<p>What are your thoughts on creating an athletic bio as a web page? </p>
<p>Is it useful or not? Would you buy a domain name such as myname dot com -- or a page through a recruiting service?</p>
<p>How much personal information would you post? I've seen home addresses and google maps to the house. (That seems a bit much to me). Grades? Coursework? awards?</p>
<p>What has worked for your athletes?</p>
<p>I did not use any type of website for my son, nor did I feel it was necessary to use a site offered by any of the recruiting services. We sent out all pertinent information directly in targeted emails to coaches. These emails included all contact info, test scores, GPA, and links to a YouTube video of his current best performance, and definitely no house pictures! I also tended not to use his full name in posted video titles. So other than an aunt or uncle liking my son’s video, I didn’t want too many people to see it randomly, but had to post them because the files were too large to e-mail.</p>
<p>The people I know who used websites set up by recruiting services, shared that the majority of the contacts they received where from lesser known D111 schools. I do not know anyone who created a personal website, and I would think that the majority of coaches would not be doing a broad internet search to identify athletes. I however, am totally paranoid about what we “put out there” so others may have had a better experience. </p>
<p>My son did set up a page and it was worth it for him. His sport (soccer) does not recruit out of high school, but mostly out of national tournaments. As part of a league he was playing in, the team was offered a free recruiting site page and coaches were directed to the link through some of the tournaments. He definitely got some interest from the tournaments and then coaches could look at the page to get more info. He posted his highlight reel on the site, plus coach recommends, awards, GPA, test scores, and his upcoming schedule of games. His team also had a team profile hard copy that they handed out to coaches at tournaments- a single tri-fold with each player, picture, stats, etc. Both of these were useful in the recruiting process, however the web page was directly linked to coaches when they attended the tournaments. I don’t think we would have used any of the sites where you have to pay monthly fees and any coach contact is pretty random. Really the same info can be sent to coaches as an attachment when an athlete emails them originally.</p>
<p>I think it depends on the sport your child plays. My D is a gymnast. Every gymnast who wants to try to get a scholarship has a website, whether if it created on their own or if it is created by someone else. In gymnastics there are a couple of companies that specifically do gymnastics websites. Many pay for the websites and then pay a maintenance fee for updates throughout the season. This is not uncommon and many use these services. There are also a couple of websites that post free bio information of gymnastics, basically arranged by Class yr. If you are a gymnast or a parent of a gymnast, you know these sites. I would think that whatever sport your child does, you would know “how people network.” Like above posted said, gymnastics really is not a school sport and recruiting is done through the JO program. </p>
<p>Most people will post all necessary information, name, address, phone, email, youtube (which is big in gymnastics) accounts, class year, upcoming meet schedule, previous year’s results. Many sites will also include pictures and embed the videos into the site, in addition to their you tube channel.</p>