The following is a guest post from SportsRecruits founder Matt Wheeler
Every club organization does them: the “College Recruiting Night.”
Parents drag their kids to a dreary gym, library or hotel conference room to learn about the college recruiting process. College will be the biggest investment a family makes outside of buying a house so it makes sense for everybody to get together for an hour and learn about the process.
Almost 100% of the time, they are a complete waste of everybody’s time.
Having personally attended 50+ of these nights as we were growing our business, the evening traditionally goes like this:
The club will tell the kids the following:
– Grades are important (duh!)
– There are a lot of kids out there competing for a finite number of spots (yup)
– You need to put work into the college recruiting process if you want to be successful (oh really?)
– Do not expect to be “discovered” by college coaches (of course)
Parents will nod their heads and jot down some notes and everybody will go their separate ways.
The club director will pat herself on the back for doing her part to educate her families and settle into her role as club director / recruiting coordinator where she will help the kids with their recruiting process “if they need it”.
As a parent, you need to ask your club director a very direct question: what systems do you have in place to keep track of our college search and recruiting process?
You will not be satisfied by their answer, most likely. The answer will most likely be something like this “well, I have a lot of relationships and a lot of kids have gone on to play in college so trust me here, I got this.”
Your club has sold you on their organization because they will “get you recruited.” Having a recruiting night where your club tells you things you already know does not “get you recruited.”
In 2014, we were so frustrated hearing parents tell us their club is letting them down that we built a software platform to help clubs deliver on their promise of “getting you recruited.” Over 400 club organizations currently power their organizations on SportsRecruits.
I am writing this post because last night I attended a “Recruiting Night” that was everything it should be. Team Elevate, which is a lacrosse club on Long Island integrated with SportsRecruits, touched on all the things you need to touch on (see above), but actually has a system in place to make sure each family gets a consistent experience. It was beautiful to see.
With every player plugged into the SportsRecruits platform, Team Elevate is able to see the recruiting efforts of each player. If a player is not logging into the platform, the club is notified and can work with the family to get on track.
My challenge to you is to expect more from your club. You are spending a lot of time and money on youth sports and you deserve more.
We hope to see you and your club organization on our platform soon. You deserve to feel in control of your college search and recruiting process.