I keep getting messages that a coach has added my kid on captainu. I have assumed that it was marketing but her team did play in a showcase this fall. Anyone had experience with captainu or another online recruiting site? Do I need to sign up? This one, another one?
That stuff is mostly garbage. Definitely donât spend any money on that.
Read through the athletic recruiting threads on here for all you need to know.
Good luck.
PS. Those services buy your kids names from the tournaments they play in or directly from your club and you will be hounded until your kid graduates HS. They offer little value to someone with basic knowledge of how recruiting works.
Thank you! I will continue to ignore the emails.
I would do just that. You are much better off having your kid contact the coaches of schools that he or she is interested in. I tried it for a month, just to find out who was interested in my kidâs profile. âCoachesâ from teams of the wrong gender, wrong sport and wrong college (i.e., colleges that I had never heard of).
Off the top of my head, I donât think I know of anyone who thought places like CaptainU, NCSA, etc. were helpful or worth the money. On the other hand, some of the on line hosting sites (my son used GoBig primarily) can be really helpful. When he was being recruited GoBig was hugely popular with the Ivy schools and after he was asked two or three times if he had his film up on that site we went ahead and put a profile together. This of course may vary depending on the sport.
What I mean by a hosting site, in case that is not clear, is that it is a service where the recruit can host some highlight and full game videos along with their stats. These sites are then searchable by coaches. This is in contrast to the sites that purport to offer recruiting assistance like Captain U or NCSA. Most of the hosting sites I am familiar with are either free to the recruit or have a relatively small fee. GoBig charged a small fee each time he released his film to a school who requested it. I think I spent somewhere around $150 total over the course of a year on that, and I would bet his film was sent to three dozen schools. I would do it again.
My DD used the free version of one of these just to have a place to host a unified version of her recruiting info: grades, club history, HUDL links, YouTube links, etc. It also provided a fairly current place to look up coach contact info. And even if you want to do everything yourself itâs not a bad place to go to see what data they provide to coaches. In the end there were some contacts from coaches, but for the most part they werenât very high quality programs and she didnât gain much from using the service. (Oh, and they will follow up repeatedly to upsell their services. If youâre not comfortable telling people to go away then donât give them your info.)
As most posters stated, direct emailing and contacting the coaches is the best way though we did use the free versions of a few hosting sites. Some coaches do look at them so they can be another avenue but I would not expect too much or pay for any of the premium services.
I also noticed that for football, many of the schools that we were targeting, such as higher academics including some Ivys, viewed profiles and film on Go Big Recruiting. They have a yearly and monthly rate that does not cost all that much.
There may also be some more local recruiters or sites that use social media quite well and have a good local or area presence.
D had a profile at berecruited.com, itâs not very expensive, and the company doesnât bombard you with other offerings. She received many contacts from coaches thru that, although they mostly contacted her by email, not thru the platform. You can also see the coaches who âviewedâ your profile, and coaches can âfollowâ the student as well.
I echo the above comments that the best way to contact coaches is by filling out the online recruiting questionnaires at each collegeâs website, and then following up via email. Berecruited was good in the sense that some coaches who expressed interest were from D1 programs/conferences that we werenât sure she could play at, so that did give her confidence to start reaching out to coaches at a higher athletic level.
Lastly, a technique that I think is effective is to pin a short highlight video at the top of the studentâs twitter account/feed, all of the college recruiting questionnaires ask for social media handles. The student should follow coaches, programs and colleges that s/he is interested in on twitter, instagram and/or snapchat. We found twitter is most active among the athletic departments.
Agree that these sites are a complete waste of time. My kids chose schools first rather than see which schools were interested in them as athletes. We just created a YouTube folder where we uploaded game and skills videos and linked those to emails to coaches.
My Dâ21 is using Sports Recruits for her lacrosse profile. She has several pieces of film on there and all of her club and high school stats. She chose the coaches she wants to have see it and has had good correspondence so far. It tells us when a coach has viewed her profile and/or film and she gets emails from many of them directly that way (these have all been D3 given the rules about no D1 contact). Itâs not anything she couldnât do without the site and I think her club team pays for it as part of the fees. Itâs a useful place to have everything in one area. But we ignore everything from Captain U for sure.
I think the one way they can be helpful is if your are wide open to where you want to go to school. I have a friend who used one, who has more money than time. His kid just wanted to play, and was open to a school almost any size or location in the country. They helped him locate programs that might be a good athletic fit that he was unfamiliar with. He will be attending one of those schools next fall, a small school 1500 miles from home
For my Son, there were maybe 20 schools max that fit academically and athletically. I didnât need a paid service to figure that out or to contact them.
I think that unless you are planning on casting a huge net that includes schools you otherwise donât know about these probably at a waste of money
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My son sent an initial greeting email to about twenty coaches, which included a very small but personalized salutation, followed by a table of academic and athletic statistics and accomplishments. He concluded the email with a request that the coaches follow his progress, while promising to update them on any major events or future accomplishments.
He also included links to video, hosted on the free Google Drive. We didnât have to spend a dime to effectively get his information to coaches. Many coaches complemented his simple format: very stat-oriented without a lot of fluff narrative. Once they saw his stats fit their needs, they reached out to him. Specific sports or coaches might vary⊠but like many comments above, I think one can successfully navigate the process through direct emails without a paid service.
My D took care of all this on her own. Well except for video of her games. We visited and researched colleges for academic fit and then narrowed them down by athletic fit by her jr year. We/she contacted coaches in her Jr year, sent video, told them when/if we would be visiting the campus and met with coaches/asst coaches who replied back. We did the big tournaments, college camps, etc. She had several coaches she never contacted reach out to her and several coaches where she was interested never reply back to emails and calls. D ended up where she wanted to be but it took a lot of work and money. Attending camps at these schools can be expensive if they are not close by. It takes work but it can be done. Oh and she had video (both professional from tournaments that we paid for and our own highlight type video we put together) on You tube.
I thought NCSA was worth it â we got the minimum package and felt that the guidance along with the database of colleges was worth it â they helped my daughter assess âfitâ with the teams so we were able to narrow down to realisitc choices and focus on those schools.