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A soccer recruiting coach walks high schoolers and parents through building highlight reels and contacting colleges. He recommends leading with goals and assists, then sending personalized two-sentence emails to roughly 150 schools using his College Shark Guy tool. Expect 80% of coaches not to respond on the first try.
Chapters
Carter, what position do you play? Center back. Okay, perfect. Um, something— so I want you to write this down, Carter, when you put together your video. Center backs need something different, just like every other position. But, you know, goals and assists are always great, so if you have those, awesome. And if you have video from high school, use that too. What high school do you go to? Perfect. Use, use it from Pally. The big thing though is we need moments of you playing through lines. Do you know what that means? Yeah, yeah. Good. And we also need moments of you showing your pace defensively. So if a ball goes over the top and you're behind initially because of whatever, your player made a bad pass and you have to catch up to the striker. Those are like the two most important things coaches care about. And your ability in the air is also important, but in your first minute of your video should be goals, assists, then show us your ability to play through lines, and then show us your ability with your pace. And if your pace is not your strength, which is okay, then show us one-on-one defending. And hey, and like balls to the line, that'd be over the top too. Absolutely. In fact, those should go first. They like that over the top. Yes, longer balls goes first. Yes, good question. Um, the other thing I would say to you is what you need to do, and I think it's true, Luna, this is true for you and for Jennifer, is you— right, oh, this is particularly for you, Carter, because because of your grades and you don't know what you want to study yet. And like in Jennifer's daughter's case, she like knows she wants to go to a type of school and there's only that, there's only like 40 of them. So it's super competitive. In your case, you're not sure yet. You're open to D3, D2, theoretically D1. And with your grades, you have some options, but you won't have, you know, all the options. My GPA was more like yours in high school. And what it means is we're going to have more options, which is frankly easier in some ways for college soccer purposes. On the other side, you have no idea where to begin, where Jennifer's daughter does. She's like, I like Pomona. She knows where to aim for. You are aiming at nothing, and it's dangerous to aim at nothing because what tends to happen is you're going to pick UCSB, UC Irvine, UCLA, and then you're not going to know what to do when they don't respond to you. So we need to do is create what's called our mass email list. So, um, one of the things that I will give you, I'm gonna— I'll put it in the chat. Uh, I think I could put it— yeah, I'll put it in the chat. So I have a program I call the College Shark Guy Program. Because you guys are part of SURF, you guys get it just because. And in it is a website. I'm going to show you what it looks like. Actually, I'll show everybody because you guys will like this, I think. So basically what this website does is it's— I built it, I helped build it. I'm not a coder, but I helped put it together. Basically what we're able to do, and also your club might have have like if you have ScoutingZone or NCSA, I'm not here to compete with those. They're fine. Never send an email from those companies though, because coaches do not like that. Send it from your own email. But if you're using them, it's fine. I don't trust them personally, but they're not going to hurt you. In saying that, this is what this website will do. You guys, I'll give you guys access to this. So you'll be able to go to the list here, go to D3, you'll be able to hit California state region, go to Field of study, in your case we could do math just for entertainment purposes, mathematics, and then we would go, let's do California, just for easy, and now this is every single school at the D3 level in California with a math major. And all you would do is you'd highlight all of these schools, you'll put it into a Google document or a Google sheet, I recommend a Google document, one of which I actually do provide you in this little program I have, and then all you do is you click on here, press more info, and it gives you their emails. And their phone numbers, um, and you just copy and paste it and you send them an email. So I will give you this for you, and let me give you guys— I'm gonna— I'll put it in, I'll put it in the chat, but I'll also end up putting it in the Discord, um, is for you, you need to start with the mass email list first. And then what I'll tell you this to make it simpler, because it'll just be easier this way, you're gonna see it will say buy, but You won't have to buy it. So just ignore the buying part. The other thing is, um, let me see here. Yeah. Okay. Um, okay. And then, okay. I'll copy and paste that in a second. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay, cool.
And starting with the mass email, as he kind of creates what he wants, and then do you wait to send once you have a video, then you send the video?
Exactly. Exactly.
And it's 40 schools and see who gets back to you, if any, that buddy.
