How To Approach a College Coach at a Camp

In today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to approach a college coach at a camp or a showcase or a recruiting event. And when is the best time to approach these college coaches? When are there going to be some opportunities to approach these coaches? Because it's very important that we create dialogue with these college coaches, start forming a relationship, hopefully, with these college coaches, hopefully get some direction with them and possible opportunities with them. Sometimes it's going to be no, and that's all right, and. And sometimes it's going to be yes. We're going to be talking about first impressions, what to say to these college coaches, conversation tips, and, of course, following up. And if you're new to my channel, 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 high school athletes and their parents navigate this college recruiting process and put them in the best possible position to play at the next level. So if you get anything from this video, please smash that, like, button right down here and subscribe. Subscribe to my YouTube channel or on my podcast. Might be listening here. And if you're on YouTube, I have a podcast and vice versa. So you can check me out there and listen on the go. And if you want to just learn more about what I do, you can go down to my website down below in the description, and I'll pull it up right here. So let's dive into first impressions, which I know that you know is really important, but I want you to think about anybody that's made a really good first impression on you. Maybe their body language was really good, their eye contact was really good. Their tone was really good. Well, those are things that we want to work on as we approach a college coach or really just anybody that we have a first interaction with as we go and engaging them with a handshake. And you can be the first one to present your hand out. Just saying like, hey, coach, I'm here to introduce myself. It's body language right there with having your eyes up and shoulders back when you approach them. So we want to avoid. Right. Our shoulders kind of down, our chin kind of down, and our hand kind of like this being tentative. Right? We want to be confident but respectful when we go and talk to these college coaches. And just keep your eyes engaged with them as you go through this. Now, what to say? All right? And it kind of depends. But let's just. From a scenario standpoint, we haven't introduced ourselves. Maybe You've interacted with them in the camp or showcase before this. Now you might not necessarily need to introduce yourself. They already know your name, all that good stuff. But let's just say they don't know your name so you're going to go introduce yourself. So for me it'd be hey coach, Alex Swinson here. I'm really interested in your program. I wanted to know if you guys are in need of my position in my class and you won't necessarily say my class. So if you are in need of a right handed pitcher in the 2027 class, it's an open ended question. Let the coach kind of talk from there because now he's going to engage with you. Like yeah, actually we are in need of right handed pitcher in the 2027 class. Oh, that's great. Coach, is there anything that you saw that I could do to help improve my chances with you guys? I would love any feedback, again, open ended question to create some conversation there and then you could also ask some other scenarios that you could, what are you looking for in an athlete? At my position you could go into again, your position, being specific. It's another way to engage this. So just being prepared for this conversation because maybe that team just played Vanderbilt and they won a series against them or this past year they went to the College World Series or whatever it may be like coach, congratulations on making it that far. I saw that series against A and M or I saw that win against UCLA or hey, I saw that what's his name got drafted. Like you can create some engagement and again it's, it's just a conversation and coaches love talking about their program, love talking about their guys. And when you are prepared to talk about them because you're going to know, right, you should know that they are going to be there. Especially camps and showcases. We want to know which schools are going to be there or we're kind of just winging it, right? You guys might have seen some videos about that with me talking about camps and showcases that we want to make sure that we know which schools and coaches that are going to be there. So we're not again just showing up randomly and nobody's there, right? So and then following up, we want to make sure that we follow up. We can let coach know. Hey Coach, again, excited to continue this conversation with you. I'll follow up with you with some video and my transcript and would love to keep this engagement going with you and if there's anything you need, just please let me know so that is kind of the best way to approach a college coach. Now, when is the best time to approach these college coaches? Really? There's three opportunities. It's at the beginning of an event, a camp or a showcase, which is probably the worst time to communicate with the college coach. But there's going to be some opportunities. And when I say worst time, there's just not going to be that many opportunities because they're going to be off kind of getting ready for the day. You might not even see them at first until the camp really gets going. But maybe you do engage with them and you can just say, hey, coach, Alex Swenson here. Really looking forward to competing in front of you today and having a conversation with you after. It's simple as that. You don't want to be too long winded with them because they are there, you know, working and watching players and things like that. But you also want to keep engagement with it. So you got to kind of read the room as we go. If they are on the middle of the field and things are happening, it needs to be quick. All right. But if it's kind of low key, maybe it's post camp. There's not much going on and you know, you can, you can have that conversation going a little bit longer. So the next opportunity is the middle of camp, which is this kind of ups your chances of having conversation with college coaches. They might come up to you, which is great too, as you go through this. So there's middle of it and then there's post. Post camp is usually and most likely when you're going to have a conversation with a college coach because they are done and they usually hang around, especially the good events. They should be hanging around so you can go engage with them. And that's when we can start having those conversations and those talking points that we had. So make sure you stay engaged. Just like we're being engaged and going through this recruiting process. We are proactive in this recruiting process, be proactive in talking to college coaches. And I get it. It can be kind of nervous and nerve wracking, like, oh man, I'm going to talk to a college coach. But that is something that is a hurdle that we need to get over. And once you start doing that more and more, you become more and more confident. And it just helps you in so many areas of your life. And it will help you in the areas of forming a relationship with these college coaches and putting you in a good position to be recruited and commit to a program that's going to be a good fit for you. If you have any questions, please comment down below. If you have any experiences with this, please comment down below and I'll see you in the next video. Take care.