We a call with them and it felt more like a sales pitch to me. Any guidance much appreciated.
They are sales pitch and our swimming coaches have emphatically told the whole group they are useless. Contacting the swim coaches/filling out the questionnaire directly is the way to go.
NCSA can be helpful for certain student-athletes, BUT I agree with the above that student-athletes can do a lot on their own:
-Fill out the online recruiting questionnaires
-Contact coaches via email (or calls when allowed per NCAA rules and/or setup by HS or club coach)—contact the head coach as well as assistants (assistants often handle recruiting, at least until the later stages)
-Attend college specific evaluation events.
-Consider creating an online profile at sites like berecruited.com. They are relatively low cost, and depending on the sport are used by coaches as one of their recruiting tools.
-For sports where a video is necessary, send the video along in introductory emails, send updated emails with updated videos and/or stats as warranted.
-Create a twitter account and pin the highlight video at the top. Follow coaches and programs of interest, retweet their tweets. Note when on twitter make sure not to post anything controversial, inappropriate, etc.
-Use sport specific resources, where available, for recruiting e.g., collegeswimming, ajga for golf, etc.
Good luck.
Good advice so far. In the sport I know, Track and Field, ncsa is a waste of time and money. Go to tfrrs.org to determine athletic fit, fill out the online recruiting forms, email or call the coaches.
A free profile isn’t valueless for D3 athletes, as it’s a simple place to pile your info and a video where coaches that are looking for specific things can find them. Most high school athletes are not going to be good enough to stand out on a national database, and most college programs are not at the top of the food chain, so after the D1 and D2 coaches make their choices these types of sites are a place for D3 and lower level players to find one another.
But for goodness sake don’t pay for that. The colleges pay to search, but athletes are the product being sold and don’t need to write a check for that privilege.
I agree with StPaulDad. Division III, particularly high academic Division III, coaches do use these websites. My son (football) created a free profile on NCSA, BeRecruited and GOBig Recruiting and received a lot of hits. I would combine this with filling out the questionnaires and direct e-mails to coaches for schools you are interested in.