How To Get Your Child The Attention Of D1 Golf Coaches

All right, so this video is going to be covering how to get the attention of Division I coaches and how to actually get recruited to play Division I golf. So ideally you're a parent who's in this type of situation trying to figure this out, what it actually takes. Uh, maybe your child's recently started taking golf more seriously. Maybe you've been at this for a long time and you're finally getting to the point where you're just like, all right, cool, we gotta start taking this seriously. Uh, we gotta know what we need to do more specifically. Right? And so this video is going to be intended to help you really understand this process transparently. There's a lot of bad information out there, or maybe not bad information, maybe the right way to put it is, um, things that aren't that helpful, um, kind of send you down some red herrings. Because at the end of the day, odds are you probably just want to understand like, hey, what's realistic? What should we be aiming at? Where should we be paying attention so that we can continue to have a positive experience with golf rather than filling with a bunch of, you know, anxiety, negativity, stuff like that. Odds are your child already beats themselves up enough about some bad tournament. You don't need to have a whole bunch of extra stuff being kind of thrown in there. So if you enjoyed this video, um, go ahead, leave it a like. It does help push it out to the YouTube algorithm and all that stuff, help other parents who are in this type of situation. If you're new here, come out with videos like this twice a week just specifically for helping guide parents of junior golfers through this process of, you know, what it actually takes and, and, you know, being very direct with you guys. So let's go ahead and jump into it. So first thing you guys are going to see on my screen here is Junior Golf Scoreboard. It is the largest ranking index for junior golfers. That's why I'm going to reference it all the time. So if you watch any of my other videos and stuff like rankings, I'm going to be referencing this thing, Junior Golf Scoreboard, a lot because it has the widest breadth of total tournaments that are going to be ranked. Okay, and so if your child is not already ranked That is absolutely essential. That is step zero. So you want to go in here, tournaments and results, search for tournaments. I'm not going to walk you guys through all of that. Got other videos on the channel dedicated to tournaments. I will link to those tournament videos somewhere in this video. Um, once your child is ranked, right, that's gonna, that's gonna help us a lot. But backing up a step here, the reason I like Junior Golf Scoreboard so much, it's not just because it's the largest ranking index, is because it gives us the clearest data on who's getting recruited to play Division 1 golf. So we can see from 2026, which is still kind of incomplete, so that's why I'm looking at 2025, all the way back to 2018. We can see where their player was ranked in their class, what their scoring differential was in the program that recruited them. So if your child says, hey, I want to go play at Stanford, you know what that looks like, you know what Stanford recruits, right? Then you can say, you know, compared to where we're at, is that reasonable, right? So we got, you know, that is an option. We can scroll all the way down here, right? We can start getting into like D2, D3 land, right? And so we can just say, you know, based on where your child's at, you know, what's realistic, what's possible for them, right? And just what are these programs actually recruiting? It kind of works in the same way where if your child says, hey, I want to go to Harvard, you know that you need to have a 4.0. So if they have a 3.2 GPA, you're like, that's cool, um, let's probably adjust expectations, right? Like, that's completely normal for, for us as parents, right, to be able to say like, hey, I like what you're doing, I like the energy, we We need to shift this just a little bit, right? So that we have a good time. So long story short, we want to know what that number is. Now, this is not just, you know, hey, here's where it ends up. Here's the cool thing. I'll show you this a couple levels first. If we go to just like the rankings here, you can see all these players getting recruited. Now, obviously this is the first page, but you know, it's like we can go pretty deep here. And we're gonna see these players getting recruited. Okay. And so coaches know that this exists. Coaches reference this page all the time. How would you use this page if you were a coach who was looking for junior golfers? Right? Would you go and travel all over the country and go like watch a bunch of tournaments and, you know, be on the ground and have your feet hurt and stay in hotel rooms all the time? Or would you go to a page like this and be like, huh, let's see here, let's look at 2027 uncommitted junior golfers, and I'm just going to go down the list and pick out the ones that, you know, maybe are closest to me. Maybe I just want to go for the best. Depends on my situation, right? That's going to be step— literally step zero, right? And so obviously this is what's happening when the player actually makes the commitment and that data gets pushed back to Junior Golf Scoreboard. This is not the number that they're at when they actually get recruited. So recruiting technically starts June 15th of sophomore year, right? So when we're looking at these numbers, we're seeing them when the player committed, which in most cases is going to be a year or two after they actually