my daughter is a rising senior and a D-3 level swimmer. She is active in the recruiting process in several D3 schools right now in which she is very interested. Of course, as I’m sure all others have experienced, she receives numerous emails from swim coaches at colleges in which she has absolutely no interest, and also some snail mail from them. She also received her first unsolicited phone call (voice message) yesterday from a college coach who was reaching out to her. I had initially thought we would treat these solicitations much as we treat the voluminous amount of college mail we receive - ignore them. But the phone message has us thinking that this is rude. Should she return the phone call even if she has absolutely no interest in this college? It was a fairly lengthy message. She was also thinking she could just email the coach and politely tell him she is not interested. What are your thoughts?
And what about all the emails? Those are less personal and don’t need to be returned, right?
I will be interested to hear the feedback about this. My son, also a swimmer, is very reserved and it is hard enough to get him to engage with coaches of schools he is actually interested in. He doesn’t answer unsolicited e-mail except for a couple that indicated that the coach was writing specifically to him and had done some research on him. S has not gotten any unsolicited phone calls. I think she should probably respond to the caller and let him know she isn’t interested or he may keep calling. I think an e-mail would be fine in this case. If it were S, he probably would not want to turn down the coach over the phone unless he absolutely had to. What do others think?
When my son was going through this process, he received two different types of e-mails: 1) just a general mass email from “Staff” inviting him to upcoming camps- he was obviously on some mailing lists or 2)personal e-mails from coaches interested in him for their teams. He did not necessarily reply to the first type as it was apparent that those e-mails had gone out to hundreds of players.He did always respond to the personal e-mails, even if he was not interested in the school. His responses were short and sweet- thank you for your interest…while your program is very successful, I’m interested in attending a very large school (or whatever reason works for you). It was of interest to me that he received several responses back from those coaches thanking him for replying and for his honesty. Now that he is playing for a D2 program, he has run into some of the coaches that he turned down and a couple have remembered him. I think it is a good idea to stay on the best of terms with any coach that has interest. The college sports scene is very small, coaches switch schools all the time, and you just never know who you may run into in the future.
More thoughts about phone calls- I know that when my son was first talking to coaches, he was very nervous about calling them and preferred e-mails. However, he found it much more effective to send an initial e-mail introducing himself and presenting all of his stats , and then following up with a phone call about a week later. Those first few phone calls were difficult for him, but he got much better with practice. He found that he didn’t always have to say a whole lot as many of the coaches steered the conversation. We sat down at one point and came up with a list of questions that coaches might ask (and questions he might want to ask the coach) so he had at least thought about good answers before talking to them. He also always looked at the team website before talking to a coach so that he was somewhat familiar with the current roster, team accomplishments, and the coach background.
Thanks for the feedback. I may need her to go back and return some of the personal emails that have been sent. Good point about not ever knowing where that coach may end up (aside from etiquette questions). I did get the sense that this unsolicited phone call was fairly personal, and so did she, so I think she should respond however she feels comfortable (email, knowing her). My daughter is also very reserved in these types of situations. She needs to become more comfortable in the back and forth with the coaches at schools she’s interested in, so the others are really daunting for her.
It is my understanding that most of my daughter’s teammates did not respond to unsolicited emails from teams that they weren’t interested in. We felt it was important to answer all of them because coaches move, it reflects well on her team, and it just seemed like the courteous thing to do.
My daughter and I worked on an email that she sent to every school that contacted her. Although every email reflected her gratitude for a team’s interest, she didn’t feel the need to personalize responses to teams that appeared to be sending out mass mailings or emails. Many of the coaches were quite appreciative of her comments about their programs.
@fbislife. My son played for a small club that had some staff who were very experienced with college recruiting. We got great advice from several people and the team actually held a mock interview session. My son found that sending a short email with his resume and a highlight video attached gave coaches a chance to take a look at his play. He would then wait about a week and call the coach to make sure he got the email, to answer questions, and to gauge interest. For his top choices he would routinely email his schedule and then follow-up after tournaments with a phone call if he knew they had attended. As he got more comfortable with phone calls he would call his top choices routinely just to touch base. He had great results and ended up at his top choice school.
My kids returned everything except the really spammy stuff. By letting a certain portion know you aren’t interested, it helps them to clear their lists and reduces the e-mail and contacts you get in the future.
D returned everything except generic spam emails, and she returned a few of those to large D1 schools that interested her. No reason to be inconsiderate to a D3 or NAIA coach just because there was no interest in their school. You never know what can happen in the future. She responded to many that she was considering several offers and that she would not be a candidate for them to continue recruiting. Almost everyone sent her a “thank you for responding” email as an answer.
@takeitalian This all blows my mind. This is really interesting advice that I hadn’t considered before. He was effectively cold calling. How does the initial conversation go? “Hi I’m Joe Blow, I just wanted to check base and see that you got my highlights video” And then what ? The coach steers the conversation a bit? Or talk about why I like the school athletically? academically? It sounds like a very nice idea, but I just don’t know what to say and say something that’ll annoy the coaches and make my prospects worse
My son responded to all contacts except for the ones that were obviously sent to everyone above a given performance level or a generic mailer request to fill out a questionnaire. He avoided most phone conversations unless he had to, and just sent an email if he could. So respond to everyone, even if just by email.
My son didn’t make any unsolicited phone calls, but did send many unsolicited emails to initiate contact with the event coach of the schools he was interested in. It seemed most of the good coaches for his event knew if you were serious you would find them, not the other way around.
If the coach is younger they will totally understand the email vs. actually talk to someone preference, it seems to be a generational thing! My son did run into many of the coaches who contacted him, and as others have said, it would have been really awkward if he had been rude or not responded.