Thanks for the tech gadget info - super helpful as we need to get on this for bb season! A bit worried that we will look like crazies filming games.
@one1ofeach I totally understand the apprehension, I had the same reservations. Now that Iāve been filming, though, other parents with sons on the team have begun asking questions and looking for advice. As the boys prepare for their winter showcase my son is one of three that will have a video to send coaches. There are many parents regretting not filming during the fall season. Iām trying to hone my skills now so Iām much better equipped to capture quality video in 2020, when things will start to matter more.
@one1ofeach, try doing a skills tape. BB lends itself well to repetitive skills, and coaches seem to like that.
Iāve already been told coaches donāt want skills tapes because plenty of kids look good without good defense. Do you have experience with coaches being ok with just skills?
^You wonāt be alone. Make sure you also take a lot of skills videoās. For better or worse, coaches will want radar readings of velocity of fielding throws (if, of, home to second) in addition to pitching velocity. Also bat speed and exit velocity of batted ball is also increasingly important. A lot of commercial batting cages are set up for this these days.
Oh hah. Iām talking about basketball, not baseball. So Iāve been told basketball and soccer coaches donāt care that much about skills. Baseball I totally get. Similar to goalies in soccer.
@gkunion, I hear you. I would be tempted to reach out to a few D3 coaches, just to see if they will give feedback. That can inform the process.
@gointhruaphase He did reach out to some D3s and theyāve already begun getting back to him. He has attended a few school specific D1 ID camps and the post-camp evaluations have been very positive. I also have a friend that is a D1 coach locally and heās agreed to offer constructive advice as well. For me, the end goal of these videos is to get his name out thereā¦then itās up to him to perform on the field.
Results from game 1:
63 coaches were on the sideline.
16 of the coaches my son emailed were there.
11 of the 63 coaches were very local to us(90 min. ride or less).
Of the 9 local schools my son had emailed 5.
11 of the 16 are clustered in parts of the country that make it somewhat unlikely they were there for any of his teammates, or the other team for that matter.
17 of the 63 coaches were clustered near the other team.
As for coaches, there were 26 HC, 10 AHC and 27 AC.
Team demographics: 20% - 2021, 69% - 2022, 11% - 2023 (one 2021 already committed).
Coach division breakdown: 46 - D1, 3 - D2, 13 - D3, 1 - MLS scout
That is great exposure! I would just caution you because I was thinking like that last year too. Even though it seemed like some coaches *should * be there to see my son (he had emailed, and his profile vs some of his teammates) they werenāt always.
I will tell you, itās a crapshoot! My son has had a few decent D1 programs reach out to him (heās targeting d3 and done no d1 outreach). He has one highly ranked (soccer and academic) NESCAC rolling out the red carpet for him ā yet, heās reached out several times to programs where itās a safety soccer and academic-wise for him and he can barely get the time of day from them.
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@cinnamon1212 I totally get it. Iām the skeptic in the family. There is a vast difference between coaches standing on the sideline and them being āinterestedā in a player. The jump from interested to recruited is even larger. This topic may morph into a cautionary tale for any number of reasons.
Thank you for posting updates. Super helpful, I am following your journey.
Coaches donāt want to be anyoneās safety. They have to be realistic about who will really come to their school and be part of the team, so they spend their time following up with those kids.
I think if you really are interested in those safety schools as a #1 pick, it helps to have a club coach reach out to the coach and tell him that.
Itās a conundrum. The safeties are not his #1 pick, they are his lowest picks. But if recruiting is a game of musical chairs, wouldnāt it make sense from my sonās perspective to be in touch with schools where he would be an impact player and have no trouble getting in, and from the coachās perspective where a recruit thatās really strong might fall into his lap? I donāt think the safety coaches need to be rolling out the red carpet for my son, or putting out much effort for him, but when my son, for example, attended a full day admissions open house event over the summer at the safety and emailed ahead of time to see if he could meet the coach, the coach couldnāt find 10 minutes during the entire day to meet with him. Meanwhile the #1 ranked soccer school had my son come and spend the entire day with the coach and the team. I suspect thatās why they are #1 and the other school isnāt on anyoneās radar, soccer-wise anyway.
Summer is unpredictable for college soccer coaches, they are often not on campus and may be traveling to work larger camps/recruiting etc. So I wouldnāt interpret the safety schoolās coach non-responsiveness as necessarily personal to your student. Or, maybe the coach is a bit of a jerk or just a bad communicator. If itās a genuine school/program of interest, then follow up, especially now that college season is over and coaches are focused on recruiting. Iāve shared often on this board about my D3 Menās Soccer kidās recruiting process, which included admissions/soccer safeties, matches and reaches. It was a challenge to find schools which were both admissions and soccer safeties since some schools which were admissions safeties or matches were soccer reaches. To mix metaphors, both coaches and students are trying to keep the funnel wide, until its summer/fall of senior year and time to play musical chairs ā then then you hope youāve done the work to make sure there is a good seat for your kid when the music stops. Itās a challenge, but rewarding for the student. And they get to keep playing the sport they love for (hopefully) 4 more years!
For my son, we did not think the recruitment video was worth the time and money. My son played Academy soccer and I just found it was very hard to do the video. I did not have good video equipment. I bought a Sony video camcorder and found it cumbersome to use. In the end, I asked my son to contact the coaches whenever he had a soccer showcase and tournaments. Most of the college coaches actually came to watch. One coach who came to watch recommended that my son attend PPA soccer camp in Florida after a showcase. When we went to the camp there were a lot of kids. The kids were divided into teams and they did drills, practiced and played soccer. They were actually coached by the actual university coaches and assistant coaches. From that PPA camp, my son was invited to the Yale soccer camp. He was interested in a top NESCAC school and Yale. He was talking to both coaches and the NESCAC coach offered him a slot first and he was given a certain time to decide. He chose the NESCAC school and he is happy there.
But the coach may know that the players who are better than their programs rarely come, rarely drop into their laps. They need to spend their time and recruiting dollars (if there are any) on recruits that might actually come to their team. If there is something thatās not obvious to the coach as to why your son might actually go to that small school with a 50/50 team if the skill set is way above that level (grandfather went there, needs to stay close to home for family reasons, needs the big merit scholarship to be able to go to ANY school), then you need to point it out.
Who wants to have 5 musical chairs winners who go to another program?
Soā¦now that spring seasons have been interrupted by Covid-19, how are people managing the recruiting video process?
For my son, he only has 3 winter showcase games and 3 early spring season games to work with. Regrettably, I didnāt travel to the winter showcase, and I was terribly sick for the two weekends of his regular spring season so I took no video myself. We have to rely on the video recorded by teams for US Soccer. Thatās not optimal for a goalkeeper because the vantage point is usually high, and at mid-field. Goalkeepers look like tiny little people off in the distance.
We have HS footage from the fall. Most coaches weāre talking to have pushed their recruiting timelines and are rescheduling summer clinics to the fall/winter. Theyāre also hoping to use late fall tournaments as a data point.
What division(s) are you talking about?
Does this include class of 2021, meaning recruiting for seniors will go into the winter for many schools?