Alex Swenson, a former Division 1 college baseball coach, presents five recruiting mistakes he made and corrective advice for high school players and parents: (1) not targeting schools that need your position, (2) assuming coaches will find you if you’re good enough, (3) lacking a proactive process for coach discovery, (4) not having a quality highlight video, and (5) being closed-minded about division levels (D1/D2/D3). He recommends starting the recruiting process by sophomore year, seeking help from coaches or services, and producing clear game/bullpen video.
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Hey, Alex here. Thanks for joining me. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about the five mistakes I made in the college baseball recruiting process. At least when I started this off, fortunately, I was able to correct it through some help. I actually had somebody help me go through this college recruiting process and get me on the right path. Now I've kind of come full circle to that, which is great. And I say started off. And for me, I started off sophomore year as far as starting this recruiting process. And really, I suggest that as well for high school baseball players and their parents. Get the ball rolling sophomore year, you don't want to get it rolling junior year because you're getting really late to the game. Some started as early as freshman year, and in some cases that makes sense. In other cases, I tell freshman year, it's like, hey, just get acclimated with your high school baseball program and then get the ball rolling once you finish your freshman year. So the summer before your sophomore year, definitely get the ball rolling on this. And if you're new to my channel, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm a former Division 1 college baseball coach, scout and recruiter. Was able to play at the next level, at the college level, Division 1. I was at Jacksonville University in Florida, and so it worked out for me. But if not, if I didn't correct these mistakes, I wouldn't have played where I played. So let's get into number one. And these aren't in any particular order. They're just all kind of mistakes that I made and mindsets to as well that I had. Number one is I did not know which schools were in need of my position. Why is this important? Because not every school's in need of every position each year. We would have boards. So again, I coached and recruited at the college level. Been a bunch of places. We would have whiteboards and we'd have the positions and be like, hey, this is what we need in this class. This is what we need in this class. And there would obviously be positions not on there that we didn't need. So this helps so much, going after schools that are in need of your positions and avoiding the ones that don't that don't need your position. And a question you're probably asked is, well, how do I know that? There's a couple ways you can do it. One, you can ask. Okay, you can ask if they're in need of your position, but sometimes it's hard to get that information honestly. But you should at least ask others. Is Getting somebody to help you go through this process, whether it's your high school coach or your summer ball coach or somebody like me helping you get that information from college coaches. You could also go on the Premier athletes app and help you distill which schools are recruiting your position as well, just so you're not showing up to camps and hoping somebody they're in need of your position. I see that time and time again as like an example. Like, there's 10 or 15 catchers back there, but they don't know that that school's not even in need of their position. So that can be hard. Let's get to number two. And that is. I thought if I was good enough, they would find me, which is not a good strategy going through this process. This is how you get missed. Now, of course, if you are throwing 95 miles an hour and you're hitting 12, 15 home runs in a high school season, yeah, they are going to find you. But if you're a good athlete, maybe you're not an elite athlete. And I wasn't an elite athlete by any means. I was honestly never really the best player on the team at any level. I thought I Little league level, high school level, college level, I was never the best guy, but I was a good athlete. I was pretty good. But I needed help getting exposure. I wasn't going to be found unless I was proactive in this process. And this gets me to number three. I did not have a process to have coaches find me again. This was starting off. I was just winging it, right? I was just like, I don't know again. I didn't know what I didn't know. And I was like, hey, if I'm good enough, they'll find me. Or I would just sit back. And again, that is a bad strategy. Have a process in place to be discovered, to be found. Okay, number four, I did not have a highlight video. This is one of the best ways for exposure. Okay? And one of the first things that really initiates conversation, dialogue, or can initiate recruitment from a school. They see a video of you. And I'm not just talking about like a PG or PBR showcase video. Like, this has got to be a good video of showcasing your best quality as a player. Not just like five swings and a couple ground balls. Some of that we can use, but we want to make sure that we're getting good footage, whether we're pitchers, like in a bullpen. Good velocity, meaning seeing Velo, seeing mechanics, seeing side, seeing behind, seeing in game. This is important in Game as well. Whether you're a position guy or a pitcher in game supported and good in game video, not video that's far away and you look like a little ant in there. Hey, some good clear video. And these phones are amazing these days. Like this is all you need. When I say clear video, you don't have to have like professionally anything like that. These cameras are just fine. What I mean is just make sure that the school and the video sees the player. That's really, really important so they can evaluate on it. And again, this, the recruiting video gets the ball rolling with these coaches that could come see you play, they could invite you to camp, they could again get dialogue going as we go. And then number five, really important. I almost got, I was almost got in trouble on this one. I was not open minded to all the levels. At first I was like, I'm going D1, D1 or bus. And I was that that was not a good strategy because I could have easily been missed at the Division 1 level. Again, kind of with my level I wasn't an elite and luckily I changed my mind on this. I corrected this mistake and was open to D2 and D3 and had some interest in offers from D2 and D3 and then was eventually picked up at a Division 1 school. Again, Jacksonville University. Very, very important that you are open minded to all of the levels of okay, not just Division 1. I understand that you want to play at the highest level. That is great. The fact of the matter is not everybody can play at the Division 1 level. And that is okay. D2 is amazing. D3 is amazing. You guys might have seen a Division 3 school run ruled a Division 1 school this year, 13 to 3. They had to like stop the game. College baseball, it is as good as it's ever been. So. So those are the five mistakes I made. Definitely start off correcting them. If you find yourself in any of these, that's okay. Correct them. That's the name of the game. Just like baseball. Hey, we make a mistake, we fail, we get back up. We correct this as we go. So hopefully you got something from this. If you do, please smash that like button that thumbs up and subscribe. And if you're on the podcast, please subscribe to the podcast as well. And if you have any questions, please let me know. Have a good day.
