Alex Swenson, a former D1 scout and recruiter, breaks down five reasons college coaches miss athletes: you're not reaching out first, your emails are too long, you have no recruiting video, you're an underclassman (coaches can't contact you yet), or you're only targeting top programs. Send short emails, make a video, and apply to mid-majors and D2/D3 schools too.
Questions this video answers
11 years.
September 1 of the student-athlete's junior year.
Chapters
Hey, how are you getting your name out there? How are you grabbing the attention of these college coaches and getting noticed? My name is Alex Swenson. I'm a former Division 1 college scout, coach and recruiter with 11 years of experience. And when I was out scouting players or events, I would think about this a lot, that I'm just missing a lot of good players because I don't know about them. Right. These scouts can't recruit you if they don't know about you. Okay? Do not rely on your travel team or your coaches for the recruiting process. Okay? Let. Let them help you. Okay? Hopefully they're helping you, but do not rely on them. Take control of your recruiting process and help yourself get your name out there. And if your parent watches, help your son and help you can help them get his or her name out there going through this process. Okay? So in today's video, I'm going to talk about why you might not be getting your name out there, grabbing the attention of these college coaches or getting noticed for a few reasons. And this hopefully is going to help you. It will help you if you just follow this and do what I kind of say, it will help you go through this process and start really getting noticed. Or maybe even just understand the timing of this, because there is a timing aspect of this, especially if you're an underclassman, which I'm going to get here in two seconds. But if you get anything from this video, please smash that, like, button and subscribe to my channel. I put out a weekly video on recruiting and how did you just get better on and off the field and help you go through this recruiting process? All right, let's get into it. So there's five quick points that I want to cover of why you might not be grabbing the attention of these college coaches, why you might not be getting noticed. And the first one is you're not reaching out. Okay. And you might just hope that you're going to be found or you think that your travel organization is just going to do it for you. Okay? I actually started with this. I had this mindset starting this recruiting process, and luckily I switched it around and took ownership of my career, my college career, my high school career, in my direction of my life. And I took in help. I got help going through this, but again, I looked at it. It was up to me. I was going to do that. All right, so that's the first one. And if you're watching this, you're probably not doing that. You're probably pretty proactive in this process. And if you are, that's okay. This is where we can turn things around. No question about it. And number two is if you're sending out emails to these college coaches, it might be way, way too long. Okay? These emails need to be condensed. These college coaches do not want to read a long email. Think of it as. It's intimidating for them when they open up an email with everything that they have going on and it's this long, long paragraph or eight paragraphs of something about a player, and they're like, no, they're not gonna. They're not gonna read all of that. They have too much going on. It has to be short. It has to be concise. Okay? Number three is you don't have video. Video is so important. Your personal recruiting video is very, very important, going through this process because it helps with exposure. And think of this as your personal recruiting video as your digital resume showing these college coaches and highlighting your best skill sets on the field and off academically and on the field. Well, number four is you are an underclassman, and they actually can't respond back to you other than camp invites. And if you're getting a bunch of camp invites, they're probably. The majority of them are just automated, meaning you put in your information, they just automatically send you a camp information. Camp information. It's not necessarily personal. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but it's not personal. Meaning if you're getting a personal invite from the college coaches and you'll be able to tell the difference from the camp invites to the personal ones, there's a difference there. There's definitely a difference. Now, if you are an underclassman, they can't reach out to you until September 1st of your junior year. So you might not just be hearing back from them because of that. All right? And number five is if you're an upperclassman and you're not hearing back. If you're past September 1st of your junior year and you're not hearing back from anybody, you might be only reaching out to one level. Like, for example, a player that's only reaching out to Vanderbilt, to Florida, to Texas, to ucla. Hey, you need. It's not. There's nothing wrong to reaching out to those schools, okay? But you need to diversify, meaning you need to reach out to all different levels. Mid majors, Lower division ones, D2s, D3s. Because if you're not hearing anything back from these college coaches, and maybe you have the email set up right, maybe you have your video set up right and maybe you have your schedule there and you have everything, and you have your metrics, your academics. You have everything these college coaches want, and you're not hearing anything back. I think it's the wrong level, okay? I think it's the wrong level, and you need to go and change your level and work your way down. Give yourself the best chance. And, hey, don't be D1 or bust mindset. Okay? Okay, I get it. I want you to shoot for the highest levels. I totally understand that. But you also need to have a balance of realistic goals and goal setting. Okay? I want you to reach for those schools, but also have some target schools and safe schools at different levels. All these levels are amazing, guys. All of these levels are awesome. If you're able to play at the next level in college, you're part of the 10%, meaning 90% don't make it. Okay? And that's amazing. The SEALs have a 20. If you want to be a Navy SEAL, 25% make it. So it's harder to get to the college level than it is to be a Navy seal. Pretty wild from statistics standpoint. Okay, so real quick recap is make sure that you're being proactive and you're not just sitting back. Okay? Number two is your email is not too long. Number three is you actually have good video, a highlight video, and you actually have a video. Okay? Number four is you might be an underclassman, you might just not be. The timing might not be right. Although these college coaches can eventually talk to you as an underclassman, but they might be waiting, and they can't from an email and text perspective. They can't respond to you. Only camps. Okay, so that's number four, and number five is an upperclassman reaching out just to the wrong level. Meaning maybe you're going only power fives, all right? Or only Division 1 ones, where you can go Division twos and Division threes, NAI and JUCO. So make sure that you're looking over these points and seeing where you can adjust. I hope this helps. Comment down below or reach email me. You can take a look at the descriptions and let me know if you have any questions. I'll see you in the next video. Take care.
