There are a lot of college recruiting websites out there, so why choose our service?
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What Makes Athletics Recruiting Different from Other Recruiting Services?
We are not a recruiting "service". From experience, we know the best way to connect with college coaches is to contact them yourself. We make your website that houses all your stats, scores, grades, film, and more, giving college coaches easy access to everything that can help them choose you over others. With Athletics Recruiting, you have to do the work by contacting coaches yourself, but we make you look great by packaging your information attractively, in a way that makes you stand out. With us there are no annoying salesmen, and no hidden fees.
What Do High School Athletes Need to Get Recruited?
Let's start by understanding the recruiting process. To get recruited for college sports, you need these 4 things:
- talent - and we assume if you’re reading this, you’re in the ballpark, or at least working on it
- an email account or a way for coaches to reach you
- and a way to package your stats, scores, grades, transcripts, profile, and video together in a way that makes you stand out from the crowd, and that makes it easy for coaches to find you and choose you over other kids.
Is That All I Need to Get Recruited?
Basically, yes, except that video is very helpful for some team sports, and especially if you are targeting D3 schools or community colleges. Smaller schools often don't have the same kind of travel budget as their D1 counterparts, making it difficult for those coaches to get around the country to see athletes in live competitions. In these cases, video is recommended and we suggest that you update it at least once a year.
When and How Does the Recruting Process Start?
For a select number of elite D1 athletes headed to top schools, the recruiting process starts in 8th grade or freshmen year of high school. For the rest of us, the recruiting process generally begins sophomore year (but more realistically junior year) and continues through senior year. So if you are a senior, and still not recruited, don't give up.
The process typically starts when a college coach sees an athlete live or views their stats on MaxPreps, and send them a 'form' email inviting them to fill out their school questionnaire and maybe attend a camp. Or, an athlete emails or calls a coach directly and the coach puts them on their contact list. NCAA rules discourage direct contact initiated by coaches early in the process.
Understanding College Coach Mentality
College coaches are busy people, and they are usually looking for a specific combination of talent, grades, and in the top academic universities, test scores. Because they want someone specific, like you, they often don't answer emails from recruiting services that send them hundreds of applicants. During recruiting season, coaches have to juggle millions of bits of information as they try to make critical recruiting decisions. Imagine how difficult it is to compare thousands of athlete’s stats, scores, accomplishments, and grades when all that information is spread out all over the place? Every coach that we surveyed in 2015-2016 said that it would make their lives much easier if kids had all their information packaged together in one central online location.
There Are a Lot of "Free" Profile Website -- How Do Athletics Recruiting Websites Differ?
- Our websites are not just words on a page: they look great and make you look great because they give the impression that you’re really serious about your sport.
- They’re easy to update and keep current. Most free profiles are stuck in time. And the recruiting profile pages on colleges websites are not updatable, for the most part.
- The hidden truth is that “free” profile pages offered by recruiting services come with strings attached. Fill them out, and you’ll soon have salesmen calling you and getting you excited about a scholarship. They get you excited about the possibility of a scholarship and talk you into setting an appointment up with mom and dad - and tell your parents they need to fork over $800, $1200, or even $2,000 to get you recruited. Then, their annoying salesmen call your home until you pay-up or tell them to stop.
How Do We Know This?
Because it happened to my sister, now playing at uPenn. And it happened to me when I was a sophomore at Branson. We both filled out "free" profile pages and the next thing we knew the salesmen started calling, and my parents got really annoyed when they realized it was kind of a scam.
Despite the hefty fees and large amounts of time spent dealing with these services, according to our research, 100% of college coaches we surveyed said they routinely delete emails from recruiting services. So what’s the point?
Do Recruiting Services Serve a Need in the College Recruiting Process?
Yes. Recruiting services have good success placing athletes in community colleges and Tier 3 academic institutions. However, from our research, we found that coaches from the "better" schools don't like to deal with recruiting services because they have so many kids they are trying to place, that their athletes' skills vary widely, and they are a waste of time. So, if you are targeting, for example, the top 50 schools in the US News & World Report rankings, we do not recommend using a recruiting service.
Building Your Own Website Is a Better Way to Get Recruited
At the end of the day, colleges want to hear from YOU and they want to know that you are serious and prepared for college athletics. You’re better off contacting them yourself and steering them to your great-looking website. They want to know that you’re interested and assertive enough to pick up the phone or send them an email. Because if you’re not willing to do that, they question your drive on the court or in the field.
So gather your confidence, skip the recruiting service, build yourself an inexpensive but attractive recruiting website, and go after that scholarship yourself.