NCSA Next College Student Athlete

Where We Came From 

NCSA is a classic Cinderella story. Founded in 2000 by former footballer Chris Krause, NCSA first began in a basement office and has since grown to more than 600 employees.

Chris Krause became passionate about helping families navigate the recruiting process after a tumultuous recruiting experience himself.

His story is very similar to many other recruits, and maybe even similar to your own story! When Chris started receiving letters from Division I football programs, he waited for coaches to reach out to him with an offer. When none came, he realized he needed to take matters into his own hands. Chris began calling college coaches up, only to find that, for most programs, he was a little too late. After countless hours reaching out to college coaches, he finally received an offer to play football at Vanderbilt.

To ensure other families didn’t make the same recruiting mistakes he did, Chris Krause developed NCSA’s suite of technology solutions.

As Chris will tell you, he was his first client. And, over the years, NCSA has continued to grow our client base from one to now tens of thousands of student-athletes in our network. But, we all still focus on the number one: change one life at a time, through one conversation at a time. We’ve come a long way since Chris’ basement office with his fax machine, and NCSA will never stop evolving and adapting to continue to deliver world-class technology and service to meet the changing needs of our clients.

Since 2000, NCSA has helped more than 100,000 student-athletes commit to colleges and become the largest-NCAA compliant recruiting company.

NCSA has also grown our database of college coaches to more than 42,000 coaches. 99% of all colleges across the country use NCSA for their recruiting. But NCSA’s favorite number is actually 0. We haven't turned away a single family due to financial reasons. NCSA is proud of our contributions in helping high school athletes find the best college sports program for them.

We've Got Perks, Yes We Do!

“Our goal is for our employees to feel appreciated because we know without them, we wouldn’t be able to accomplish all that we have,” said Lisa Strasman, President of NCSA.

NCSA works hard to make sure we provide employees everything they need to not only do their job, but have fun at the same time. From best-in-class benefits to incentive programs, work from home opportunities and advancement options, employees are empowered to find their career at NCSA.

NCSA was recognized by the National Association for Business Resources (NABR) as one of 2016’s “Best and Brightest Companies to Work For® in the Nation,” its fourth consecutive year receiving this national award.

Facing fierce competition, NCSA rose to the top based on our many culture initiatives.

• The Wellness Credit Reimbursement Program that reimburses employees $65 every month to use toward any healthy lifestyle event or product like a gym membership, vitamins, race entry fees and more
• The Employee Referral Program, encouraging employees to refer new hires and granting monetary bonuses
• Daily lunch options from Fooda, team lunches, Bagel Fridays, and coffee & fruit every day
• Paid entry into organized sport tournaments
• Laptop reimbursement program
• Happy hours and other social events
• Company-wide sports events, including the yearly Turkey Bowl flag football tournament that draws more than 100 employee participants
• Flexible spending accounts

NABR evaluated each winning company based on a variety of criteria, including: compensation and benefits, engagement and retention, employee education and development, recruitment, diversity and inclusion, community initiatives, and communication and vision, among others. Earlier in 2016, NCSA also won Chicago’s “Best and Brightest Companies to Work For” award for its sixth consecutive year.

Why Does NCSA Help Student-Athletes?

The recruiting process can be complicated, frustrating and completely overwhelming. It takes hard work and dedication on and off the field or court to earn an athletic scholarship. So, why in the world does NCSA want to be involved?

The simple answer is that we don’t want to see high school athletes miss out on their dreams of playing sports in college. But there’s a lot more to it than that.

We believe strongly in Athleadership.

Athleadership -- from athlete and leadership -- is how leaders empower themselves and others through sports. Athleaders are student-athletes who maximize sports to get ahead and to give back to the community. They are individuals who use sports as a stepping stone to achieve lofty but attainable goals. We want to help develop athleaders.

Getting an athletic scholarship is an important first step in a college career.

College is a time for unbelievable personal growth, and the time spent in college greatly impacts the rest of our life. We want to help athletes find the right college, and make the experience as rewarding and positive as it can be.

A college degree is an amazing thing and everybody has a right to one.

We know the power of a college degree. We’re familiar with the success a degree can bring and the doors it can open. And we want to make sure that every college recruit that deserves an athletic scholarship gets one. We don’t want to see any student-athletes left behind simply because they didn’t know how the recruiting process worked.

We’ve All Been There Before

Most of the staff at NCSA participated in sports while in college. So, we know exactly what college recruits are going through, because at one time most of us went through the process too. That gives us essential insight and the ability to empathize with each student-athlete we deal with. We are here to help.