The number one goal of Sparks Consulting is to pair each student athlete with an ideal swimming and academic programs that will maximize the athlete's educational, athletic, and personal ideals.

We work on a personal, individual basis with each athlete and their family, and we provide each one with the benefit of our relationship with the swimming community and with our tried and true method for zeroing in on each student’s true values. And once those values are identified we then help each student athlete assert those values in the recruiting process, helping each to find their way to a school that they will personally appreciate, and where they will be appreciated.

Our overall client admit-rate for their selected first choice is 96%! (Though we prefer to judge true success by the impact college has on our clients after four years.)

What is the college swimming experience (actually) about?

The intense coverage of Division I programs throughout the year, in various media outlets, makes these programs highly visible. Yet some Division II and III programs take the sport just as seriously and have benefits Division I schools do not offer for every athlete.

Each of these divisions has a “general culture” and a “specific programmatic culture” that is usually a large and extremely meaningful part of years 18–22 for students. In the end the college swimming experience is actually about how these various divisions, leagues, and programs impact and relate with you – the student-athlete.

What is truly the ‘best’ experience?

The "best" experience is found in the school where the most positive impact can occur for both the athlete and the school. At Sparks Consulting we are of the opinion that the best undergraduate experience depends wholly on the qualities of the student-athlete, the school, and the swimming program, and their chemistry together! The essential relationship between student and school is one that affects both at a deep level. Any lesser pairing makes for a highly expensive, lukewarm experience at best.

How We Match

In part, we consider ourselves a matching service and we seek to provide schools with ideal student-athlete matches for their specific programs; and we excel at cutting through the chaff on recruiting coordinator's desks. Simultaneously, we work with student-athletes to help them present the qualities the do possess that are most important to their chosen schools, in both the admission and recruiting processes.

Sparks Consulting is a win-win solution! That is our mission, and we continually succeed at it because we are uncommonly good at what we do. Our long-term goal is to further develop college swimming by educating our clients about themselves and about the recruiting process, and by working to connect all of the entities within the swimming community in everything we do.

Coaching in Our Natural Element

Everyone who works at Sparks is ultimately a coach at heart. We seek to understand the potential and value of each athlete we work with, and we help them express those values at their fullest. Each of our counselors works with a very small client load to guarantee they can develop close relationships with our clients and their families; and these small client loads make the process far more rewarding for our families.

We are also intimately familiar with the admissions process student-athletes will experience, since each of our staff has personal experience working with the swimming recruiting process. This provides our families with a distinct advantage that many private firms or school counselors cannot match.

We specialize in helping student athletes present their own unique attributes; and we prepare them to demonstrate that their attributes are a good match for specific universities and swimming programs during the admissions process. Our training also includes how to properly prepare and submit applications and essays, how to make appropriate phone calls to coaches and admissions officers, how to construct proper emails, how to speak to coaches, and how to conduct themselves during official visits. This is our natural element, and we understand the recruiting and admissions processes on every level.

Integrity and Passion

Out of necessity we do limit our clientele. We do this to provide the best services possible to those we work with in the swimming community while we also provide the best possible match for students and colleges. We also believe this is the proper way to establish trust with our clients, which we think is the critical bond in any coaching relationship.

Thus, we seek out athletes with the passion to take their swimming to the next level and beyond. And then we examine each case individually to help align the athlete with the best opportunity to enjoy their college experience.

When and How to Begin

Our services are free for high school freshmen. Then we start a pricing plan for sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

Though our most intense work generally occurs with our juniors and seniors during their fall semester, they can certainly begin earlier if they wish. Ideally a client will work with us over the course of their entire junior year, thereby saving energy and expense on the process in their senior year. We prefer to build a close and abiding relationship with our clients, since it is essential to know each athlete as the complex individual they are; which allows us to maximizing the impact of our services to them as college and recruiting guidance counselors.

We seek to provide a coaching experience that is as intensely satisfying as we want their college experience to be – and we want it to be character-driven, efficient, effective, and most of all...enjoyable!