A few South students this year were recruited to play a sport at the NCAA level, which is made up of nearly half a million athletes, but how do they get there?

First, in order to play collegiate sports, an athlete has to meet certain academic requirements in high school. All of the necessary information can be found on the Olathe South website. Essentially, they have to take 16 NCAA core courses such as certain math classes throughout their high school career and meet GPA and standardized test requirements depending on the division the student plays in.

Students that are planning to play at the collegiate level do get help from the counselors, according to Matt Johnson, athletic director. The counselors will notify students if they risk losing eligibility and help them create an NCAA eligibility account online to help students.

Johnson stated that more often than not, most recruiting and scouting gets done at the club level as opposed to the school level, and in the rare instance it is done through the school, recruiters will go through the coach to set up an opportunity to meet the prospect.

Dan Morrow, boys basketball coach, stated that sometimes college recruiters will go to the coach when they are scouting an athlete at a game, but usually recruiters do not.

Emmanuel Okwuone, senior, committed to the track and field program at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. The University of Tulsa was one of three colleges who pursued Okwuone, the other two being Wichita State University and Pittsburg State University.

He chose the University of Tulsa because of the scholarships he had and academics.