Calling our experienced members and any Marie Kondo’s of athletic recruiting @Mwfan1921 @cinnamon1212 @GKUnion. What tips and templates do you use or recommend to stay organized during the heat of the recruiting process (11th-12th)?
My son is a 2024 soccer player, hoping to play at a top academic D3 school or lower level D1 school. With the help of this forum, we went into summer feeling quite organized and prepared with 3 lovely 
spreadsheets I created:
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Big List of all D3 and lower level D1 soccer schools in selected states, league they play in and coaches names and contact info.
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List of target, likely, and reach schools; UG size, accept rate, possible majors, and notes (ex: academ fit, soccer reach, no xxx major…)
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Communication Tracker (for son): school name, emails sent to coach, completed recruit quest, campus tour, sent video, other emails sent.
Then, the real recruiting process began this summer. College Camps, emails to coaches, emails from coaches, college tours, recruiting questionnaires, follow up emails, videos. We are swimming in google sheets and I’m here to say, my lovely spreadsheets are not working!
Would anyone be willing to share how they organized the information and any (empty) xls, google sheets, or templates that worked for them?
Specifically, I’d like to find a (relatively) easy way for my son to keep up with the emails he’s sent to his list of schools, received from coaches, forms completed, videos sent, camps attended at the school…
Thank you!
There isn’t a great system that will solve your problem, I think. I used one spreadsheet based off the one in The College Scholarship Playbook. I was the one inputting/tracking the various items early on. It IS super time consuming. My son had his hands full at a boarding school, playing a sport there, as well as playing club. He would not have kept up with the spreadsheet on his own.
After awhile your role will diminish as communication with coaches moves from emails to calls and texts. You won’t know about every one of those, and that’s ok. Also by then the number of schools will be winnowed down – not every coach will be interested in your son, and also your son will not like every school. So it becomes more manageable.
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I too am in the process and at the same stage. So not wisdom, but I will share my approach.
We used a process of elimination. We started with a map of the US and eliminated states she didn’t care for. Then focused on acceptable cities (she wants a city or nearby), then schools in those cities that had her major. The results were the “64”. I was surprised this brought it down to such a manageable number- and it did eliminate some very prestigious schools that could have been within reach, but decisions need to be made.
I keep one massive spreadsheet with all schools on our radar (64 total) and keep most of the info for each that you mention. I might add schools to the list from time to time, but to be honest it hasn’t changed in weeks or months.
What makes my life easier is adding one more column: “apply?” and fill in YES, maybe or blank for each school. What I have in there for any given school can change throughout the course of the process. Schools that were a “YES” might flip to maybe or blank. But I never remove them from the 64.
For a reality check from time to time, I will filter the list for only YES’s and run that list by her. Its much less overwhelming than the entire set of data. If she isn’t sure about one, we will see if the other categories have an acceptable substitute and promote perhaps. As we get closer to fall, we are trying to narrow this category down to 10 or so. This review is important because the +/- of each school can be compared in one place: school has interest in her as an athlete?, acceptance rate, cost, size, etc.
In terms of communicating via text and email to coaches, I leave that entirely up to her. She needs agency in the process, and I think it sends an important message to the coach: my parents aren’t the ones running this process.
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We also used just one spreadsheet for everything…schools (already significantly narrowed down from the list of all schools that offer the sport of interest), key academic info, and a record of coach communications. I was the main keeper of the spreadsheet.
I agree with the others that your S should be handling all coach communications, and over time you won’t know about all of those. Of course, we often discussed together the kid/student’s email/text response. Over time the spreadsheet faded away as the list of schools became smaller and smaller.
Make sure your S is completing the recruiting questionnaires too (you hadn’t explicitly mentioned those)…some coaches are real sticklers for them. Typically I suggest doing those first, then immediately following up with an introductory email.
I would encourage him to create a twitter account, with a bio containing key academic and sports info, and pin a tweet with a highlight video at top. He should follow coaches and soccer programs of interest, tweet and re-tweet as appropriate. Nothing controversial. I don’t know how much men’s soccer coaches are using twitter, but its use as a recruiting tool in many sports has exploded.
Lastly, I would have a second list of schools where he would not necessarily play his sport, as the whole recruiting thing might not work out. Good luck, your S is fortunate to have your help and guidance!
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Couldn’t agree more that list should also “non-sport” schools. Sports should be a factor in the selection of school from my perspective- but not necessarily a means to filter out a school. But this choice is personal.
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We kept 1 spreadsheet and tried to keep it simple. We just listed the schools of interest and the date our kids filled out the school questionnaire and sent an email with a sports “resume” (included sports accomplishment/teams, honors, stats, GPA and test scores) and a video link. We tried to do contacts in “batches” (initial reach out/updates) and hit every school still on our list at that time.
We made heavy use of camps with multiple schools participating and would email the relevant coaches prior to each camp to let them know we would be there. The camps let us cull our kids’ lists pretty quickly to the schools that had interest in them and vice versa. By the time we were down to individualized calls, the list was down to less than 6 schools which was easy to manage without an elaborate spreadsheet.
Important point mentioned upthread, make sure you are also doing what is necessary in case there are no offers from schools that your kid wants to attend. That list and tracking of to do’s is as, if not more, important.
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We talked our son into using a spreadsheet to track communication. I think it worked pretty well, but he never developed a very long list of schools he communicated with.
I would strongly urge using a specific email folder for each school, and move both incoming and outgoing emails to the appropriate folder at least twice a week (son missed an email from a school and inadvertently sat on it for a month–not a good look).
When coaches start giving out phone numbers, incorporate the school with the coaches name on the contact. When the phone rings and a name pops up, the school pops up too. This helps for people who are bad with names.
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Whew! Now that you are saying it, it does make sense. I already feel better!
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Great tip on the twitter bio!
Just to be clear, S is handling all communication and questionnaires. I only build the spreadsheets with the school info and try to help him keep up with what he has or hasn’t done… However, this summer we’ve had a great time with a whirlwind of road trips, campus tours, and camps, where (many times) after the camp, he’s looking at me asking, “Wait, did I complete their questionnaire?”
It’s hard to explain, but it’s like going from the abstract to the concrete. Before, he was emailing a person he hadn’t met. Now he’s emailing coaches he’s met and played for and it’s the process of connecting the 2 together that makes us both feel uncertain and unorganized. I’m not sure I can make this make sense, but I get it.
Thank you for pulling me from the recruiting whirlpool! It seems so obvious now, it kinda scares me… This is a hectic phase where there is a lot to keep up with, however, once he’s completed all of the firsts: emails, recruiting forms, follows… he’s done. Then (hopefully) the communication moves to calls and texts. As this happens, the school list will become smaller and eventually, the spreadsheet fades away.
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Great advice on doing it in “batches.” I think not doing it this way caused most of the confusion.
You’ve received the type of quality information I always expect from the above group of posters. I’m sorry I’m coming in late but I was moving my son in at school.
Towards the end, when our son transitioned to mostly calls and texts, he used a good old-fashioned college compostition notebook to track communications, and take notes. It became the recruiting bible. It was always available on the desk in his room.
As for videos, make a recruiting specific Youtube page if you haven’t already. On the recruiting account we uploaded and “restricted” access to his videos. The only people that could view them were those he sent the link to. That way we could gauge general interest by monitoring the number of views each video received.
One other tip, always time your emails to land in a coach’s inbox around 6 a.m. They get so many emails that it pays to be at the top of his stack for the day.
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