Trenton Luera (former college quarterback, founder of Scholarship Accelerator) argues the number-one "recruiting killer" for aspiring college athletes is timing — starting too late. He warns that in competitive markets (California, Texas, Florida, Georgia) athletes should begin outreach and learning the recruiting process as early as freshman/sophomore year (ideal window: post-sophomore season into the months before coaches can contact recruits). He gives personal anecdotes, recommends 15–30 minutes/day of recruiting activity, and urges parents/athletes not to wait for junior/senior film alone.
Questions this video answers
Time (starting too late).
7% of high school athletes (speaker's statement).
Approximately 2% of high school football players (speaker's statement).
Post-sophomore season — roughly a six to eight month head start before the June 15 date when coaches can contact recruits.
Chapters
So today I'm going to talk about the number one recruiting killer. So that way you can stop it in its tracks and just get way better, smoother recruiting process, get more offers and find that best school for you. And if you don't know who I am, I'm Tren Lora. I'm a former college quarterback. Now I run a company called Scholarship Accelerator where we help families get scholarship offers. And over in the past year we've already helped 50 plus families. And so how I'm going to try show you this number one recruiting killer is that this is a raw, unedited video. There's going to be ums, there's going to be oz. I'm just going to break it down for you step by step, sharing my process, why this is a big killer. And so with that, it's going to be a lot of knowledge thrown your way. You're listening to this in the car. Whatever other situation might be, you can listen to it there. But I recommend that you take notes throughout this because I'm not giving this to you in necessarily a clear blueprint. I'm sharing with you my knowledge that some of the things I've taken away from it and you can take what you want from it. So let's dive into it. So the number one recruiting killer is time. That's easily the number one. And so what I'll say with the context on this is my recruiting process is gonna be different than yours. But what I'll share with you from mine is I was from California, as you might not know. But if you're from any of these areas, they're very heavy competitive recruiting markets. California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, probably the top four most competitive, definitely California, Texas, Florida, and I definitely lump Georgia in there as well. That means that there's a lot of kids out there that play good football, that want to play college football at a high level. And coaches know that, and so they recruit in these areas. And so I played also one of the most competitive positions out there, quarterback. And so if you know anything about playing quarterback, about getting recruited a quarterback, it's crazy. It's a world of craziness. And I didn't really know what I was signing it for. I just liked the position, ended up playing it, luckily got a college football scholarship for it. But how it kind of went was I didn't start worrying about my career process until going into my junior year. That's it. I happened to get on a 7 on 7 team that was filled with a lot of top guys. Xavier, Worthy, who just signed with the Chief or got drafted by the Chiefs in the first round. He was from there. Torrey Horton, who's over at Colorado State currently, I believe. I don't think he went to the draft. That's the second guy. A couple other big names, Jalen McMillan was on there, who just recently got drafted as well and played out. Washington was from there. So I was fortunate enough to get on that team, though by no means. I was a top quarterback on the team. I was on the team and it brought me kind of my eyes to the recruiting process. And so I ended up going to a camp. It was the first camp I ever gone to as far as college camps, to San Jose State camp. And that was my first dip in the. Dip in my toe in the water into the recruiting process. And I learned that I had a shot, but I was already kind of too late. And so that's one of the big realizations I've had throughout my recruiting process is I started too late as a California quarterback going into my junior year, I was too late. Most kids at this point already talking to D1 coaches, some of them already had offers. It's just, it's not necessarily like, obviously it worked out for me. I was able to get multiple offers. But if you want to play at the Division 1 level, especially FVs in one of these areas overall in the nation, you have to get started earlier. You have to get started in your sophomore freshman year. And I'm not saying you have to go crazy. You don't have to be baby grog posting all over the place. But you have to at least start learning the process, start going to camp, start putting yourself out there a little bit so that we can get the head start on the people that do wait. Because there, there's always going to be people that wait. Let's say that's overkill. You don't need to do that. I heard from Jim and Joe that, you know, they recruit on talent of your senior and junior film and you don't. Coaches don't need to know about you. You just need to worry about putting the work in the film. You know they're going to show up. And though talent and film fairly very important aspects and your junior film is very key, why would you not get a head start in the process? Why would you not start earlier? I talked to so many parents, hundreds of parents, honestly, and I have never once heard one parent say, you know what? We got started really early