Find your fitRecruiting fit, built on real results
McKAILEN shows athletes and parents where a track and field athlete fits in college, using the results college athletes have actually posted.
Why I built McKAILEN
I’ve been fortunate to experience this sport from a lot of different angles.
I’ve worked with Olympians, professional athletes, college athletes, and high school athletes. I’ve been around national and international medalists and champions, and I’ve had the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest coaches in the history of our sport — watching how they coach, how they evaluate athletes, how they build programs, and how they recruit.
I’ve coached at the Division I, Division II, Division III, and high school levels.
But I also come at this as something else:
- A former athlete.
- A father.
- A coach.
- A mentor.
And those perspectives are ultimately why McKAILEN exists.
Read the full story
The problem I kept seeing
There are a lot of talented kids who want the opportunity to compete in college.
The problem isn’t always talent.
Sometimes they simply don’t know where they fit.
Families are told they need recruiting services, showcases, consultants, exposure packages, subscriptions, videos, and countless emails just to have a chance.
Parents can spend thousands of dollars and still be left asking the same basic questions:
- Is this school realistic for my child?
- Would the coach actually be interested in them?
- Could they contribute to this program?
- Will this program help them become better?
- Are we looking at the right schools in the first place?
Parents need clarity.
They don’t need smoke and mirrors.
And they shouldn’t have to spend thousands of dollars just to help their son or daughter figure out where they might have an opportunity to compete in college.
That’s why we built McKAILEN
McKAILEN is designed to make the recruiting process smarter, clearer, and more accessible.
Most recruiting platforms begin with:
How do we get you noticed?
I believe there is a question that should come first:
Who should you be trying to get noticed by?
There are thousands of college programs across the country. The best opportunity for an athlete may not be the school they’ve heard the most about, the biggest name on their list, or the program with the largest social-media following.
It may be a program they haven’t discovered yet.
Our goal is to use real performance data, program results, athlete development, coaching information, and other meaningful factors to help athletes understand where they may fit.
Not just where they can get admitted.
Not just where they might make a roster.
But where they may have a genuine opportunity to compete, contribute, develop, and belong.
More than a recruiting database
One of the most important things I’ve learned from great coaches is that recruiting isn’t simply about finding the fastest athlete.
It’s about projection.
Development.
Fit.
Opportunity.
And understanding what an athlete might become in the right environment.
A high school personal record tells part of the story. What happens to athletes after they enter a program tells another.
McKAILEN is being built to help families see more of that picture.
We want to help athletes identify programs that may fall into three useful categories:
Reach. Match. Thrive.
Not as guarantees.
Not as promises.
But as a better starting point for the recruiting conversation.
What I hope McKAILEN accomplishes
At its core, this is about opportunity.
I want the talented kid from a small school to have access to information that previously might only have been available to athletes with extensive recruiting networks.
I want parents sitting at the kitchen table with their son or daughter to feel like they finally understand the landscape.
I want college coaches hearing from more athletes who actually make sense for their programs.
And I want athletes discovering schools and opportunities they may never have found on their own.
The recruiting process will always involve uncertainty. No app can replace the relationship between an athlete and a coach, and no algorithm should make one of the biggest decisions of a young person’s life for them.
What technology can do is give families better information before those conversations begin.
That’s what we’re trying to build.
A clearer starting point.
A smarter recruiting process.
And hopefully, more opportunities for kids to continue doing the sport they love.
Where the numbers come from
Thrive, Match and Reach are explained on the Fit Board, right under the category buttons. See what each category means →
Where the data comes from
- Performance: public college track and field results, collected program by program.
- Cost and admissions: published U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard figures (cost of attendance, average net price, test-score ranges, graduation rate and more). These are shown for your information and aren’t part of your category.
What the category doesn’t claim
A category compares marks. It doesn’t predict admission, a scholarship, a coach’s interest, or how you’d place at a meet. Use it to build a smart list, then talk to the coaches.
