What can a player/parent do to market themselves to college coaches?
- Develop an online student athlete profile.
- This is your most valuable tool for organizing the details of your academic and athletic performance and communicating them to coaches. Frequently update your online student athlete profile to reflect competition results; participation in tournament, camps and showcases; video highlights, current G.P.A. and other information coaches need to evaluate prospects.
- Develop your own website for free by utilizing Google sites.
- It is an easy to use and free tool in which you can develop a personalized recruiting site. The site can be public (not recommended) or accessible only to those with the link (recommended).
- Include links to skills and full game videos in the site.
- YouTube is an easy way to distribute your videos to coaches.
- Just send them a link and they can watch immediately.
- Include links to this site in all e-mails to college coaches.
- Keep the site up-to-date with your upcoming tournaments, recent grades, test scores, etc.
Do I need a video?
- Yes.
What should my video contain?
- The type of video that coaches like to see varies from program to program.
- Ideally, you should include a skills tape, highlight video that is no more than 5 -7 minutes long
- The video from your best match or individual sets from the season.
Skills tape
- The skills tape gives coaches an opportunity to see your form and consistency.
- You want to keep your skills video short and to the point. Coaches are professional evaluators and can get an idea of your capabilities from 3-5 attempts at each skill.
- Skills tape pertains to your position
- If you are a Middle Blocker (volleyball) never play defense in the back row, then don't show coaches your floor moves, or maybe lack there of!
- Remember, video is the vehicle you use to motivate coaches to come see you play in person, so show them the skills in which you excel.
- Show your skills from a couple different angles i.e from behind and from the side.
- Make sure your skill tape captures the result of the ball.
- Coaches want to see if you can pass/dig consistently to target (volleyball). Therefore have someone standing in target catching your balls.
- Finally, the point of a skills video is to show your consistency i.e. how well you can perform the exact same skill 3-5 times IN A ROW! Therefore, keep editing limited by using the best 3-5 attempts in a row before you move on to the next camera angle or skill.
Highlight video
The highlights give you the opportunity to showcase your ability, athleticism, and attitude. A coach does not want to see 6 minutes of you attacking the exact same ball, however.
- Show your versatility by including clips of you hitting the high 5, 4, 2, Hut etc.
- Show any great defensive plays, your block coverage, how well you read the setter etc.
- The highlight reel shows coaches your potential so give them your very best.
Un-Edited Game
- You want to include a full match or at least back to back sets. This will give coaches a realistic look at how you play within the flow of a game.
- How do you communicate on the court, what is your attitude like when you are winning, or more importantly when you are losing?
- How do you react when you mess up? Do you shake it off and bounce back or shut down?
- Are you a leader on the court? Do you perform well under pressure i.e. no missed serves on game point! etc.
- It is important to help a coach get a better sense of you as a complete player, and by giving a coach a skills video, highlight video, and full match you are giving them what they need to evaluate you.
How do I get it to college coaches?
YouTube is an excellent vehicle to distribute the videos to college coaches. Unless you want it accessible to the public, make sure to set the appropriate privacy settings so that only those with the direct link can view it.
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