Trenton Luera got a $70,200 scholarship offer from junior college despite throwing only 97 passes over two years. He sent over 1,000 DMs to coaches, posted constantly on Twitter, and treated recruiting like a separate game. Aggressive self-promotion and exposure got him multiple offers.
Questions this video answers
Winter of 2022.
$17,550 for one semester.
About 97 recorded passes.
He said he started only five games in high school (estimated total starts across high school ~11–12, uncertain).
He said it was over one thousand DMs, "easily."
Chapters
So today I'm sharing the story of how I earned a $70,200 scholarship for just two years of school coming out of junior college. If you don't know who I am, I'm Trent Loire. I played at the collegiate level at the JUCO and the NI level, and now I run your first scholarship where I help families get their first scholarship and more. So let's dive into my story for today. So how I got this scholarship in the first place. So I'll flash back you to shoot. What was the year even then? It was. It was 2022, winter of 2022. And so we just wrapped up our season and I actually went out to record a post. I talk a lot about as far as what got me a lot of exposure and attention and interest. And a coach called me up that I got an email, a Twitter DM from email response actually, this scholarship really initially came from email and talked on the phone with him. Basically got offered the full scholarship there. He mentioned at least, but he just wanted to confirm some things. So it wasn't definitely set in stone. Went out there, record the video, ended up getting some more attention. They really liked it, but essentially went back home. I was actually on a trip with some friends. And so we got there, I got the text, hey, just sent you the information. And boom, I opened up my laptop, check my email, and there it is, like, for one semester, $17,550 for the semester. And so that was a big moment for me to finally get that full scholarship. And it was awesome. But, like, how did I actually get it? So let's talk about it. So the biggest thing is I did not play a lot. Like, I think I had about 97 recorded passes in junior college of two years. Started in only five games in high school. I think I started a total of, I don't know, somewhere between like 11 and 14. I can't really remember off the top of my head. It's probably 11 or 12. I just didn't play a lot. I got benched my senior year, too. I was a backup most of my junior year. And so I didn't necessarily have a ton of film out there, but I was still able to get recruited. I was still able to get scholarships. I mean, that scholarship I mentioned to you was the one I took, but I got multiple other scholarships. I got multiple scholarships out of high school. I got easily 10, I think probably closer to 15, maybe over 15 scholarships out of high school. And so the biggest thing I did, because I was not the most talented player on my team. There was plenty of other guys. We had some great offensive linemen that probably could have went D1, two receivers that probably could have went D1. But the reason why my recruiting went so well and why I was able to get so much attention was because I did stuff on my own. I didn't rely on anyone else. That's what I saw growing up is like, my high school had plenty of talented athletes, and some of them did play at a very high level. But the reason why most of them phased out was because they were missing something. They weren't doing something that got the, that should have got them recruited. And it's because they just weren't marketing themselves. They weren't making themselves stand out. They were trying to rely on just their talent and film alone to somehow get seen by college coaches. And that just doesn't work. And so especially in the modern era of recruiting, with transfer Portal and Nil, you have to market yourself. You have to get seen by college coaches. That's something that I did extremely well. Just, that was my strength. I was consistent with it. I put in a lot of effort and time. I tried new things, experimented to figure out what worked. I mean, I can't even say how many DMs I sent to college coaches. It was over a thousand, like, easily. And so I, I tested a lot and I really figured out, hey, this is, this is what works, this what, this is what doesn't. And it led me to get a lot of scholarships, a lot of attention, a lot of interest. I use Twitter posts to my advantage. And ultimately that led me to that moment to get to that scholarship. And even the day I committed, I ended up getting my only D1 offer, but didn't take it for a couple reasons. But ultimately I learned the recruiting process like the hard way. I learned through trial and error, by fire, a lot of lessons throughout the way by teammates, by coaches that I can't thank enough for, for teaching me that stuff and now that I share with you guys. But if I had to boil it down to one thing, it was really just that I thought about recruiting a lot. Like I thought about it as, as a. Its own game, because that's really what it is like. I think a lot of people tie it together. They think football and recruiting are together, but really they're separate games, the football game and the recruiting game. Because the recruiting game is more so about attention. It's not about. It is about your play on the field. That is a piece of it, but it is not the whole thing. And that's what people get confused about. They think if you just play well, that'll cover the recruiting aspect. It just transfers over. That's not how it works. It does, some of it does transfer over and trickle over into your recruiting stuff. Definitely like playing well is an important part of the recruiting process. But like me, I didn't play well, so how did I get recruited? That doesn't really match up with this whole play well thing. And the thing is if you play well, there's plenty of people that play well and then don't get recruited or don't get recruited as much as they should. And so why do they get that? So there's these, there's those reasons that make me question that saying and just make me realize that's not true. And so what makes a person's recruiting isn't necessarily by their talent or by what they produce on the field. You can, there's definitely some correlation there, but what really comes down to is exposure, marketing, selling themselves. Because if you can market yourself, if you can, I mean just imagine this, like if you can get known by every single school, if every single coach knows your name, watches your film multiple times and they see your best stuff, they know the best things about you and they just become marketed and sold on you, how would you not crush your recruiting process versus, let's say you just focus on the field. You do really well in the field, you're at let's say like a mid sized school, you really well in the field, you perform well, you win all state honors and then that's it. Which one gives you a better chance? Probably the one where you're marketed and sold to each coach. And that's really what I strive to teach and to do in your first scholarship. But that's my whole philosophy. Because you're telling me if you don't get known by every single coach and we share you in the best light that you will not get recruited. You will not just maximize recruiting process. Of course you will. So that's, that's the big thing is like on the other hand, yeah, you can perform really on the field. I mean, obviously the best of both worlds is combine the two because then you really crush it. But like if you're perform the best on the field and don't get seen by anyone, like none of that matters. I mean I've worked with plenty of kids that were all state CIF and you know, wherever else, but they weren't getting recruited as much as they'd like. Because his coaches just didn't know about them. And that's the most frustrating thing. You perform well on the field and the coaches don't know about you, and then your recruiting process is just not doing well. And you're like, why? Like, I am the player that coaches want to see. Why aren't they not seeing me? And it's because they just don't know about you, honestly, because you didn't put in the effort to get them to know about you, or you're not doing it the way that will actually grab their attention. And so a lot of that stuff just comes out to marketing and you're selling yourselves correctly. And so that's the biggest reason why I was able to get recruited, why I was able to earn the scholarship that I talk about, the scholarships that I talk about, is because I marketed and sold myself extremely well. Extremely, extremely well. And it just led me to a much simpler, much easier recruiting process without the stress, without the frustration, though, there was some components for sure, because I had to learn a lot. But by the end of it, it just became a lot smoother and I knew exactly what I needed to do to get recruited, to get the scholarships I wanted to. So if there's anything you learn from my scholarship, how I earned it, how I got to this point is market it and sell yourself. And as long as you're putting on a pretty good product on the field, everything will take care of itself. So hopefully you got something from this. If you like this one more content like it, be sure to subscribe. You can also follow me on other social media platforms. My handle is Trentonluera14 on anything, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram. And then also, if you want to learn more about how to work with me personally, you can go to YourFirstScholarship.com and you can get some more information there. Peace.
