A Time to Build On Recruiting
Summer is coming–time to plan for summer jobs, vacations, and lay out your recruiting plan. Depending on what grade you are entering you will need to have different summer plans of attack for your recruiting.
Entering Freshman
You are about to enter a world completely different and foreign to you. It will be amazing as long as you keep your head on straight and you have clear cut plans on what you need to be doing these next 4 years. Luckily you will have your sport or sports; this will give you an opportunity to meet new people with similar interests with very minimal effort.
Start Planning Now
If you are interested in playing your sport in college you need to start your planning now. Call your new high school and see if you can set up a meeting with your Grade Level Coordinator and explain to them your goals to play your sport in college so that they can help you map out which classes you will need to take and what year.
Also let them know if you have a desired school that you want to go to. Just because you meet NCAA academic qualifications doesn’t mean that you will meet the academic qualifications of the desired school. You will want to make sure you are on the right academic track for that too.
Sophomore Year
Depending on the sport, this is the time that colleges will start being interested in your high school season stats. You will want to make sure you are making the necessary plans to get the colleges the information they want. Talk to your high school coach; let him know that you are looking to get recruited by a college so you are keeping personal stats on your progress. Ask if they can help with this or if you need to do this yourself. You will also want to start getting video footage of your games, matches or meets. Find out the best way to do this–is there a person who films all of the competitions that you can get the footage from? Or do you have to make arrangements to have someone there filming for you?
Start Going to Camps
This is also the best summer to start going to camps for your sport. Start researching local summer camps, combines and showcases that are at your desired school or that college coaches will be attending. Once you are registered to go to the camp make sure you get ahold of the coach or coaches to let them know you will be there and are interested in having them take a look at your talents.
Junior Year
Once again camps will be very important this summer so make sure that you are registered to attend one. If last year you attended a camp that was held at a particular college that you are interested in attending make sure you go back–they will remember you and you can continue to build relationships with the team.
Narrow Your List of Colleges
You will also want to start narrowing your list of desired schools into a shorter list. At this point you should have already started contacting coaches and letting them know you are interested in attending their school as well as letting them know about your athletic talents. Once you have built some sort of relationship with these coaches you will know which schools are interested in you and which you are still interested in attending. Take this summer to start visiting schools.
Senior Year
This is crunch time, you will have to start picking schools and talking seriously to coaches this year. You don’t want to be left behind in your recruiting class. Be proactive, be aggressive and make sure you carry yourself professionally and with respect. Go to camps, senior showcases, and update coaches on what you are doing.
Make sure that you are using the summer months to athletically train and to gain momentum in your recruiting–the more you are prepared and proactive the more successful you will be.
If you have questions or comments about how to spend the summer recruiting season please use the comments section below or connect with us on Facebook or Twitter.