made the commitment, right? So we just have to kind of keep that in context here, right? And so there's no hard and fast rule about when a program will actually commit to a player, right? There's a verbal commitment, there's written commitment, there's a whole bunch of, you know, stuff that happens in between, right? And so this just gives us a ballpark of, hey, when we get to that age, you know, where are we going to be at, right? And if we're going back to Junior Golf Scoreboard over here, you know, if we're in this situation where we're at a -5 scoring differential and we're, you know, let's look at class of 2026. Like, all these players getting recruited, kind of the main point that I'm trying to make here. We look at 2026, all these players on this front page, they're getting recruited, right? If we go back over to this page, we can see very few gaps in between where the player is ranked. This is just a long way of saying, hey, if your child's ranked in the appropriate range, those programs around that range will reach out to them. It's kind of the easiest way to think about it, right? So what this not is not saying— going to camps. I get that question all the time. Camps are cool. Camps, they do a great job with camps. Usually the assistant coaches, that's how they make a few extra bucks. They're— you're gonna have— your child's gonna have a great time. It is not a way to help your child get recruited. Doesn't— it literally doesn't matter unless they're in a position where the coach is like, hey, I want you to come to this camp because I want to recruit you and I want to see you hit some balls, that's one thing, right? Then you can, you can make your judgments based off of that. But if your child doesn't have all their other X's and O's, you know, checked off, kind of a waste of money, right? So we have limited funds, that's something to consider there, right? So want to be in the right spot. Um, other things that might come up: social media videos, um, emails, all that stuff. You got to think of this as like a two-way sales conversation, right? What do you do when you get emails in your inbox about something that you don't want? You either ignore them, delete them, or tell them to go away, please, right? So in the same sense, that's what a coach is going to do if they get an email from your child and they're not in a position where they're realistically going to recruit them, right? They're either going to delete the email, they're going to ignore the email, or they're going to say, that's awesome, glad you're interested in the program, send me some scores and you're playing some tournaments, right? That's essentially what they're going to say, okay? Because they're already looking at this, they already know who they want to recruit. It's not your email or your child's email that's going to push them over the edge in one direction or the other, right? And if it is, then your child needs to make sure front and center it's like, hey, I'm looking at this type of player that you recruit and you haven't reached out to me yet. I'd really love to go to your program because I've got a -6 scoring differential. I've got a great GPA. I've got great SAT scores. I've got these other programs reaching out to me, but I really want to go to your program. Can we have a conversation? Right? That's a valuable email to get, right? Then the coach can be like, whoa, I overlooked this kid. I should have given them a chance. All right, let's have a conversation. Right? That's that first sniff test. We don't have that kind of like bait there. You know, maybe we're in a situation where we're just selling potential. You know, potential is just that, it's potential, it's a maybe, right? And we want to be in the position where, you know, we're selling a sure thing, right? So if your child's not in this position, right, they're not at a -5 scoring differential, the next best thing is to get ranked and figure out what they need to do specifically, right? Which is something I talk about in other videos. It's something that I help all my students with directly. That's the main thing that I do as a coach is giving you direction on— and your child direction, not just on, hey, here's how we do this big-term, you know, long-term target, but like, what do we need to do this week so that we can accomplish that long-term goal, right? And so I can worry about the big time, you know, big picture stuff and like whether we're on pace. You guys worry about what you need to do this week or this month, right? So that's the main thing that I do when I'm, when I'm coaching players. I'm not going to get too deep into this, um, to that specific topic in this video. I do have other videos on the channel, um, or if you're in a position where you don't have infinite time to watch YouTube videos, there's a link below where you can learn a little bit more about my program, how it works, and if it's something that you feel like would be a good fit for your child. You can apply. I'll ask you some questions, make sure you're a good fit. If, if you are, then you'll be able to schedule onto my calendar, talk about it, make sure everything makes sense, and go, go through the onboarding process and show you what that looks like. So anyway, back into the video here. What we want to be able to do is we want to figure out where your child's at, right? We want to get them better as fast as possible. But just to make my point here, I want to use, uh, the reference, one of the students I worked with this points, got a scoring average of 73. But more interesting than that, last year, beginning of June, he was at a -1.62 scoring differential. Okay, keep