对体育特长生的建议 - 常春藤之路 ivytrack.org

对体育特长生的建议（Suggested Recruiting Timeline）

Freshman Year and earlier: Themost important thing is to NOT WORRY about college sportsl! Enjoy your time onthe court playing and focus on getting better and mastering the game Don’tstress out about college.

Sophomore Year: Once your sport season hasbegun, work with your family to think of colleges you may be interested in.Send an introductory letter or email to thecoaches of those schools. Don’t stress out about this – you should havetwo goals this year – develop as a player and get on the radar of as manyschools you are interested in as possible.

Junior Year: This is a key year in the college search process. As a player,this will be your last serious opportunity to develop and take your game to thenext level before key times in the recruiting process. Before you attend anytournaments with your team, reach out to all colleges on your list with yourteam schedule. Before an individual tournament, let the coach know youwill be playing and when. Make sure you have a video youcan send to coaches. Try to rank the schools that are already on your list andevaluate whether you want to add new schools to your list. Be aware of thecolleges who are showing interest in you and ask tough questions to see howserious their interest is. In the early spring, plan to visit any schools thatare high on your list and are showing serious interest. For any schools nearthe top of your list, try to do an overnight visit before the collegeschool year ends. While summer visits can be informative, they won’t giveyou the information you need about the team because the players will probablynot be on campus. Division 1 programs have a quiet period around the holidays,so be sure to reach out to them early so you are on their radar in January.

Senior Year: The fall of your senior year is a time to seriouslyevaluate where you stand with the schools on your list. By this point, youshould already have been in touch with the schools you are interested in, havesent them video, and visited. If you haven’t done these things, don’t panic –do it now. Make sure you understand the college’s timeline forwhen they expect you to commit, when they need to submit lists to admissions ortheir athletic departments. Ask direct questions and find out thoseanswers as well as whether the schools are still interested in you and how manyathletes they are recruiting at your position. If you are contacted by a newschool, or become interested in one, don’t worry – just get on the ball now.You need to ask tough questions and not be afraid of seeming too forward. Thisis a major life decision for you and you need to advocate for yourself.

Contacting college Coaches

Contacting college coaches doesn't haveto be scary or intimidating. Most of them are nice people who love sport andwant to find the best fit for their program. Take control of the processyourself. Don’t wait for coaches to contact/notice you – there are tens ofthousands of high school athletes playing sports. The odds that your top choicehappens to be watching your court at the exact time you do something that makesyou stand out are pretty low. Give them a reason to care.

Start with a letter or email. See below for what to include. If youare truly interested, a phone call is a great way to separate yourself from thepack. College Coaches get hundreds of emails a month from high school athletes,but only a few phone calls.

Visit! Contact the coach and visit at least once, maybe more than that.Meet the coach, take a tour, go to classes, meet the team, eat in the dininghall, sleep in a dorm. This will be your home for 4 years. Make an informeddecision.

Most important stuff to include in your initial contact:

Link to unedited game footage – (highest level of competition you haveplayed) Your Club Coach can help with that

Best phone number to contact you

Why you are interested in their school

Othervery good stuff:

Link to club team website or schedule

Career ambition/desired major

Coach contact info (highest level of competition you have played)

Some kind of personal statement or introduction of who you are and whatis important to you.

Dos and don’ts in the Process

Email specifically to the coach byname. Even if you send essentially the same email to many coaches, take thetime to use the actual name.

Ditto for the college. No coach is interested in getting “DearCoach, I am interested in your

Google yourself. What do people find when they type your name? Whatabout when they type your name and the word “sports name”?

Mention your academic/career interests, if you know. This will help thecoach respond to you with specific information about their school. If a coachis interested, he/she may want to promote their school by sending you infoabout programs you didn’t know about at their school that the coach thinkswould be attractive to you.

Don’t be afraid to ask pointed questions. This is so important becausesome coaches have a hard time telling recruits no. Ask:

“How many players are yourecruiting in my year?”

“Are you recruiting [my position] in my year?”

“How do I compare to your other recruits?”

“Would you guarantee me a spot on the team?”

Be direct and follow up if you get a non-specific answer. You are notbeing too forward to ask. If a coach tells you that you are in their top 5, that means you are #5. If you were #3, the coach would say so.

Ask how the coach thinks you compare to the players already on theroster.

Ask what influence the coach has with admissions or financial aid.

Don’t wait for colleges to contact you! If you are interested, get intouch with them and give them a reason to care.

Don’t worry about being too forward, assertive, or appearing toointerested. The more interested you seem in a school, the more the coach willwant to learn about you and the more they will try to see you play.

Don’t let your parent do all the talking. Your parent is perfectlyentitled to ask lots of questions, and they should definitely do that, but youneed to be the one doing most of the talking – asking and answering questions.It is totally appropriate for parents to have their own meetings/phone callswith coaches.

Don’t come on an overnight visit looking to party and experience a wild nightlife.You definitely want to know what makes the school tick and what kids do forfun, but you want to meet the team and find out if that’s a place you want tolive for 4 years. You can go out to a club on your own time, talk topeople and ask questions.

Guide to Recruiting Videos

If you want to be recruited by acollege, it is very helpful to have video of yourself that you can easily sendto the coach. Youtube is an excellent resource for this. Depending on howpublic you want your video to be, Youtube offers 3 levels of privacy:
Public – anyone can search for and viewyour video
Unlisted – anyone who has the link cansee it, but it won’t come up when people search for you
Private – only people you have givenpermission can view the video

Making videos: The easiest thing to do is just film a match at one ofyour tournaments for your club. Super high quality cameras are not necessary,but a tripod helps. A cell phone camera can even work if you have some way tokeep it still (maybe attach a car mount to a tripod or use binder clips toimprovise).

Some college coaches will wantto see a skills video, although most of the time real game footage is best. Ifa coach asks for skills videos, ask your coach and he/she can either help orrefer you to someone who can assist.

Helpful Links

These can be a helpful way to simplifythe process. Most services have free tiers that will at least allow you to havea profile page with helpful information like grades, career interest, contactinfo, and video. Usually the services make money by doing some of the work foryou – they contact coaches for you, they use their proprietary algorithms tomatch you up with schools, they track who visits your page for you. None ofthat is really necessary, but can make your life easier.

Here are a couple examples, take a look and shop around:

Other Helpful Links:

This is the NCAA Guide for the College Bound Student Athlete, which youcan download as a pdf for free: