Alex Swenson, a former Division I coach, breaks down whether baseball camps are worth attending. Confirm the school actually needs your position before going, prioritize camps with games since coaches need to see you play, and understand what they're measuring: physicality, athleticism, metrics, and performance. Coach emails are often mass blasts, but reply anyway and ask if they need your spot.
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Hey Team Alex here. Today's episode, we're going to be talking about school camps and are they worth going to. And before you sign up and commit to a camp, making sure that you check off these things before you do so to make sure that it is worth it. Because I know that you guys get emails all the time of come to this, come to that. How do you know what is legit and what is not? And is it a blast email where they send to thousands of kids and how for us to check? And it might be a blast email, but it might still be worth going to? Kind of depends and we're going to be diving into that. If you're new to my channel or my podcast, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm A former Division 1 college coach, scout and recruiter with 11 years of experience. And now what I do is help talented high school baseball players and their families navigate this college recruiting process and put them in the best possible position to play at the next level. If you're interested in learning more and want some help going through this recruiting process, you can go to my website down below. I'll pull it up for right here and it'll be down in the description where you just click the link. Go to my website now. Before we go on and commit to a school, a camp invite, if you will, is we're going to want to make sure that that school's in need of your position because they blast out an email to thousands of kids. Because a lot of schools do that and not all of them do. Some can definitely be personalized, but if it's a blast email doesn't mean it's not necessarily worth going to. But you got to want to make sure that they're in need of your position or your son's position. That is very important because not every school's in need of every position each year. Some of them might need a center fielder, some of them might not need a center fielder. Depends on their roster, guys coming into the program, guys leaving the program. Some of them might need a catcher, some of them might need a corner, some of them might not shortstop. They're usually always looking for short stops. They'll typically bring in one, two or three. But you want to know have they already committed one of their shortstop, they're bringing those guys in. Or pitchers, they're going to bring in pitchers each year, but depends on how many are they bringing in and where are they at. From a right handed pitcher's perspective and a left handed pitcher's perspective Very, very important. Then also going to a school camp and understanding their athletic standards. Every school has athletic standards that we need to meet depending on our position. Very, very important and what they are looking for. Are you close to that? Because if you're a sophomore considering going to a college camp, maybe a power five school, they're not expecting you to be at those standards. A Division 1 Power 5 schools standards. But projectability really does matter and there's certain standards that we need to hit by the time we are a senior. Depending on if we are right handed pitcher, left handed pitcher, middle infielder, outfielder, all those catchers, corner guys and understanding those. If you're interested in learning more about it, you don't know, go to my premier athletes platform, it's premierathletes app. I have all the athletic standards of all of the schools to make sure that you understand where you stand with that school. So you're not wasting time because there could be plenty of guys that are going after big time schools, the LSU's, the Stanfords of the world, the Florida of the world and the Michigan's of the world. And we're not quite there, we're not quite ready yet. Okay. We need to make sure that we understand that and knowing that the six things that these college coaches look for, right? Physicality. One of the first things I see is your body. It's a billboard. All right. How physical are you? The next thing is your athleticism and projectability. Okay. Those kind of come together is how athletic are you? How projectable are you? And then they're going to look at your metrics, kind of your athletic standards for that school. Okay. And where you're projecting out for that, they're going to look at your game performance. Okay? Big time. Now before we go to a camp, you want to make sure this is something that you have to check off that the camp has games. Okay. If it does not have games, I do not recommend it. Okay. Because you could go and do a pro style or a showcase style where you hit BP, run a 60, you throw a bullpen, but you're not playing any games. These, these coaches are going to need to see you in games. Like for me, I wasn't a big showcase guy. I wasn't going to wow you in the showcases. But game I was really good. I was a gamer if you will. So we need to make sure that we're playing in games. They're going to have to see you in game. So confirm that the camp has games. That goes for camps and that goes for showcases as well. Now, say the coach emails you and you're not sure if it's legit or not or if it's a blast email or you know, it's a blast email. But you want to see if they have any true interest. Go on and reply back to that coach. And something that you could say is, hey, coach, thank you so much for your email. I am interested in your camp, but I wanted to confirm that you're in need of my position and you can put your position and your class year and then also would love any feedback that you have on my video. That way you send that in and they respond back to you. That is a personal message to you like, hey, yes, we are in need, it is confirmed. And hey, liked your video, liked what I saw here. Now we're getting some dialogue going. So that's a really, really good thing because say you do respond to that like that and you get crickets. There's your answer. Okay. There's your answer. I wanted to attend that camp. And they might respond like, hey, yeah, actually we're not in need of a catcher or center fielder or right fielder and this probably won't make sense for you to come to camp. So consider those things when you are considering camps, whether it's the summer, fall or winter, those are typically the big times for camps, especially in the summer and fall because college coaches are not in their season. And then fall we have the quiet period, which means college coaches can't go off of their campus and recruit players. So they're going to have a lot more camps on their campus because that's where they can recruit and have in person contact. If you have any questions down below or have any comments about camps and things that you've seen that are red flags, green flags, please let me know and let others know and I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Take care.
