Nationally-known speaker Michael Nadal will educate families on the way to prepare mentally, physically and academically for both college athletics and the recruiting process when Pioneer hosts the Student-Athlete and College Recruiting Program on Feb. 7 at 7:30 p.m.

The free event will be open to all high school student athletes, as well as parents, athletic directors and coaches.

The Student-Athlete and College Recruiting Program was created to aid all student athletes, whether male or female, to prepare for the transition to college.

The program is also geared for younger athletes as well. Student athletes as young as ninth grade will also benefit from this program in order to learn what it will take to participate in college athletics.

The program aims to help clear up any confusion over the NCAA regulations that concern academics and athletics.

Some of the information that will be touched upon in the program will be academics, athletics in general and marketing.

The academics section of the program will detail the eligibility requirements needed to be a college athlete, how to calculate the NCAA core credits, when is the best time to register with the NCAA clearinghouse, how to meet the "Qualifier Index" and how to use academics as a method of getting recruited.

Athletics will touch on goal setting, training instruction on speed, strength and plyometrics, the level of commitment needed, the mental capacity it requires as well as the physical capacity and even how parents can evaluate their child's talent level on a realistic scale.

And the program will also detail how to market a student-athlete to desired colleges, scholarships available for Division I and II, a list of NCAA colleges by division as well as by state and the options of marketing the student-athlete to college coaches.

Included in the program is an actual list of the available scholarships for all sports in Division I and II schools and a four-step plan to help compete for a scholarship.

The program will also detail the recruiting process. They will explain the college evaluation sheets, explain key words in the recruiting process, show examples of a college coach's recruiting calendar, touch on some general recruiting questions, explain how to receive unofficial visits and give effective ways to evaluate specific universities.

For more information on the program, visit www.dynamitesports.com.