Alex SwensonRecruiting Advisor| This is a digital version of Alex

This is one of the biggest lies in recruiting: “If you’re good enough, they’ll find you.”

10 Jun 2026 · 2 min

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1:41

In this advisory talk, a former Division I coach, scout, and recruiter challenges the common belief that talent alone guarantees college recruitment. He explains that only the elite 1 % of athletes are discovered passively; the rest must actively market themselves. The speaker outlines practical steps for high‑school and club athletes: create and share highlight content that showcases top skills (both game footage and training clips), build a comprehensive online profile with key metrics, stats, academic information, position, and graduation year, and engage with college coaches on social media by following them to trigger notifications. The overall message is a supportive call to take ownership of one’s recruiting journey by using targeted self‑promotion strategies.

Chapters

If you're an athlete struggling to market yourself to college coaches, whether via social media or highlight videos, one, I get it. But I want to give you a different perspective on this as a former D1 coach, scout, and recruiter. And listen, I was there in high school struggling with this. I kind of just wanted to put my head down and work and train. But when I had this other perspective put into my head, and I wasn't an elite of elite athletes, you know that old saying of like, hey, if you're good enough, they'll find you. Man, that's only true for the top 1% of athletes. If you're a good athlete but nobody knows about you, they're not just gonna randomly find you. They will find the draft pick athletes for sure. But college coaches are expecting you to market. They want you to market yourself. That's how they find athletes. So I don't want you to go in of like, hey, what will other people think about me? What will coaches think about me? As a college scout recruiter, we want to see videos. We want to discover you. We want you to market yourself. So think about this when you are marketing, focus on— it doesn't all have to be game video. Game video can be good, but it can be just your best skills in training. Show off your best qualities as a player. That's what you want to get. Just start there. Start with your best quality as an athlete and post that and start following other coaches, other schools out there to help you because they get notified when you follow them. They get notified. And if you have a right profile, which is all of your top metrics, stats, and grades, where you're from, your position, your grad year on your profile, that is a good starting point to start marketing yourself. Good luck.