Initial Email to Coaches

A message that you will see repeated on any credible recruiting information is that college coaches want to hear from you, the student athlete. Learning how to communicate properly is a must in the college recruiting process. See below for some guidelines on sending your initial email to a coach.

Heading: Make the subject of the email “YOUR NAME and YOUR GRAD YEAR” Make sure to start the email with Dear Coach (USE THEIR NAME). Make it personal, this whole process is personal so make sure you start on the right foot!

Length: Keep it short and sweet. College coaches are looking at hundreds of these and want to get to the important information asap!

Content: Include your name, contact info, grad year, position and a link to your online athletic resume. Then a short paragraph about why you feel you are a good fit for their program athletically AND academically.

Closing: Thank the coach for taking the time to read your email and let them know you are looking forward to hearing from them!

Follow up: If you do not hear back from the coach within a week, send another email or call them confirming they received your correspondence. Whenever a coach reaches out to you, make sure you respond within 24 hours!

Get Seen

Once you have your list of colleges, you’ve created an athletic resume/video, and you’ve reached out to your prospective coaches, it is time to get seen live! It is very easy to waste a lot of time and money going to the wrong events. Also, do not plan on getting “discovered” at these events. These coaches will be coming with a list of players they are scouting. Reach out to the coaches before hand and let them know that you will be attending the event. Get yourself on their list!

College Camps: Colleges usually hold their own showcase/camp on campus. For your top schools, it would be a great idea to attend these events. Find the dates of these events by going to the each schools athletic page.

Showcases/Tournaments: Do not just sign up for random events. Attend showcases or tournaments that have multiple schools on your list at one event. Look for events that post a list of confirmed schools before the event.

Summer Team: Send your schedule to your prospective coaches so they can come to see you play when they are available. Make sure your playing on a team that will focus on developing your talents as well as get you exposure experience at showcases and tournaments.

Visit your top schools

Visiting your top schools is an essential part of the process. This will give you an opportunity to see the classrooms, campus life, indoor and outdoor facilities. You will be living at this campus for a very important four years of your life, so you need to make sure you are excited about the layout, structure, and atmosphere. MAKE SURE THE COACH KNOWS YOUR COMING! Try to set up a time to meet with coaches during your visit. Give them an opportunity to see that you are prepared to continue to do what it takes to succeed academically and athletically in their program.

Unofficial Visits: You have an unlimited amount of unofficial visits to any campus. These visits are completely funded by you and not by the coach/school.

Official Visits: Each student athlete is only allowed five official visits. These are set up by the coach/school and they pay for you to be in attendance. Choose wisely!

Importance of Questionnaire’s

Most college’s athletic website’s have recruiting questionnaires for prospects to fill out. Filling out these questionnaires lets the coaches know that you are interested in playing for their school. This is a great way to initiate contact and you will most likely receive something from the coaches if the information you provide interests them. It is very important to be honest with your answers. If you don’t hear from a coach, you can still follow up with an email to highlight how serious you are about wanting to be recruited. The more questionnaires you fill out, the greater your chance of being recruited is. Get started here!

We have provided links for some questionnaires:

Division II

U of Bridgeport Baseball
Rollins College Athletics
Pace University Athletics
Southern CT U Athletics
Post University Athletics
Concordia Athletics

Division III

Keene State Athletics
Bowdoin Athletics
Tufts University Athletics
Springfield College Athletics
Eastern CT Baseball
Western CT Baseball

Creating Your Recruiting Video

College recruiting video’s have become an essential part of the recruiting process. Coach’s have thousands of prospects and can’t possibly get to see them all. The purpose of this video is to capture the coach’s attention and make them want to see more. This is your chance to make a first impression, make it great! That being said, this video will not automatically get you a scholarship. Most college coach’s will want to see you live before offering any type of scholarship.

Intro: Start off with a bang! Coach may not get through the whole video so make sure the first 30 seconds highlights your best qualities. Contrary to popular belief, you do not need an intro with all of your athletic info, you can include that on your athletic resume and/or quickly in your email to the coach.

Length: Keep it short, 2-3 minutes. College coaches are going through thousands of these videos and want to get through them quickly. They can usually see after a few reps if they are interested or not.

Content: This section varies based on sport and position. Very important that the coach watching can easily distinguish you from the other players. For example football, soccer, hockey and lacrosse videos are mostly game highlights. Using a spotlight or arrows to highlight the player are key.