that in mind. So that was where he was at. That's where we didn't do anything as far as reaching out to coaches, because technically coaches can't even respond prior to that. But that aside, we didn't do anything reaching out to coaches, just went out there, play our game, right? Well, this is the message that he sent me June 15th. Of that year. He says, hey, I got this DM from the Oregon State head coach. I'm going to go into the details of that, but pretty cool, right? You also have 4 other programs reaching out to him, right? Phenomenal position to be in, right? And so that's not unique. I'll pull up another student that I'm still working with. Um, same exact thing here, right? Got a number of emails here. I want to say he had like 13 or 14 in total. Uh, he ended up committing to Columbia. And so long story short, he was ranked a little bit better, he was about a -2.5 scoring differential at the time, and so he had more programs reaching out to them. So long story short, what I'm trying to sell you guys on here is the way to play Division I golf, the way to, to get recruited, is to get your ranking, your child's ranking, where it needs to be, specifically the scoring differential. Don't worry about the overall number. The overall number doesn't matter. We want to— we don't even necessarily need to worry too much about the class number. This class number can fluctuate, right? If your child's really like high in their class but they're a 6th grader, they don't really do anything for us, right? We want to think in terms of where do we get the scoring differential to. Something to keep, keep in mind here: the average player on Junior Golf Scoreboard only improves by about 1.2 shots per year. Okay, that's the average, right? So if your child wants to get to -2 and they're at 5 today and they're an 8th grader, well, you got 2 years to accomplish that. They're improved by 1.2 shots on average. Right? So they're going to get to about a 3 scoring differential. They're going to fall short of that target, target by about 5 shots, right? And so if that sounds like difficult or unfair, yeah, I mean, about 3.3% of junior golfers go on to play Division 1 golf, which is technically harder than getting to Harvard. So if you're like, that sounds really hard, it's because it is really hard, right? Now, good news, average player I work with improves by about 4 shots per year, right? And so we have that same math problem. We're looking at that like, okay, we got a scoring differential of 5 today. We're going to improve by about 4 shots for the next year. That gets us to a 1. Another 4 shots gets us to a -3. Even if we fall short, we end up at a -1, we're still in a much better spot. So again, application below if you want to learn more about what that could look like for your child, especially if they're a 7th, 8th, 9th grader. Um, those are the situations that I love because we've got a nice runway ahead of us. A lot of time we've got some raw potential there that we're able to, to turn around into better results. you know, in most cases, right, from doing some relatively simple things. So again, if you're interested there, um, long story short, like, this is the process. Like, this is the method. This is how you actually have these coaches reaching out to your child. Now, are there exceptions to this, right? Can you do the whole social media thing and the emails if your child is a senior? Yeah, potentially. Um, just to be transparent, that's not really what I do, right? I don't work with players in that type of position. I'm not good at it. I don't have connections that I'm leveraging or things like that. I help players get better at golf And because they got better at golf, um, because they're performing at the level that they need to, those coaches reach out to them and, you know, recruit them. So that's really the methodology here. Um, if your child wants to play Division I golf, this is what they need to be doing. Um, whether they're 12 years old or 15 years old, the earlier you start, technically the more runway you have. Uh, and in theory you can tolerate a, a slower improvement rate over that period of time. And the cool thing about that too, with your child being ranked, is you can actually pace it out. So when I'm working with a student, I'm looking at, okay, what's the pace that we're on, right? If we continue on that pace, are we gonna hit our target, right? So that way the player can relax a little bit. Or if we're not on that pace, we're gonna be able to look at their statistics and say, well, hey, we're not on that pace because the statistic is contracted and we need to put our focus into getting that up, whatever it is, you know. And so again, that, that's really this process here is just where are we at, make sure we have enough runway, make sure we're applying the right stuff, and then go. Um, that, that, that's the process. Hopefully it makes sense. Hopefully this is clearer than maybe you thought when you, you started this thing off. It's, it's pretty straightforward for, for both us, um, for the junior golfer and, and for the coach, right? It's just like, what level of golfer are we trying to get to? Let's map that out. Where are we at today? How much runway do we have? How fast do we need to improve? Right? That's it. So hopefully you learned something here. If you want to go learn some other stuff, there's plenty of other videos on the channel. I mean, go ahead and check those out. Again, subscribe to the channel if you want videos like this every single week. Tap the bell notification if you want to actually get notified on these, and I'll see you in the next one.