Listen to this articleBelow is our recent interview with Melvin Nunnery, President at SchollyME:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to SchollyME?
A: SchollyME is short and hip for Scholarship Me. It was built out of a need to assist high school athletes along with their parents in the NCAA recruiting process. It can be very difficult getting a scholarship if you don’t know how or where to look. Each year in the United States there are approximately 7.6 million high school athletes competing for 142,000 scholarships. There are tons of talented athletes that go undiscovered simply because college coaches haven’t heard about them.
Recruiting is the backbone of all college programs. No coach wants to miss out on an athlete who can help their program win. SchollyME has put together the #1 do it yourself recruiting app that is also a social network. No one will work harder than the athletes on getting an athletic scholarship than themselves.
A high school athlete should never leave their scholarship dreams in the hands of their coach. For one, coaches aren’t paid to work overtime, they have their own families, they already put in extra work for the program, their significant other is always demanding more time and you’re not their kid. Let’s face it, your high school coach can only do so much. Getting an athletic scholarship is very competitive and the best thing an athlete can do is market and promote themselves to college coaches on the platform they’re using every day.
Recommended: Q: Who is your ideal user and why?
A: The13 year old kid dreaming about getting a scholarship one day in whatever sport they desire. The recruiting process really starts as young as 13 these days and sometimes younger. SchollyME is for any kid or parent that wants to get noticed by college coaches across the country. The coaches on our mobile app range from top Division 1 programs to NAIA. It doesn’t matter what your talent level is because you should be able to find a program that is willing to accept you into their program.
SchollyME is not only for the athlete, but it’s for their fans and family. This is a great app to communicate with other athletes, friends and family from all over the country. As an athlete is being recruited by a school, he or she can reach out to other athletes who currently attend that school or those who have committed to attend the school. The student body of these programs love getting involved in the recruiting process of a top athlete on SchollyME. Choosing where you’ll attend college is one of the biggest decisions a family will make. It would help a great deal if the parents could speak to other parents in a similar situation.
There are really cool features for the athlete and fans:
Song of the Day – followers who land on your page can play the song that describes your mood for the day. When they arrive on your page, they’ll see a play button. They can play your song while they surf your page or click the stop button. I believe music is the soundtrack to our lives and everyone has a song that can describe what they’re going through at that very moment. Why wouldn’t you want to hear and feel that mood?
Kilt’d – hip word that replaces killed it. Here you can upload any short video that is no longer than 15 seconds in length. These videos can be sports related, dance, singing or anything you believe you Kilt’d in and want the world to see. The videos are ranked to top 100 based on likes and comments daily. We let the fans decided what’s hot and what’s not.
Pep Talk – weekly blog from our Sports Psychiatrist Dr. Ashley Benjamin. These blogs cover everyday events, issues, recruiting and life problems. Dr. Ash doesn’t try to give you the answers to these pressing issues he merely attempts to get you to a place where you begin thinking about your own solution to these questions.
I chose Dr. Ash to lead Pep Talk because he’s been my personal psychiatrist since 2014 when a few of my friends tried to take my company away from me. Dr. Ash was amazing at guiding me through that rough patch. Also, he authored an amazing book entitled: The Student Athlete’s College Recruitment Guide. It’s a must read.
My Academics – where athletes enter their GPA and SAT scores for college coaches. The athlete may request a verification of their score so college coaches can see that the scores are accurate along with the date the scores were verified by our trusted staff. Also, athletes can request a transcript upload. We have developed a unique process that will allow a college coach to request the transcript from the athlete, and if the athletes accept the request from the coach then the coaches receive an official transcript emailed within 2 seconds.
The transcripts are sent to us directly from the athlete’s school in a sealed and stamped envelope. My team verifies the information and the athlete then stores it on our database. The transcripts are sent from us and the athlete never touches the transcript during any part of the process. This is the fastest and most efficient process in the country.
Q: You’ve recently partnered with the Chinese Electronic Chamber of Commerce – Esports; can you tell us something more?
A: The Chinese market in terms of Esports is very large. In fact, China has the second largest gaming market in the world. We have been granted access to over 88 million gamers in China and boy are we excited! We’ve teamed up with the CECC to assist those gamers in marketing themselves to the United States Universities in hopes to receive a scholarship.
In 2019 there are 77 US Universities that offer scholarship money for gamers. UC Berkley, UC Irvine, Miami, University of Ohio, Boise State University, Georgia Southern and the University of Utah to name a few. Most top gamers turn professional at a very young age between 13-21. Our goal is to make sure the larger nonprofessional market has a home. We cater to the gamers that are very talented but not able to earn the big bucks right away.
SchollyME will also participate in sponsoring cross boarder tournaments with the United States and China. This relationship will allow China Universities to recruit Americans and American Universities will be able to recruit Chinese gamers. This has never been done before, so we better do a great job.
Recommended: Q: What can we expect from SchollyME in next three months?
A: You can expect SchollyME to become the leading expert in Esports and gaming recruiting. We are aiming to become the trailblazer in gaming as much as we are in traditional sports. SchollyME was the first recruiting social network certified by the NCAA. Now we have become the first and best recruiting social network for gamers.
You can expect our app to get better. We are always looking to improve our app for our consumers. Our goal is to be faster and more robust. I’m excited for the improvements and added features that are coming to the SchollyME platform in the next three months. At the end of the day it’s all about the user experience, and with our recent partnership we are more than capable of achieving that goal.
Q: What are main benefits for high school and jr. college athletes?
A: Targeted exposure. Before SchollyME existed 72% of all athletic recruiting was being done over several social media platforms. That has changed drastically since the emergence of SchollyME. On the other platforms you have a bunch of noise that coaches are forced to navigate through in order to find an athlete. On our platform it’s very simple for athletes and parents to find the coaches, and for the coaches to find the athlete and parents.
There have been great Hall of Fame athletes and future Hall of Fame athletes that were not recruited out of high school. Athletes such as JJ Watt, Scottie Pippen, Antonio Brown, Ben Wallace, Ozzie Smith, Clay Matthews, Ryan Howard and Jordy Nelson. Did they not have the talent in high school and became better once they were college? Or were they overlooked in high school because they came from a smaller school?
The biggest benefit to using SchollyME is that anyone one can get a scholarship if you have a little talent and a smartphone. Our mantra is: Go from discovered to offered in one click. We really want the kid in Mississippi or Kentucky to have the same opportunity as the kid from California or Texas has. It doesn’t matter if you come from a wealthy family or a poverty-stricken family. SchollyME levels the playing field so that everyone has the same opportunity to get discovered and display their talent. I would say the main benefit is the ability to receive something tangible. A scholarship.
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