Get on College Teams' Radars!

Hey, team Alex here. Thanks for joining me. And in today's video, we're going to be talking about how to get on teams radars, how to be noticed, how to get on coaches radars as we go through this college recruiting process. 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. And now what I do is help high school athletes and their parents go through this college recruiting process and help them find the best college fit. There's four, four things that I want to cover that's going to help us with this and how to get on teams radar. But before I get into it, it's very important to understand that we are in the quiet period right now. As of this recording, it is October and we're going to be in the quiet period for the next five months. What does that mean? Is college coaches cannot go out and recruit or see players in person off of their campus. So they can't go to a tournament, they can't go to a showcase. Again, that's off their campus. That's why you're seeing a lot of camps pop up right now. You're probably getting a lot of camp invites right now because college coaches can only recruit on their campus. They can only have unofficial visits happen right now because they can only see potential recruits, potential commits on their campus. They can't see them off their campus. So that's important. So if you're thinking about going to a tournament with a travel ball organization or to a showcase and thinking that Division 1 schools and coaches are going to be there, they're not. Okay. They're not. So don't go. All right. Especially if you're going for recruiting purposes. If you're going for developmental purposes, absolutely. But you probably do that locally and not spend a lot of money traveling across the region and country, et cetera from there. All right. So there's a lot of different ways that we can do it. I'm going to be doing more videos on over the coming months in the fall. That's going to help ourselves go through this recruiting process during this time of the year, fall and winter. Because recruiting does not stop for these college coaches. I know I was one for a while and I know these coaches really, really well. And they are always recruiting. Recruiting is 24 7, 365. No doubt. It is the bloodline to their program. If they are not recruiting and they're not recruiting good ball players, their program is not good. And then if Their program is not good. They get fired. When it comes down to it, their livelihoods as from a financial standpoint, is on the line. All right, so recruiting is always happening. So let's also talk about. We got the quiet period out. College baseball is actually playing games now. NCAA just passed this rule a year or two ago where college programs can play other opponents. It used to be they can only play themselves. We play inner squads all the time. We would see the same people on our team playing against until we got into February. But right now, like Ole Miss just played Samford and other programs around the country are playing hey, locally. Go locally and go watch a baseball game. Go watch a practice and see and kind of eval where they're at and eval where you're at. Very, very important. So let's go over these four topics that's going to help you go through this process. Number one is, is you need to set up and you need to create a highlight video. Some people call it a skills video, some people call it a recruiting video. Honestly, I've called them all three. It's just a video of you showing your best attributes as a player. This needs to be short and sweet with good quality video. Okay. Good thing is these phones in my pocket right now, the cameras on them are amazing. Doesn't need to be like professional camera everything. It just need. We need to be able to see. See you. If you're getting video from, you know, 20 rows up in the, in the stands, you can't. You look like a little ant. That's not helpful, guys. We got to be able to see you. So if you have to get on the fence or if you have to put a tripod on during a game, do that. But it doesn't always have to be during the game. It could be, hey, you hitting bp, you throwing a bullpen and your coach standing behind you. If you're a pitcher and you're a righty, just stand off a little bit to your right so coaches can see your mechanics. Coaches can see the ball come out of your hand. Very important. Go into the catcher. See how again, your mechanics and how your body moves, how your arm action is positionally. You want to be able to show your hitting. Want to be able to show your defense wherever you're playing. And if you're a center fielder, an outfielder, a middle infielder, want to see you run a little bit too, because that's very important for those positions as we go. All right, so short, impactful video. And then we're going to Want to be sending that out to college coaches. That can be an email. And recruiting has changed as far as just how this whole process social media is, whether you like it or not, it's part of this process. And college coaches are on Twitter. If you're going to be on one social media for recruiting, it's on Twitter. So get on Twitter, post your videos there. I think the max amount of length of video that you can Post on Twitter, 60 seconds. And honestly that's probably a good framework of keeping your highlight video around there. Max you want to be is like three minutes that you don't need. Coaches don't need a lot of it and they're not going to watch a long video. They don't have time to watch a long video. So keep it short and sweet. 90 seconds to a minute is kind of that sweet spot. Then we're going to want. This is number two. So number one is creating that highlight video, getting that out. Number two is getting in front of them. Especially when you are ready. If you're not ready, if you're a freshman or a sophomore and you're just, you know that you have some improvements to make, hey, let's go on and wait. Unless you're just trying to get in front of getting experience. Okay, I'm not against getting in front of coaches and just kind of getting experience. But if you can wait and if you want to wait, wait until you are ready. And then number three, fill out their questionnaire so you get in their system and they can let you know when, hey, where they're going to be or what camps they're going to have so you can get in front of them and as well. And number four, probably the most important one honestly is be realistic with yourself. Be realistic with your skill set and your evaluation. So an example was me. I was interested in the University of Florida sec. I was interested in Vanderbilt. I was interested in lsu. I was not that type of player. I wasn't going to play for them. All right. Even if I got on the team, I wasn't going to play. All right. There was just those. It's a different, honestly, it's a different caliber guys. I'm an undersized 57 catcher that could play a little bit. I ended up playing Division 1, Mid Major, but that was just not a fit for me. Another analogy that you can think of is like if you are an average to above average good student, like for me I was above average student but I was not Harvard. So it would be like for me trying to get into Harvard, where I would just could not compete at the Harvard from academics as people getting in, it just wasn't going to fit. I wasn't going to get in. All right. There were so many people and students around the country that are just way above me from an academic standpoint. Even though I was pretty good, I was like a 3.8 in high school. But Harvard, you have to have a 4.0 or above and your test score's got to be off the charts. So it's just finding your fit athletically and getting a true evaluation. Get an unbiased evaluation of yourself as far as from a coach of yourself. And then, hey, be truthful with you. And that's why go see these college games. See where they're at, okay? See how physical these guys are. You need to be in the weight room. That's a one that I don't have on here. It could be number five is, hey, get in the weight room. Be physical. That's how you can get on radar is being super, super physical. So, hey, hopefully you got something from this. If you did again, please smash that, like, button and subscribe to my channel and I will see you in the next video. Have a great day.