The life of a college athlete may seem glamorous in movies—the big-man-on-campus football player always seems to be paired with the too-beautiful-for-words cheerleader. But the reality of playing sports at the college level is often filled with much more grunt work than glamour.

Author Laurie Richter delivered that and other such truths about being on a college team during her talk Wednesday night at Hinsdale Central about post-secondary athletic recruitment.

Nearly 60 parents and a few students crammed into the school's Community Room to hear Richter speak about "Five Things I Wish I had Known about Recruiting." Hinsdale South parent group Parents Empowering Parents organized the event.

Richter wrote the book, Put Me in Coach: A Parent's Guide to College Recruiting, after going through the process with her older son, Dylan, now a junior on the basketball team at Washington University in St. Louis.

After comparing notes with other parents, Richter said she realized how little information was out there to help families navigate the recruitment process.

"I heard a lot of horror stories and unhappy endings," she said. "Kids ended up not playing or transferred out of the school because it wasn't the right choice."

Richter, who lives in Lincolnshire, offered a series of tips to help ensure that students make the right choice about whether to play at the college level and which school to attend.

First and foremost, she said students need to consider whether the lifestyle of a college athlete is even right for them. She played clips of local college athletes discussing the ups—team bonding, love of the sport—and downs—a year-round practice schedule and holidays away from home—of playing sports at that level.

"You really have to love it, and you have to go in knowing what you're up against," she said.

Once students are ready to make that commitment, she suggested following these steps:

1. College recruitment doesn't happen on its own. Coaches don't have time to initiate contact with all but the most talented high school athletes. If no one has reached out to your child by junior year (in most cases through a high school coach because of NCAA rules governing recruitment), it's unlikely anyone will without the student getting things rolling.
2. Find someone who will honestly assess your child's talent. If you overestimate your child's talent, he or she may focus on the wrong level of school. With how competitive college sports are, Richter said even a high school soccer star might not be cut out for a Division I team. But a realistic appraisal of the student's ability allows him or her to target schools that are a good match and increase the chances of making the team.
3. Take the initiative to reach out to the coach. Though in most cases coaches can't call students until their junior year of high school, teens can make as many calls to the coach as they want. Students should seize that opportunity to let the coach know who they are and where their talents lie.
4. Get to know the scholarship options. Division I schools are the only ones that offer full scholarships, and only then for a small segment of sports. Other divisions offer partial scholarships, if they offer them at all—but in exchange, many will award merit scholarships for academics. If your student is also academically talented, weigh the financial impact an academic scholarship could have at a slightly less prestigious sports school.
5. It's never too early to start the process. Even though most students have yet to grow to their full size and talent by freshman year, they can start researching schools online to find ones with the blend of academics and sports most suited to them.

Sue Lillioja, whose 15-year-old daughter, Hannah, is a junior on the swim team, said she found the presentation particularly helpful because both she and her husband grew up in Australia. The whole process of college sport recruitment is completely new to them, she said.

The advice about reaching out to coaches was particularly useful, Lillioja said.

"[My daughter's] view would be, 'I can't contact the coach because he's busy,'" she said. "It's good I can say with some authority, 'This is a well-researched fact that hearing from students is OK.'"

Martha Maggiore, administrative assistant in the Superintendent's Office, said she believes sessions such as this are incredibly beneficial to parents.

"I don't think there's any wiser advice than parents talking to parents," she said.