What you can count on
Scores only from real college results
Categories are built only from marks college athletes have actually posted in competition, taken from public college results. A program that doesn’t have enough results in your event on record isn’t placed at all; it shows as “No score yet” instead of a guess.
No athlete names shown
School pages show where your mark would slot among a program’s athletes, but every row is anonymous. We never show college athletes’ names, and we never show yours to anyone you haven’t linked.
Parent approval for athletes under 18
If an athlete is under 18, a parent or guardian must link their account and approve it before school, grades, test scores, majors, budget or distance can be saved. A parent can withdraw approval at any time, and those details are cleared immediately.
Your data is never sold
We don’t sell athlete or family data.
Athletes, parents and coaches
Athletes
Enter the event you run, jump or throw and your best mark. See which programs you can reach, match and thrive at, then save schools, track outreach and draft messages to coaches on your list.
Parents
Link to your athlete’s account from Parent View and approve it if they’re under 18. Every school page shows cost of attendance, average net price and admissions figures from College Scorecard.
High-school coaches
Point athletes at programs where their marks already fit, and ground college conversations in real results instead of guesswork.
Common questions
How are the categories decided?
Each school gets two lines in your event, rebuilt every night from public college results. The Thrive line is the typical 8th-best mark on its conference’s season list over the last three seasons. At a school whose freshmen are better than that, the Thrive line is its typical freshman instead, so Thrive always means top 8 in the conference and at least the middle of that school’s freshman class. Match means at or ahead of that school’s typical college freshman (marks from their first college season, not from high school), or that your mark plus the typical gain from a high school best to a college career best reaches its conference top 8. That gain comes from athletes who finished a college career, and the card says how many. Reach is behind the typical freshman. A Reach school marked “Walk-on level” is one where you’re already in the range of its freshmen. Further back than that, Reach runs to within 4% in sprints, 5% in hurdles and distance, 6% in jumps, 8% in multis and 12% in throws. Each card also shows the conference meet mark: the season best of the athlete at the back of that school’s conference championship field, typical of the last three seasons. Where a school has no freshman marks on file, Match can only come from the top-8 route; otherwise it’s Reach until those marks arrive. Each school shows its lines and when they were last updated. A school missing a line is placed by your mark against its roster, and its card says so. Your results also show the mark that moves a school up one category.
Does Thrive mean I would score at the conference meet?
No. A season list ranks every athlete’s best mark of the year, from any meet. A championship is one race or one series on one day, and it can go very differently. Top 8 on the list tells you your mark is at the level of the athletes near the front of that conference. It isn’t a meet result, a qualifying standard or a promise of points. Where we have a conference’s actual championship results, the card shows them separately, with the year.
What do the numbers on a school card mean?
“You’d rank about 4th of 6” counts the athletes in your event at that school in one season. When we combine several seasons to have enough athletes, it says “in a typical season”. “Faster than 73% of D1 freshmen nationwide” compares you with every freshman at that level across the country over the last three seasons, not with that one school. The small print on each card says how many athletes and which seasons the roster numbers come from. Small samples are labelled.
Why is my event converted?
Some high-school events aren’t run in college, so there are no college results to compare them with. We score them as the nearest college event: 300H as 400H, 1600m as 1500m, 3200m and 2 mile as 5000m, 55m as 60m and 55H as 60H. A converted mark is an estimate, and it’s labelled that way on your results.
Why can’t I see athlete names?
College athletes didn’t sign up for McKAILEN, so we don’t put their names next to a comparison. You still see every anonymous mark on the roster and exactly where yours would land, which is what matters for fit.
How do parents approve?
The athlete generates an invite code on their Athlete Profile page. The parent creates a parent account, enters the code in Parent View to link, and taps Approve. Until then, the athlete can still search, but school, academic and family details stay blank.
How current is the data?
Each school shows when its Thrive and Match lines were last updated. They’re rebuilt every night, and conference lists are re-pulled every week during the season.
Ready to see where you fit?
Find My FitQuestions? Email info@mckailen.com