Messaging college coaches is crucial throughout your recruiting process. SportsRecruits Recruiting Analysts Chris Ruhl and Emily Wetz discuss the general guidelines when messaging college coaches for student-athletes and their families. They discuss the importance of messaging throughout your proccess and exactly what you should be reaching out to coaches about!

Watch the webinar to learn about

  • NCAA rules involving messaging college coaches
  • What to say in your messages to college coaches
  • Organizing your outreach
  • Using the SportsRecruits Messaging System
  • The dos and don’ts surrounding your email correspondence with colleges

 

Q&A

Is eighth grade/freshman year too young to start the recruiting process?

This is all up to the discretion of the student-athlete and his/her family on when they want to start the recruiting process. Parents may think it is too early for their 8th or 9th grader to start the recruiting process and use the SportsRecruits platform. However, in this day and age, the recruiting process is starting earlier and earlier across all sports. It is becoming more common for student-athletes to commit to top D1 schools in 8th and 9th grade, before they even start competing at the high school level.

While not all student-athletes are looking to go D1 and commit early, you can use the SportsRecruits platform to store information to use later on in the recruiting process. Instead of having to pull together and remember your athletic accolades or academic information, you can update your profile along the way and all of your information will remain in one place. Our best advice is to build out your athlete profile, add video, find schools you’re interested in, and then start messaging college coaches when you are ready! Check out our help article to learn more about whether you should start messaging coaches as an eighth or ninth grader.

 

How do I know what division is the best fit for me?

Determining what division is the right fit can be challenging. That’s why it is important to include your athletic advocates (club coach, high school coach, etc.) in this process. Your advocates are the people who know you best as an athlete. He/She will be the best person to offer feedback to this question and, hopefully, can gauge your talent level with past athletes that have gone on to play at all levels. If you belong to a club/high school program, you have coaches that are there to help in the recruiting process – use them!

How do I personalize each message?

College coaches don’t like email templates. It’s obvious when a message was copied, pasted, and sent to 50 other schools across the country. Coaches want to know why you are interested in their program. They want to sense genuine interest, so they know they aren’t wasting their time pursuing you as a student-athlete. Taking the time to spell out a coach’s name, listing something unique to that school/program, or referencing a special connection you have with that school are much more effective than your standard, templated email. The more time and effort you spend on your emails, the more likely that time and effort will be reciprocated by the college coach!

 

What are good reasons to reach out to a college coach?

Here are some great reasons to reach out to a college coach:

  • Introduction Message
  • Pre-Event Message
  • Post-Event Message
  • Updated video
  • Updated transcripts
  • Updated test scores
  • Wish a coach luck
  • Congratulate a coach
  • Your in-season update
  • Keep in mind this list is certainly not all-inclusive. Just make sure you are reaching out to college coaches with a purpose and making the messages as personalized as possible!

     

    Where can I tune into more webinars?

    You can find our free webinar schedules here. You can also explore our blog or YouTube Channel for more recruiting resources.