Navigating the Recruiting Process

If you’re a High School athlete (or the parent of one) looking to play in a college, your head may be swimming when you start to think about the Recruiting Process. It can be hard to know exactly what you should be doing to reach your goal of playing in college, but also playing at a school that is the right fit for you. From my experiences and conversations with other coaches, there are a few important points I can share with you that should help you along the way.

Know What You Want

It seems simple, but this should be the first and most important step you take. Sit down, make a list, and prioritize what is important to you. This activity will help you identify potential strong fits for you, and will prepare you to have a conversation with your coaches, club recruiting coordinator, and potential college coaches. It always impresses me when I have a first conversation with a potential recruit and they know exactly what they are looking for. Some things you may want to consider:

• Major – If you know what you want to study, it’s extremely important that your future school has your major.
• Cost of attendance and potential for Scholarship Aid
• Location and Size of School – Do you want to stay close to home? Go as far away as possible? Are you looking for a small school or big school experience?
• Coaching Staff – How important is the Coaching Philosophy and Style of your future school’s coaching staff to you?
• Playing at the Highest Level vs Playing for the Team where you can have the biggest role – Excluding the most elite athletes, playing for the team that gives you to play at the highest level with the most current team success and playing for the team that gives you the opportunity to have the biggest role (especially early in your college career) are going to lead you to different decisions.
• Other Factors – What other personal considerations are important to you?

As you go through these questions, the ones that you have very specific answers to are likely most important to you, where the ones you don’t know the answer to or are very open on are likely less important to you.

Involve Your Coach

Now that you know what you want, it’s important that you share this information. Your High School Coach, Club Coach, and Club Recruiting Coordinator should all know what you’re looking for in a potential school. While I have the opportunity to see a large number of athletes during the High School season, Club season, and through recruiting services, I’m still only seeing a relatively small number when compared to the overall population of High School Volleyball athletes. Another way that college coaches find potential athletes for their team are by contacting coaches and recruiting coordinators for information on athletes on their teams that might be a good fit for their program. If your coaches know what you’re looking for, they are better prepared to help you.

Involving your coach is also important for communication purposes. As an NAIA coach, I can communicate directly with potential student-athletes and their parents, but this isn’t the case all of the time for all collegiate divisions. Because of this, it is a good rule of thumb to always include your coach’s contact information when communicating with a college coach. That way if they cannot communicate directly with you, you have at least provided them with a resource to find out more information and provide feedback if you would potentially be a good fit for their program.

Contact Schools You’re Interested In

Once you know what you want and have involved your coach, you are ready to contact schools that you are interested in. A lot of schools will have a recruiting questionnaire that you can fill out on their website. Whether you choose to fill that out or not, I recommend that you also send an introductory email the Volleyball coaching staff. Always be sure to include the Assistant Coach(es) on your email, as they are often taking the lead on a lot of the recruiting contacts. 

Tips for Your Introductory Email

• Include the following information: Name, High School Grad Year, Position, High School, Club Team, Potential Major, GPA, ACT or SAT score, Height, Standing Reach, Block Touch, Approach Touch
• Include a link to video of you playing
• Provide your High School and/or Club Schedule. An interested coach may want to see you play in person.
• Provide your coach’s contact information
• Personalize the email in some way. The easiest way is to include a sentence or two about why you are interested in the school you are contacting. Do not send out mass emails, especially using a program that auto-fills in information. This may seem like a time saver, but it’s very obvious when an email has been mass emailed out. It can also lead to embarrassing mistakes that won’t create the first impression you want. Overall, the extra time you take to personalize your email will make it more likely that you’ll stick out and receive a response.

Tips for Your Recruiting Video

• Limit any Introduction
• Actual Game Footage is preferred over Practice or “Skills” video
• Show the complete rally whenever possible in Highlight videos. Coaches want to see not only the contact that you make, but how you move and position yourself on the court throughout the rally.
• Do not use special effects such as highlighting, slow motion, pausing mid-rally, or shading. You may think they look really cool, but they actually just distract from watching you play. A single indicator of which player you are on the court at the beginning of the video is more than enough.
• Tape from behind the endline on your team’s side of the net whenever possible.
• The first plays on a Highlight video should emphasize skills specific to your position. Hitters should show themselves hitting first, Liberos should show themselves in Serve Receive and Defense, and Setters should show themselves setting a variety of attacks.

Do You Need a Recruiting Service?

There are many recruiting services available to athletes interested in finding a school to play at, but one of the most common questions I hear discussed by parents and athletes is to ask whether or not they need a recruiting service. The short answer to this question is that No you do not need one, but it might help you.

If you are well organized and willing to put in the work yourself, you can do everything the recruiting service does for you without the cost. Youtube is a free and easy way to host your recruiting videos. The main benefits that the recruiting services are going to offer you are organizing your recruiting activity in one place, and it may help you learn about and be contacted by some schools that you wouldn’t have otherwise. Determining whether or not this is worth the cost, and which one offers you the best service for your money is a personal decision.

Still have questions? Feel free to email me at matt@prepdig.com

I’ll be happy to answer, and with enough questions I will put together a follow-up to this article.