Summer is almost gone, and the fall sports season is just around the corner. Over the past summer, many of Hawai'i's future sports stars have been honing their skills in an effort to get to the next level. It seems that a record number of aspiring college athletes have been attending summer sports camps. According to a recent article in a local weekly paper, parents of school-aged children throughout Hawai'i are shelling out big bucks in an effort to land big college athletic scholarships as a means to pay for higher education.

But how realistic is the dream of athletic stardom to the average school-aged child?

According to the NCAA, the likelihood of a high school football player making it onto the roster of an NCAA institution is less than 6 percent. And more than half of these opportunities are non-scholarship programs and not at the big-time Division I schools that dominate the Saturday TV schedules. The odds of going pro in football are less than 1 in 1,000. The odds of success in basketball are even slimmer at 3 in 10,000. I hope it leads parents to ask the question, "Even if my child has the athletic ability, will he be able to academically get into the college that offers that full ride?"

The NCAA a while back set minimum academic standards for all freshmen going to Division I or Division II schools (these are the ones that can give out athletic scholarships). These standards include: graduation from high school, completion of a minimum of 14 specific college prep or "core courses," and a minimum SAT/ACT score. These requirements will be more rigorous starting with the 2008-2009 academic year. Perhaps these same parents should start to put the same level of emphasis on after-school tutoring in math and English as they do on conditioning, weight-training and athletic-skill development.

Fortunately, there are opportunities for academics as well. For the past three years, I have been involved with a summer camp in La'ie called Game Plan Hawai'i, which is put on by Education 1st, a local nonprofit. The Game Plan program emphasizes more than just athletic skills. It looks at what it takes to get involved in, and best benefit from, the college experience.

The Game Plan Academy seeks to prepare local students (around three-quarters of the participants to date have been Native Hawaiians) to get into and succeed in college, not just athletically but also academically. More than 70 percent of the participants during the academy's first three years have gone on to college, not just to play but to succeed.

This year Education 1st added the Game Plan Football camp, where more than 230 Hawai'i high school football players went to develop their playing skills under the direction of some of the top coaches in the nation. These players also developed mental skills not associated merely with football. The football camp addressed academic preparation for college. Education 1st co-founder Asai Gilman sums it all up in Stephen Tsai's Aug. 8 article, "Lessons learned on and off the field," in the following words: "We didn't want to just mentor in football. If you have the talent but can't get into school, it ends, doesn't it? We wanted a full program to teach the players how to become better student-athletes."

More parents should feel the same way.

Wayne M. Tanna is a professor of accounting and an NCAA compliance officer at Chaminade University. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.