Junior year vs senior year recruiting

So this video is for anybody going through the recruiting process or planning on going through it that wants to absolutely dominate it and understand their situation clearly so that we can know exactly what to do. And so I'm Trent Lore, I'm a former college quarterback. I now run your first scholarship where I help families get their first scholarship and more. And so what that, what I'm going to talk about today is the difference between junior and senior recruiting because it's drastically different how you treat that and I'll kind of dive into different situations there as well. So let's get into it because this came to my mind because I'm starting to, I mean we're starting to work with so many families that I just get such a unique feel because I'm, I'm essentially in their process. Like I, I kind of see day to day of who's getting responses, what those responses look like differently from the 25 class to 26 class as I'm recording this and in September of 2024. And so I almost have this bird eye view of like over probably at this point, 50, 60 families across the nation of what's going on there in their recruiting. And so I've noticed something different between the juniors and the seniors. And I thought it's just interesting sharing because maybe you're going through this process and you're like, I'm not too sure how we should be doing things or how things should look and might be useful. So let's start off with junior. So junior recruiting is kind of unique because most people think like, oh, we should really be taking off right now because coaches can talk to you and they're like, why aren't we really getting the conversation started? Relationships as much as we thought realistically, like most schools are still focused on the 25 class heavily if now more than like in the past because signing day is happening early signing days in December, national signing days on in February. And so as we get closer and closer to that date, they become more focused on that 25 class than ever because they have to get that done. They still have over a year to recruit the 26 class. And so it's not really like these, these milestones, the three game, the five game mid season highlights and the full season highlights, like they're important milestones as juniors as well. But they're more for the seniors because they need the eval on those seniors on how they are now because they, these seniors went to camps, they did the junior days, they did all this stuff, they're in communication with them. But they need to see how they developed and how that's translating on the field. Because if it hasn't really translated on the field, they're not seeing anything different from what they saw in their junior tape. Then, okay, cool. Our evil on this guy earlier was correct. We don't need to change anything. We're probably not going to recruit him. But if this guy improved drastically, whoa, this guy's got a lot of potential. Okay, maybe we need to offer this guy versus junior year. It's much more about like, okay, let's see who our top performers are. Obviously you're gonna offer them. I'm talking about guys that have stars and rankings and are Getting interest from P4 schools versus everybody else is more so just you're trying to get that full body of work so that way you have the full season highlights. They can start sending the coaches, they see what your junior season is like, make those evaluations, and. And you start building those relationships from there. And then things really pick up. More so after the new year when classes start to get finalized, especially after national signing day, and then things really start to pick up in the spring. That's where most of our guys from the 25 class that are D1 guys really saw their offers get in, probably from January all the way to the summer during camp season. And so that. That's kind of like the timeline that you should expect. Now this takes me to the senior year because this is drastically different than senior year, because if you're a junior, you're really still like, just trying to get ahead. Like, it's not really. You're probably not going to get a ton of offers. If you do get an offer, you're ahead in terms of division one school. You're just trying to. You're just trying to rack up the interest. So that way you talking to a bunch of different coaches. And on top of that, coaches are going to move around. So you just have relationships built up already that way. Once you do get into that next year, you can just hit into hyperdrive. You don't really have to worry about, like, interest and conversations as much. You can just focus on the relationships you have and secure those. And so it just kind of becomes like this investment that kind of takes a little bit to get going. And then once it does, boom, the first offer drops. And then all these other schools you're talking to start to offer you as well. It's kind of what happened. And a good example of that is Jonathan, for example, now going into senior year, it's different because if, let's say I'm going to talk to two different situations because one, if you've, if you're just kind of starting the recruiting process now, it's completely different. You're kind of doing both at the same time. You're trying to like rack up interest quickly and try to get your first offer as fast as possible. That's really hard to do. But the key is you need to be exposure heavy. And so like again, those milestones are super important. Your three game, your five each week is super important. And so you need to be maximizing those highlights. You need to be putting out the coaches as much as possible because each week scholarships are being sent out, opportunities are dwindling by. And so you need to continue pushing that stuff out. Pressing, pressing. Like, I can't even like put into words how hard you need to be going and thinking about this stuff. And it depends on your goal. Like if your goal is, hey, D3 school, like maybe not as much, but if your goal is like even now, honestly, like D2FCs, like, you got it, you got to go because FPS is basically out of there if you're not getting their, their attention. And so you have to really just go and drive and, and, and just send it out and start following up like crazy and do everything you can because it's kind of like again, it's still investment time because most offers are going to come after that season. And so you just want to again continue to rack up interest, but you have a small window. And so you're trying to do that as fast as possible so we can get on that, on that train, that offer train there in essentially November, really December is like where most offers come. So that's a drastic difference. And then, but the guys that do it right, that junior year comes much easier because they're already talking to, you know, at least 20 schools, probably more. You're, if you're doing it right, it just becomes easy where you're just managing these conversations, you're sending them film weekly and you're probably still funneling interest in if you're doing some other stuff on the side. And so that's really the drastic difference there between the junior year and the senior year is as time comes closer to an end, it's all dependent on the interest level that you have and the offers that you have because obviously if you already have offers going in your senior year, you're probably not going to be as stressed. And it's just much more about the relationships and deciding the best fit later down the line. If you have a ton of interest but no offers. Okay, yeah. You're still like, oh, what if any of these turn into anything? But if you have 20, 50 interest at schools, safe to say one's gonna turn into an offer. Right. And probably they probably already communicated that to you. And so you need to. Hopefully you can get ahead, but if you're a senior, that's still kind of behind here. You need to press. You need to go hard. This is the full court press here. And you need to try and reach out to as many schools as possible, build that interest up, and then really plan on getting the offers in December or November. And so that's really the difference I've noticed is just kind of the timelines and the slower pace depending on the year. And so hopefully this helps you if you're going to that situation. Just getting some clarity on that and hopefully gives you a better plane of attack. So hope you like this. If you got something from it, be sure to subscribe. I'll see you later. Peace.