Exactly. And then what he would do is in the meantime, time, instead of waiting for his video to get done, and this is in the program, so there's a little tutorial video on it. What he's gonna do, I'm gonna put it, I put in the Discord, but I will also put it in the Zoom chat. And it will say buy, but just ignore that, it's free. Is in his case, what I want him to do is whenever you write an email to any school, particularly schools you like, so he, let's say he makes a list of 150 schools, And he goes, you know, I just copied and pasted 100. And actually, when you click the program that I just gave you, I have a recommended list for him that I recommend based off of his major and region. So you could just copy and paste my list, which is a lot of schools. It's about 150 schools, which is not all of them, but it is some of them. And I updated every year based off of how they did last year, what positions they might need, coaches. I don't know everybody in every second. Like tomorrow, somebody tears their ACL. I don't know right away. But my job is to know, you know, that's what I do. So anyways, my point is, what he would do in the meantime is he'd pick 20 schools and go, I'm going to write a genuine part to that school. So let's say UC Santa Cruz, or let's say Cal Lutheran, which has like, with his grades, he could, it's realistic. It's a very competitive Division III program, maybe a little too close to home, or for your mom, maybe perfect. And you would say to them something genuine like, I plan to come to your game this fall, or I watched one of your games on TV or on ESPN or whatever it might be, and they're much more likely to respond with that genuine, just a 1 to 2 sentence, doesn't have to be long, but something. And so in the meantime, while he would create his list, then he would start writing genuine aspects while he's making his video. And then say in a month from now, he'll have all of his emails written out, he'll have his video done, and he can just press send. And when you press send, you're just clicking send, send, send, send, send. And then there is another dilemma once they start responding, but a good one. So we can deal with that one.
Really quickly, you said something about at this point, he may have 1 minute. What is the maximum? Or what is the ideal? Right?
Good question. Ideally, it would be between 2 to 4 minutes. Okay. For his highlight video. Now, to keep it simple, 2 to 4 minutes, but if he has like only 2 minutes, that would be fine. And then frankly, He can add to it as time goes on, but people always get it wrong. They think it's all about updating your highlight video. If a coach sees a clip twice, they will stop watching your video because they're like, I already saw this, I don't wanna watch any of this again. They want new video. So that's when you have to say to yourself, okay, I made a video, a highlight video, but this next coach I'm about to email, I've already talked to him. He doesn't wanna see updated highlights. He wants to see completely new video he's never seen before. So sometimes you have to make a second separate video for that. Okay. So yes, it is. So collect video would be the first step there. Okay, cool. Okay, good. The program will be helpful if he does chapters 1 through 3. He'll be off to a flying start.
Okay, when would you expect to hear back? You said not till the end of the season, probably?
Good question. Oh, no, no, no, no, they— 7— 3 to 5 days. Sometimes they'll take— sometimes they won't respond. He'll, he'll have to follow up. I would say 80% of schools don't respond to the first round. Okay. Because that's how they weed out the kids who can't. Sure. And then it will really— yeah, if this video is sharp, then they're more likely to respond. So it's worth spending the time on making that first impression good. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, Cole. Mr. Hubbard. Yeah, hello. Hello, Mr. Hubbard. How are you? I'm pretty good. How are you? I'm good, thank you. Tell me a little bit about your situation. So, um, I mean, I have— I had like some highlights and stuff. I had highlights from my old club, but I don't have highlights from Santa Monica, like surf. And I'm playing, uh, I'm playing right back. So I was just wondering if I start getting highlights and we get like a camera or something, what should I be putting in my, my reel? Well, as a right back, what you want to put— goals and assists first. Then in your case, you're going to want to put your ability to deliver crosses and 1v1 attacking, and then the same 1v1 defending. That's going to be the most important for you. It's okay that you don't have video from Santa Monica yet, but you definitely want to get it as soon as you can. Yeah, I know. Um, what— how old are you? What year are you? Uh, I'm going into junior year. You're going junior year. Okay, so this is beautiful. This is the time. Definitely want your video. You're going to want to start emailing schools, thinking about ID camps. That would be super important for you. Very good. Very good. Let me think for a second. In your case, you sound like you're— yeah, so you should join the Discord, because then you can ask us some questions there that I think would be helpful to you. Yeah, that's in the chat. In the Zoom chat. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. Okay, great. Franny, Miss Schwartz, how are you?
