lacrosse, respectively.
For both Assell and Jalove, passion for their sports drove them to pursue a college career with athletics. Across the country, less than 7% of all high school athletes participate at the collegiate level, with millions of high school athletes not making the cut.
To reach their goals of playing college-level sports, both Jalove and Assell had to put in many hours of work and training on their own time.
“If you want to be good [at a sport],” said Assell, “You have to put in the work outside of practice. I practice two to three times a week outside of season with club [sports], and in season it’s every day.”
Outside of physical training, North’s athletes also had to undergo the challenging recruitment process. In particular, communication with colleges was something both Jalove and Assell identified as important to be recruited.
“Start emailing [schools] as early as possible [and] be annoying to the schools you want to go to,” said Assell. “Even if they’re not responding, keep sending those emails weekly so you can get on the radar. And then eventually you’ll get calls and you’ll get [the schools] to reach back out to you.”
Another part of the recruitment process for Jalove and Assell was participating in summer college camps or club games with colleges watching.
“Summer ball with your club teams is what gets the most recruitment out of it,” said Jalove. “You can invite [colleges] to come to those tournaments, … and then they can watch you and see if they like you.”
Finally, after years of putting in so much effort into training and getting recruited, signing night came for North’s athletes. There, Jalove and Assell felt both happy and relieved to see the results of their hard work.
“[Signing night] was honestly pretty emotional [since] a dream I’ve had since I was a little kid was to play [college baseball],” said Jalove. “It was emotional [and] sentimental, like, ‘Oh, I really did [it].’”
But despite both of their achievements, neither Jalove nor Assell plan to slow down. Instead, they hope to continue growing as college athletes.
“I think [signing to play college sports] is really rewarding, but I also think it pushes me to want to be better,” said Assell. “Now I’m at that next level, and I can’t just stop and be complacent with where I’m at.”