in the process. I just so, so regret that. No, what they usually say is I'm realizing now that we got started too late and we need to go into hyperdrive or we got served too late and that messed up our entire process. So that's why I'm sharing this with you. So that way you don't get started too late, so that way you don't put this off. And I talked to so many parents that honestly are sadly a little bit clueless and they say like, oh yeah, well, he's going into his junior or his senior year and you know, he had a pretty good junior year. You know, coaches aren't noticing him. But I know the process goes late with a lot of them and so it'll be fine and hopefully it does turn out for them. But you can't just sit around and wait and hope for things to happen. I imagine you didn't do that for the rest of your, for most of your life. If you did on the football field, that wouldn't work. And so you can't wait around for those offers for the coaches to come to you. And so time is the biggest killer. It's not necessarily time in just a waiting aspect, but just time. And like there's limited time in the recruiting process. It starts, the clock starts right when you realize when your signing day is. And it ticks from every single second down to that. And at that point you have to find that home, you have to sign that paper and you hopefully have scholarship offer by then. And Most don't. Only 7% of high school athletes get a scholarship. I believe it's 2% of high school football players get a scholarship. I mean there's hundred thousand plus high school seniors every year that want to play college football, that go through the process just like you are going through and only a limited amount, limited amount, get an actual scholarship. So you can't take that lightly. You can't just slide into the process late, expect to crush it. You have to start early. And hopefully you're, you're a parent or an athlete that's a freshman, a sophomore and you're learning stuff early and you're getting ahead and you're like, you know what, Trent, I already know this, that's awesome, kudos to you. But you have to get started early. I can't emphasize that enough. I think the perfect time, the perfect time, there's any one time out of the pick, it's that, it's, it's post sophomore, it's like that sophomore season, right after sophomore season, you get about a six to maybe eight month head start. To the June 15th date when coaches can contact you. That's probably that perfect window where, like, you can start putting yourself out there. You're probably not going to get a ton of interest, ton of responses, but you're going to get at least a head start. Coaches are going to start knowing your name a little bit. And then once that June 15th date hurts, boom, you're hitting the ground running. You already have a step up from everybody else because you've reached out to. I mean, sure, at that point you probably reach out to 1,000 plus college coaches and you're just, you're just running from there while other people are like, oh, June 15th, hit. Oh, okay, let's start contacting coaches, blah, blah, boards already made. They have to get on boards and it's too late. So. And that was me. I did get started until that period and it was just too late at that point. I couldn't catch up to guys that were already had known this process and we're going about it the right way. So all that to say, I'll recap this with this whole rant. We're out about 7, 7 minutes and 20 seconds here. If you're going through the recruiting process, you need to, you need to try and start as early as possible. If you've been holding back on it, if you're like, I'll wait till I get more film, I'll wait till I play on varsity. If you at least have some film and you're pretty, you're relatively talented, you should be putting some time into recruiting. It doesn't have to be anything crazy. 15, 30 minutes a day, that's it. Or at live, or at least learn. Go through my Twitter account, go through other people's Twitter account, follow those accounts, watch videos. Educating yourself on the process, doing some actions will give you so much momentum early on that I can't even explain it will. You will be so glad when you get to your junior senior year and be like, I am glad we got started early because this thing, you know, it's going to be stressful no matter what. I'll be honest, because it's just random and recruiting is crazy. But when you get to that point, your junior and senior year and you just, you have a clear plan, you've been doing this for a year already, and you're like, okay, I feel like we're pretty comfortable at this point. We know. We know what to do. Trust me, you'll be glad that you put in that time a year or two before that. And trust me, I wish I could go back in time and do that because literally the easiest decision I could have made that would have probably, probably taken my recruiting to the next level is just starting earlier 100% so if that's you then I recommend if you've been holding it off. You've been saying I don't really need to reach out to coaches right now. You should start now 100% so hopefully this gave you some insight. Whatever platform you're following this on could be a bunch. I'm not even going to list them out. Be sure to follow subscribe for more content like this. I'm trying to post two of these per week so we can get you guys some more longer form content me breaking down the recruiting process Let me know if you enjoyed this. Let me know if there's anything else you want me to blab about but hopefully there are some golden nuggets in here that you can take away into your own recruiting process. Make it simpler, do better and crush it. Peace.
