The following post features excerpts from the SportsRecruits Recruiting Guide for student-athletes. For a confident and fun recruiting process, access the complete guide here.
NCAA Contact Rules For Student-Athletes
Questions frequently arise around the contact rules between high school student-athletes and college coaches. These rules vary greatly from sport-to-sport, which can cause confusion. Be sure to check the NCAA website for specifics regarding your particular sport if you are interested.
Let’s pause there for a second. If you are interested.
However, if your curiosity about the NCAA rules stems from worry, then I am going to stop you right there. At any phase in your recruiting process, if you are more concerned with the contact rules for coaches than you are with taking recruiting under your own control, your focus is not where it should be.
The most important thing you should know about contact rules applies to all sports. Understanding this cardinal rule for student-athlete recruiting will change the entire course of your recruiting process. Are you listening?
The Only Contact Rule High School Athletes Should Worry About
There is none. There is not a single NCAA rule that keeps you from chasing your dreams. No NCAA rule is keeping you from inviting a college coach to have a look at your profile and watch your video. Over the years, we have seen far too many people use NCAA rules college coaches have to worry about as an excuse for not taking care of their outreach.
If you’re concerned about when college coaches can contact you, what you really care about is being on a college coach’s radar. Let’s take a look at how outreach can help you do this.
Emailing College Coaches
When the recruiting process begins each year, coaching staff assemble an “A-list” of student-athletes they are interested in recruiting. The names on this list represent athletes that the coaches have seen in action at camp, state and regional games, or tournaments. They also come from referrals by trusted sources, like other college coaches, boosters, former athletes, and some high school coaches. Last but not least, the list includes athletes who put in the work and got themselves on the map by reaching out to their Target List of Schools and providing video to be evaluated.
Athletes don’t have to passively wait for a college coach to be allowed to contact them. While other prospects sit back and wait for inbound, driven high school athletes engage their own recruiting process. How? By emailing a college coach.
The Takeaway
It’s important to remember that the recruiting process does not have to look like this:
Step 1. A college coach “discovers” you, which means he now has you on his radar.
Step 2. That college coach reaches out to you to begin the conversation.
Rather, the recruiting process can look like this:
Step 1. You reach out to a college coach to begin the conversation.
Step 2. Now, that college coach has you on his radar.
Not sure how to rev up your recruiting process? We can help.
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