High school athletes who don't have colleges knocking down their doors to offer them scholarships are learning it helps to have someone knocking on the door of colleges to find a school that meets their needs.

Scott Madsen, a former Tam High athletic director and assistant football coach at Terra Linda, is just such a man to bruise his knuckles to see if students can find a school where they can play and perhaps get some help with tuition.

"Scott has helped me out a lot. Without him I wouldn't have been able to do any of this on my own," said Terra Linda running back Paul Schilling, who is on the verge of committing to a small college. "I'm kind of lazy and he is really organized. The small schools definitely have a lot less guys to go out and recruit us. They can't come visit me, so I have to come to them."

What Schilling has is above average grades and test scores and above average football ability. He was an all-league standout, rushing for nearly 2,000 yards the past two seasons, but he didn't stand out enough to get the major colleges interested. Neither were his academic marks the kind that schools covet. But his total package was just what many smaller colleges are looking for in student-athletes.

The challenge for Madsen and his business partner, Jeff Dale, is letting those colleges know that Schilling exists and what he has to offer.

"With those Division II and Division III kind of schools you have to put Paul on their radar," Madsen said. "You have to show them, this is what he does and what we think he can do, and send them films and stats and test scores so they can evaluate him."

Madsen, whose business that is geared toward helping student-athletes in all sports but also helps non-athletes, created a marketing package for Schilling with all the facts and figures needed from football and academics and followed up with e-mails and calls to coaches.

"Some would say they liked Paul, but didn't need a running back and some would say they didn't see him playing on their level and some schools said he looks great for us," Madsen said.

Madsen ended up with about eight schools that had interest in Paul, that he and his family narrowed down to five to visit. The leading candidate is Occidental, a small D-III school in Los Angeles that Schilling knew little about before the process began. He found out it was a good academic school with a championship football team ranked nationally that is hard to get accepted into.

"If it wasn't for football, I'm not sure I would've got in, but the coaches like me and want me to play and I guess my grades are good enough to get in," Schilling said. "I had no idea of how to do it. I just knew I wanted to play football for someone and Scott is getting it done."

Although D-II and D-III schools often don't have athletic scholarships they do offer financial aid, which can be based both on financial need and athletic ability, depending on the school. The Schilling family is hoping to get half off at a school like Occidental, which costs $42,000 a year.

Madsen also worked with Main Catholic's Jono Grayson, another standout running back who many major schools deemed too small at 5-foot-7, 165 pounds.

"Coaches have a huge bias when it comes to size and weight and it is certainly not fair in Jono's case. He's the best back I've seen in years and why more D-I schools didn't see that is still a mystery. But Cal Poly (San Luis Obispo) watched his film and offered him a scholarship that night."

Like Occidental, Cal Poly is a championship caliber program on a smaller level - I-AA in football. Even if the big schools didn't give him the call, Grayson also felt he found the school just right for him.

"They helped me out a lot," Grayson said. "He simplified the process and kept me organized. It is tough to find the right school, but he sent out tapes and all kinds of letters to 30-40 schools."

Grayson's coach at MC, Ken Peralta, aided his player with the football side of his search, but coaches - who are often part-time employees - are only able to make so many calls. Madsen was counted on to help with the academics and marketing. Peralta agrees with Madsen that there is a school out there for every good high school player, but it takes research and effort.

"It's my job at MC to help kids get recruited and I do that a number of ways," said Peralta, who belongs to national coaching associations and has coached at the college level. "I think any service that helps young men and young women get focused is a good thing."

Part of what Madsen's service can do is make sure a junior is taking all the right courses as a senior to be eligible to play in college. It can be more confusing than it looks and good students from schools like De La Salle have made teams as a walk-on, only to be told they can't play because they didn't have enough science credits or some other NCAA requirement.

Terra Linda coach Tim Bosque said one of the most important steps in helping a student-athlete is getting them to be realistic about their expectations. Peralta helped quarterback Cam Taylor sign with Middlebury, a D-III school in Vermont. His top linebacker, John Stanton, is looking at several options including junior college.

"There are a number of opportunities for John and with a little more time to develop he could play at the top level," Peralta said. "He's a skinny guy with 205 pounds on his frame that should get bigger. That is what junior college is for. It can be a wonderful deal at that level. If you want a place to play there are 450 colleges that play football in this nation and if a boy wants to play there is a place for him somewhere."

The Schilling family learned their lesson the hard way when Paul's father Mike went to Sacramento State where he didn't play football, but then transferred to Sonoma State where he could play football. Like Paul, Mike was an all-league running back who was good enough to play in college, but not quite good enough to have the schools come to him.

"This kid made a timeline when he was 6 years old, and I think everything he said has come true," Paul's mother, Tina Schilling, said. "He's not going to play in the NFL, but he is going to college. I'm really proud of him and I hope it works out."

Tina said she wouldn't have known about the many small schools that Madsen contacted for Paul. The family believed neither the big schools or the junior colleges were the right choice for Paul.

"Paul would get lost at a huge school with 20,000 kids," Tina said. "I know he has big dreams, but we need him to go where he will fit in and Scott really investigated that for us."

Madsen's fees range anywhere from $50 for an initial evaluation to $2,000 for the full-package, which goes beyond the support Schilling received. He works with student-athletes all over the Bay Area in a variety of sports, as well as with students who aren't interested in athletics.