VALDOSTA — Information is power.

Valdosta High athletic director Reginald Mitchell wants for the school’s student-athletes to be as informed as they possibly can in pursuit of a college scholarship, which is why the Wildcats held a recruiting seminar Tuesday in the Performing Arts Center.

“When I assumed the job as AD, I had a list of things I wanted to get accomplished as AD,” Mitchell said. “One was, to make our parent, guardians, and student athletes more aware of the recruiting process.”

Although Mitchell wasn’t quite able to get his vision off the ground in his first year as athletic director, the Valdosta football team received its recruiting lesson last month when the National Preps director of southeast scouting Joe Windon went over the specifics of the process.

The rest of the school’s student-athletes heard a similar lecture from the Next College Student Athlete (NCSA) director of regional recruiting, Ron Sigler.

It’s NCSA’s mission to help every student-athlete and college program benefit from a successful recruiting process, which it achieves by working to ensure the athletes and their families are informed, confident and inspired by the college opportunities created.

Tuesday, Sigler provided tips to help student-athletes throughout the process, such as: following and interacting with the position coaches from schools of interest on social media and placing a priority on showcases or combines that release verifiable numbers.

But the most important aspect of Sigler’s speech focused on the academic requirements necessary to even land on a college program’s recruiting radar.

“Cs make you non-recruitable,” Sigler said in front of the crowd of student-athletes, parents and guardians.

Sigler gave an example of a 3.2 overall GPA that’d be ruled ineligible due to a low core GPA resulting from Cs in courses like math, science, history and English. He also urged the student-athletes to take both the SAT and ACT in order to discover which test they perform best on.

According to data from The College Board, the average published charges for tuition, fees and room and board at in-state public four-year institutions was $20,090 in 2016-17. For a public four-year out-of-state institution, the average cost was $35,370.

Mitchell and Valdosta are trying to do everything it can to help families combat the rising cost of college.

“The dynamics have changed somewhat with the NCAA and some of their rule changes, so I just wanted to make sure we constantly stand on the cutting edge of what’s going on with the recruiting process,” Mitchell said. “Education is powerful, so if the parents and guardians know what’s going on, the athletes know what’s going on, the coaches know what’s going, all those stake-holders involved know what’s going on, it should help us to get out student-athletes recruited.”

Derrick Davis is the sports editor at the Valdosta Daily Times.