Getting Recruited: Part 1
Leveraging social media to get in contact with college coaches and professional teams.
Getting Recruited: Part 1
If you are reading this and are not a baseball person, you can 100% apply what i'm going to tell you to your own sport.
I see different ideas everywhere about “what it takes” to get recognized by college coaches in order to get recruited, and most of them are not great. They lack a lot of feel for what a coach's daily schedule really looks like and how you actually get their attention. This may sound obvious, but coaches are **super** busy, and the best ones that you’re trying to reach don’t even read their own mail anymore.
I made the same mistakes growing up, my brother and I wrote 15 handwritten letters my freshman year of high school to different colleges around the southeast that we were interested in. We got “responses” from almost every one, but no real communication.
Here’s why:
I wrote letters to Ole Miss, Coastal Carolina, UNC, Clemson, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida State and the likes. I actually ended up committing to Ole Miss and playing baseball there, and they never knew I even wrote them a letter (despite responding to me).
Programs like these get letters/emails all the time, there’s a reason you’re writing to them in the first place, because they’re really good and you’re certainly not the only person who wants to go there.
Odds are, if you’ve ever watched a game of theirs on ESPN, they get flooded with communication requests.
During my freshman year at Ole Miss, I would walk into our baseball offices and see piles of mail being sorted through by the secretary, and I would see dozens of letters being opened and sorted into a pile that resulted in you getting an automatic camp invite.
Every “response” I got was an automated camp invite, and my mailing address was slumped into a list that got us sent mail for every single camp they had for a while. I actually kept getting camp invites while I was literally playing for them.
This is probably semi well known, but do not take a camp invite seriously, 99% of the time they are fake and meaningless. Unless a coach contacts you directly through social media, text or call I would just assume it’s a stock reach-out they send out to everyone.
Tired of this?
Yeah, me too. It gets sort of ridiculous after a while but that is how the majority of these programs make enough money to survive and pay their coaches.
There are better ways around this, one of which I used in my junior college days that resulted in a pretty solid response rate from ACC/SEC coaches.
This is shockingly simple, and I'm really surprised by the fact that it is public information.
Google: ‘(University Name) Baseball Staff Directory”
Pretty much all public university employees are required to have their contact information publicly available. It is usually the very first link too, I searched “NC State University Baseball Staff directory” and found it. Usually, you are able to find their phone numbers ***DO NOT CALL THEM*** 100% of the time they will negatively judge you for this and will think you’re weird and wont want you to play for them.
Email them and include the following:
video of you pitching/hitting
include a visible radar reading of your exit velocity and pitching velocity.
Your contact information
Your grades
Your coaches contact information
Your baseball tournament playing schedule/locations
These are the only things you can leave them that they will really pay attention to, and leaving much more will make them ignore you and your email as a whole.
When you do get a response:
Keep it short and sweet, include any and all information that they ask for and dont write a bunch of fluff. The quicker you reply and the more concise your email is the better chance you have of getting a response.
Do’s and Don'ts:
DO
Proofread and use a basic idea for every email
DON’T
Copy/Paste the same exact format to every single one, all it takes is one mess up for you to have a bad reputation.
DO
Be respectful and send a follow up email or two to make sure the coaches get a chance to see your email
DON’T
Harass and send demanding emails to coaches with expectations of being given attention, they don’t owe you anything.
DO
Give coaches a week or two to get back to you before resending your email
DON’T
Email them daily being super demanding for time and attention.
DO
Be thankful and courteous with any response, even the bad ones
DON’T
Send rude emails if they turn you down, you will get turned down. **I got turned down by the school that ended up signing me**
I think you guys get the point. This is a base communication level that will allow you to send out “feelers” to any college and see if there is mutual interest.
If there isn't mutual interest, that is okay. That just means they're not interested **at this very moment** and if you improve, there is a good chance their interest will improve too.
Being good is the name of the game, everyone told me no when i wasn't good. Almost everyone told me yes when I was really good. (Except wake forest)
This goes to show that no matter how good you are, someone won’t like your style of play, your look, mechanics, or something else.
Coaches and scouts are uber talented at finding reasons to not like someone, don’t take it personal and don't give them any more ammo than they already have.
Twitter is a different method of communication that can work, and ill talk about that in part 2. For now, here is a piece of advice:
Stop tagging 100 coaches you don't know in your tweets, you would try and flirt with 100 girls at the same time and if you did they would 100% think you are a loser. Post your videos and build a following. If you attend a camp feel free to tag the coaches you met at said camp, but dont spam.
Good Luck
John