The Secret To Getting Noticed By College Coaches

If you want to play sports in college, one of the most important questions you'll ask yourself going through this college recruiting process in high school is, how do I get noticed? How do I get seen? How do I get interest? How do I stand out from the crowd? You should be asking yourself that. And we're going to be covering that today. And I welcome you. If you're new to my channel, My name is Alex Swinson. 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 baseball players and and their parents navigate this college recruiting process and put them in the best possible position to play at the next level. And I hope this video helps you, because the purpose of this video is to put you in the best possible position. So make sure you follow these things, because we're going to be talking about how to best get noticed, especially starting off and going into some detail. So the first thing that I want to talk about. Recruiting does not reward the passive player or prospect. If you are passive, meaning you're kind of sitting back and waiting for scouts to come to you, or the mindset that we see a lot of here is, hey, if they're good enough, they will find me. Guys, I do not like that saying. And I don't want you to like that saying. I don't want you to kind of sit back and lean on that. It's like, hey, yeah, if I'm good enough, they'll just find me. That is the wrong way. That is passive. That is how you get missed. Is it true to a certain extent? Absolutely. Right? It is 100% true. If you throw 95. Hey, if you're watching this and you or Your son throws 95 miles an hour and he hits 10 to 12 home runs in the high school season, he's the Gatorade player of the year. Yeah, don't worry about it. They're going to find you. All right? Hey, but for everybody else, including myself, I was that athlete, meaning I was a good athlete. I wasn't in an elite athlete. This is for you. This is how to get noticed. Going through this now also for learning experiences for my young guys in high school, okay, this is a marketing game. You need to market yourself. There's healthy ways to do this. And I work with a lot of athletes and families. It's like, ah, it feels weird to market myself because I feel like I'm bragging, right? It is not bragging. And college coaches want to see your performance, right? You're just showing your skill set, and we want to make sure we show your best skill set going through this. So with all that said, we want to be proactive in this process. Proactive in showing who you are as a player, who you are academically, who you are as a person eventually. Okay? That is really, really important. So. So one of the best things that we can do when we are starting to put ourselves out there is a recruiting video. It's one of the most important tools that you can use in the recruiting process. Why is that? Right. Because with a couple clicks, you can send your recruiting video to hundreds of coaches if you wanted to, all right? And they can sit back at their desk when they get into the office. You typically in the morning or after practice or after a game or on the bus ride after a game or towards a game, they can watch you in your skill set. Okay? A recruiting video, again, is one of the most important things that you can have. And continue to update your recruiting video because you're going to continue to get better. All right? I hear all the time like, hey, I sent out my video, and I didn't really hear anything back. Guys, it is so important to continue to follow up to. These coaches aren't going to necessarily respond to every single message they get. All right? There's been guys in my program that, yes, maybe have gotten some responses first, but there's been also a lot more that's gotten on the second and third and fourth and even fifth. Next thing you know, you're on a college visit or a phone call, you're talking to the coach. Then you're on a college visit. Then you're sitting in the head coach's office, and he's offering you a scholarship. I mean, it's amazing in this recruiting process, things can happen slow. Like, there's things that you need to do, right? And then all of a sudden, all the work that you've put in, right? Because you weren't passive, boom, things start happening really fast. Usually that's what happens in life. Good things happen in life really fast. But a lot of people say, you hear the a overnight success, right? Nah, nah, nah. It's all the stuff they put in, and then all of a sudden, boom, it hit success, right? That is technically the overnight success. It's not. It's the. In our case, it could be a year, year and a half of the work that we're putting. In some cases it's six months, some cases it's eight months. But you need to be proactive in this recruiting process, some key factors to understand is your skills. So how to get noticed, right? If we are sending out our information to college coaches and we're trying to get in front of college coaches, maybe we're sending. Let's start with sending out the highlight video, okay. Which is again really, really important. We're sending that out to Vanderbilt, Coach Corbin over there or Texas or Florida or Stanford. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that. Unless, okay, it is not realistic. There is players out there that it may be a good fit for you and there's players that it might not be a good fit. It's not realistic and that is. Okay, all right. I wasn't going to play at Vanderbilt, okay? I just wasn't. I wasn't that type of player. I was a mid major Division 1 player and that was actually a reach for me and I made that and you know, I was a three time captain. We went to three regionals. It was awesome. All right, it was great. Had a great career there, but it was a reach for me. Vanderbilt, I would have never, if I would have only focused on Vanderbilt, I wouldn't have played college baseball. All right? There's a lot of players out there and I want you to avoid this and I want to make sure that this is clear. I want you to dream, I to want. I want you to dream big but I also want you to find a line to manage your expectations to see where your skill set is. All right? I know that everybody wants to, or mostly everybody wants to play at the Division 1 level. But there is great baseball, D2 level, D3 level. And if your skill sets match up with the D2s and D3s, you need to make sure you're covering those too. So cover all of your bases if you will, all right? Cover all of your bases when you are going because that's how you're going to get noticed, right? If you're going only after the power fives and you're not a Power 5 player, you're not going to get noticed. Okay? Very, very important. This video is about how to get noticed. Especially that are good fits for you. That's who we want to target. Schools that are good fits for you athletically, academically, geographically, socially, financially, all of those things. So make sure you open up your, your thoughts to other schools, right? And you're open minded to those schools and you want to make sure that you are targeting those as we go through this. So then, so we have a recruiting video. We're sending our recruiting video. It's a good recruiting video. It's three minutes or less showing your best skill sets as a player, highlighting some of hey, what you've done, metrics wise, what you've done, academics wise, if you're not sure, metrics wise and things like this. I've done videos, but you can go also to my premier athletes app or website if you will. And I have everything there as far as metrics that these college coaches are looking for at each level. Power fives, division one, mid majors, D2s, D3s, et cetera, jucos, nai, all that stuff. So we have that. Then we want to get in front of college coaches. So we need to get in front of either at camps or showcases. Camps and showcases, if they are the good ones, that is the best way to get directly in front of. So we might have initially created some dialogue with our recruiting video. Then we want to get directly in front of them via camps or showcases and in person. Okay. Tournaments can happen a little bit, but you're completely winging it. You don't know who's going to be there. You guys have seen this. I'm not a big fan of travel ball anymore. I used to be. I used to think travel ball was great from a recruiting perspective. Now it's not anymore. It's just watered down. There's so many teams. It's really hard to see all the athletes where campsite showcases are the best ways because we know who's going to be there. Especially if we go to the good ones and we get in front of them because they are going to need to confirm what they see in the video. There's just things that you can't see in the video. As much as a video is great for recruiting, again, it kind of jump starts us. It kind of can spark things. And then they come see you or we go to them and next thing you know, again you're on their campus and you're talking to coach and your offers. Okay. But they need to confirm to see. And they might see you once, they might see you twice, they might see you three times, three or four times. Good recruits will see guys multiple times. So that is kind of the process how to get noticed. Right. Is making sure is one. We are being proactive in this process. We're sending out good recruiting videos to schools that could be potentially good fits for us athletically, academically, all of those. And we're going to have a wide range of those schools. It's good to start wide range and we'll narrow it down as we go and then we're going to get in front of those college coaches at either camps and showcases. Camps are school specific. Okay. And then showcases are not necessarily I'm not talking about perfect game or pbr that's more for metrics and getting video that's good for that stuff. I'm talking about showcases where it's a third party where they're bringing college coaches in and you know who's going to be there and you're getting in front of the decision makers. That is how you get noticed and you being proactive in this college recruiting process and not sitting back and hoping that college coaches come to you or if you're good enough they will find you. All right if you have any questions please comment down below. Subscribe to my YouTube channel and also if you're listening on the podcast make sure you subscribe and write a review. Would love to hear from you. All right again if you have any questions please let me know. Take care.