Recruiting Series with Kara Hill: Beginning the College Recruiting Process
Kara Hill is the founder of My Recruiting Solutions which helps student athletes with college recruiting process. This article begins the first part of the recruiting series for high school players looking to play volleyball in college. For more info, visit My Recruiting Solutions here.
Photo by WorldBestSports
Starting the Recruiting Process
It’s usually good to start things early, and the same is true when it comes to college recruiting. The earlier you start, the easier it is to research and narrow down your choices. Keep in mind, choosing a school is not just about finding a place to play volleyball past high school. The ultimate goal during the recruiting process should be to find a school with the perfect balance between sports and academics.
Idealistically, the recruiting process begins during your freshman year of high school. At My Recruiting Solutions students begin the process with an academic review by finding out what the student’s academic interests are. Unfortunately, not many high school students (and a majority of college kids) don’t have any idea what to major in.
But rest assured, because you can narrow down your choices by taking a career guidance test for possible careers based on your personality. Using this, you can create a list of schools to contact by seeing which schools have volleyball programs and offer your major(s) of interest. Then start contacting college coaches at schools that fit this criterion and they will appreciate your initiative in researching the school prior to contacting them!All in all, eliminating schools that don’t offer your academic interests saves time for both you and other coaches so it’s good to make sure that your academic interests match the schools you contact.
It's kind of like a cover letter - sell yourself!
Creating Your General Interest Letter
In contacting coaches, you need to introduce yourself using an academic and athletic resume. The resume is a letter with your background and your basic info (year in school, physique etc.) as well as anything about you that stands out as a player. Do you have a strong vertical or a high reach? Then include that in the resume. You want to grab coaches’ attention so they will want to keep in touch to learn more about you.
In the text, include academic or athletic achievements in your career so far such as MVP, 1st Team All-League, or other academic honors. Include the name, email address, and phone number of your club coach because coaches who are interested in learning more about you will often contact your club coach for more information.
A key attachment to your resume is a skills video to give coaches an idea of your athletic fit within their programs. A skills video is a video of you in a private lesson setting where you perform basic skills such as passing, setting, hitting, serving, and blocking regardless of your position on the court. Just because you are a middle blocker doesn’t mean you never have to pass or set a ball so you need to demonstrate your skills in every aspect of the game no matter how strong they are. Try to get some private practice before filming your skills video to improve your technique and to boost your confidence level.
It’s also important to send a game video to the coach. Take several clips from a match with missed serves (by all players) and long breaks in between rallies removed. Note that this is not a highlight reel because anyone can look like an all-star in a highlight video. But coaches only spend 3-5 minutes per video so make it short and sweet.In the game video, it’s crucial to include your mistakes for coaches to see how you respond to them. Do you put your head down and bring down the whole team after missing a serve or can you shake it off and move on to the next play? You want to demonstrate that you are a team player so get in the habit of moving on with your mistakes during a game and give your teammates a pat on the back next time your teammates miss a serve!
E-mails can be annoying, but answer them all!
If coaches are interested in you after seeing your resume/videos, they will add you to their list of players to watch. Throughout this process, be honest about your info/stats and prompt in answering every emails from coaches. Even if you aren’t interested in their programs, you never know where that coach may end up so always be kind and respectful. Be sure to thank coaches for their evaluation even if you aren’t good enough to play for their team. Remember, you often have just shot at being recruited so take the time to do it right! Good luck!