BASEBALL

Hitters: BP swings, NO FRONT/SOFT TOSS, do not need game footage. Get a 5-10 swings from behind you, showing you and the path of the ball after contact. Try to show that you can hit to all fields. Get another 10-15 swings from the angle of the opposite batters box, showing your side profile throughout the swing.
Infielders: Set up camera angle from home plate. Show yourself fielding 2 ground balls (GB’s) right at you, 2 GB’s to your glove hand side, 2 GB’s to your backhand side, coming in on 2 slow rollers/choppers, 2-5 GB’s turning a double play.

Outfielders: First camera angle close up showing you track and throw 2 Fly Balls (FB’s) right at you, 2 FB’s over your head, 2 FB’s ranging to your glove side, 2 FB’s ranging to your backhand side, and you coming through two GB’s. Final camera angle’s set up behind 3rd base and then home plate. Be able to film you in the distance fielding FB’s as well as track the path of your throw to third then home.

Catchers: Camera right in front of you, show 3-5 clips of you framing. Same camera angle, show 2 clips of you blocking right in front of you, then 2 to your glove hand side, then 2 more to your backhand side. Set camera up behind you and record 2 throws to each base. If indoors with limited space, get a side angle to show footwork and release.

Pitchers: Set camera up behind you to your throwing hand side. Be able to record your delivery and catcher receiving the ball. Record 15-25 pitches. 10-15 fastballs, 5-7 of each of your off-speed pitches. Repeat same process out of the stretch.

Creating Your Athletic Resume

It is extremely important to have a place where coaches can find all of the necessary information they need to recruit you. Feel free to check out our player profile pages and see examples of what you need. If you would like to post your athletic resume on our page, fill out our information form.

Contact Info: Always put your (the players) information. College coaches want to talk to you, not your parents. Make sure they can reach out to you personally. Include your full name, phone number, email address, home address, age, graduation year and high school.

Personal Mission Statement: Write something personal explaining your love of the game and why you want to be a college student-athlete.

Athletic Info: Height, Weight, Primary Position, Secondary Position, Hitting Handedness, Throwing Handedness, 60 time, Exit Velocity, Arm Speed. Pitchers include fastball velocity and velocities for all of your off speed pitches. Catchers include your pop-time.

Academic Info: The more positive academic info you can share with a coach the better chance you have at them being interested in following you. Include your GPA, Sat/Act Scores, any AP classes, any academic achievements, etc.

Team Info: Include your high school coach’s name and contact info. If you play on a travel team include that coach’s information as well. Same goes for any coach you may workout with privately.

Past/Future Events: List any past or future showcase’s you’ve attended or plan on attending.

Recruiting Video: Include the hyperlink to your recruiting video. Make it as easily accessible as possible! Having a video is one of the most important parts of this process. Get one made as soon as you are ready.

Social Media: Include your Twitter, Linkedin, or Facebook addresses. Social media can be used as a valuable asset or terrible deterrent so make sure you are setting yourself up for success first by not having any negative posts.

How to Build List of Potential Colleges

You have to do your research. There is an unlimited amount of information on the internet about the thousands of colleges throughout the country. Using these quick guidelines will help you start to form your list of school your interested in. We suggest starting with around 50 schools and throughout the process we will trim it down until we are left with your perfect fit!

Location: Do you want to live in a warm climate? Do you want to be a plane ride away from home or right around the corner? Ask yourself questions like these and figure out which area of the country you would like to be in.

Academics: Use your grades and standardized test scores to determine which schools you will be able to get into. Check out the schools majors and see if they have any programs that interest you. It’s ok if you don’t know exactly what you want to do yet but if you do, it will help you narrow down your list. Not to mention it will give you a specific detail about academics that you can use when communicating with college coaches. It is important that you let them know you are interested in their program both athletically and academically.

Division?: Be realistic about what division suits your playing abilities. Would you rather contribute to your team right away or do you not mind waiting until your senior year to maybe get a chance to play? Do not get caught up in playing at a big name school just for the name. You may miss out on a school that is the right fit for you athletically, academically, and socially. There are thousands of schools out there and we will find the right fit for you.

Some other factors to be considered: Financial, School Size, School Atmosphere, Team Atmosphere, Coaching Philosophy, etc.