College Recruiting Tips & Insights

What College Coaches Really Want
Put Yourself in a College Coach’s Shoes – What would it be like if you met 100 new people every week? Not only that, what if you had to get to know them well enough to decide who was going to be your new best friend?

This is what recruiting is like for college coaches. Each week they hear from tons of new players and have to figure out which of those players they’re going to recruit. It’s kind of like picking a fantasy football team if you’ve never watched an NFL game.

The fact is, it’s impossible for a college coach to evaluate every player. One coach told me recently, “I know going into this that I’m never going to be able to see 90% of the players who contact me.” Yikes.

What college coaches tell us they want is to be able to quickly figure out who you are and what you’re like as a player. Your job is to make this easy for coaches. Otherwise, it’s quite likely that you’ll get lost in the shuffle.
Make it absurdly easy for a college coach to evaluate you.

You need college coaches to be able to get a clear picture of who you are in 5 minutes or less.

Don’t hold back: give them the information they need to decide to pursue you or not. If they decide you’re not right for their team, you won’t waste any more time on that school. If they do like what they see, then they’ll add you to their list of priority recruits.

Here are the four questions you need to answer for them:
1. Do you have the grades to get in?
2. Do you play for a good team?
3. Do you play at good tournaments that they attend?
4. Do you have a short highlight video that they can watch?

If a coach can answer “yes” to these questions quickly, you’ll have helped them make an informed decision. Then you can get the feedback you need to move forward — whether it means pursuing that school aggressively, or focusing your time and energy on other opportunities.