We’re entering he hardest season in recruiting. Here’s how to crush it:

All right, so today I'm talking about the hardest season of recruiting that we're going into. What you need to know about it and what you can do about it. And so if you don't know who I am, I'm Trent Lohr. I'm a former college quarterback, played at the NA and the JUCO level. And now I run your first scholarship where we've helped over 70 plus families get scholarships, get interest from coaches and just completely change the recruiting. And so today, if you don't know what this looks like, it's unedited. Just me rambling on about some of my thoughts. So take what you can. If you take just one thing, take, take away just one thing and go implement that in your recruiting. Trust me, it'll. It'll help out a ton. So the hardest season of recruiting, in my eyes, there's two really difficult pieces and it's probably the time, like somewhere in the spring, I'd say kind of that February to March window is a little tough. Signing day wraps up, coaches start moving around a lot and you can definitely get some activity. So I wouldn't call it the hardest. The hardest time is what we're entering now. Camps wrap up, dead period starts. So you're not allowed to really enter campus. You're not really able to see coaches in person. And then you basically, that dead period basically rolls into fall camp. And then coaches are focused on season, they're focused on just winning games because that's their, I mean, if anything, that's what's going to get them, you know, better contracts, secure their job, everything like that, like recruiting does matter, the long scheme of things, grand scheme of things, winning games is all that matters on a year to year basis. And so that is what's happening right now is this is July 4th, so there will be some camp still going on, but as we get closer to like July 20, things will start to die out. You'll notice coaches start to get more quiet and especially that, that just August month and even early September sometimes, especially last year was, it starts to get a little dead. And if you don't have a ton of attention, it can be kind of a frightening time where you feel like, hey, I'm getting ghosted, I'm getting, not getting any interest what's going on here. And so I just want to bring light to that because it's hard to know when you're going around this, like, maybe your son is a senior, maybe you're a senior, maybe you're a junior, or your son is A junior. It's hard to know because this is probably your first time to really pay attention to it and to be in it. And so you don't really know what is supposed to happen. And luckily I've been through it five plus different cycles. I went through it with all my families this last year that we started working with and so have a pretty good feel for what it's supposed to look like, what good. A good process is supposed to look like it and what a bad process is supposed to look like. So let's dive into what that's supposed to look like. So again, like I said, really you're not gonna get a lot going. I mean, yeah, can you get like the. The windows of opportunity are endless. You can still get offers during this time, coaches can still contact you. That's the thing that people get confused a lot during the dead period. That even the families inside. Your first scholarship that I have to keep reminding him is like the dead period really doesn't have much impact on your recruiting other than you can't do visits, they can't come to your home, do in person stuff. Like there's no evaluation during that time. It's all just digital communication. So they can call you, they can text you and you can do the same. You can call them, you can text them, DM them, whatever. It's not completely dead. It's just a dead period because there's not in person contact. So that's the difference. And there's the valuation period and all that stuff. There's different kind of actions that coaches can take during that time. And so the period is the most restricted. They just can't do in person stuff essentially. So that's why that kind of matters. And it just changes up. You have to think that with that, okay, what are they going to do? Okay, well, they can't host in person events. So they're going to start focusing more on themselves and they're really just going to worry about the main guys because they're not evaluating anybody new necessarily. And so what will happen here is as camps wrap up and some of them have wrapped up at the D1 level, they're going to come back, they're going to evaluate what they saw over camp season, they're going to finalize their boards. Especially if we're talking about for the 2024 class or no, the 2025 class, I'm thinking about last year. But for the 2025 class, they're going to start to pick the other their final boards, especially at the FCS level, the group of five level, D2 level. I mean, that board's always changing. Same with D3NA. So it's hard to say. They'll obviously come together as a group and just pick out, hey, these are the guys we're really getting after. But you'll notice that with that, you want to make sure that you're staying in contact with these coaches because I can't tell you the amount of times that I've heard that I've seen happen where I'm sure you, you might have heard if you've gone to camp. So you went through the post camp process and you did the right way. You probably heard a few times, hey, we're gonna go back, we're gonna finalize our boards, I'm gonna get back to you on this and we'll see where we're at from there. And so the biggest thing is they said that to a lot of kids. And so you wanna make sure that you're just staying in touch with them, reaching out continuously so that way you can get a solid response back. And so this time, if anything, is a great time to continue focusing on aggressive recruiting, pushing, pushing forward. Because coaches don't aren't going to be moving super fast during this time and they're not going to want to move fast. They're not going to be apt to move fast. They've had plenty of other responsibilities. It's kind of a little bit of their break as well before they really jump into things with fall camp. So you need to be on them. And I mean, of course, don't be rude, but if you want to actually get something during this time, if you want to actually move forward in the process quicker, you have to be on top of it during this time, during the season of recruiting. And so it's a big thing as well. And just of course, focusing on relationships. Great time to build relationships as well as it always is. Probably the third thing and the last thing I'll say that you really focus on during this time is just exposure. And you just have to tamper your expectations with exposure. Because for example, during probably the summer and the spring months, and of course during the fall months, if you post something, you should get one to two coaches following you and if you're dming, you should get plenty of replies back and emails, everything like that, during this time it's going to be different, you're going to hear less responses. And so my goal, at least our goal for the families inside and I'm actually developing a full game plan for this. So this is kind of a rough draft, but our goal is really just to get anything. Anything is a bonus. I look at this time, this, these next two months as cherry on top months. Most recruits, 99.9% of recruits, probably 99.5% of recruits are going to get nothing during this time. They're going to get nothing new, they're going to get ghosted. It's going to be very quiet to them. So to be part of the 0.5%, just need one to two coaches to get new interest in or to continue building relationship with. If you get one offer, like you're a stud. So that's what I look at, is just changing our expectations, tweaking a little bit of what we're exactly focusing on and that's how we're going to crush this time of the year. So if you're prepping, if you're trying to, you know, really crush your recruiting, then you're going to make sure to focus on aggressive recruiting, relationships, exposure. If you do those three things and also you do those three things throughout the entire recruiting process, you'll crush the recruiting process. So hopefully this is helpful. And if you like this, be sure to drop a like, be sure to subscribe. And also if you are looking for more daily insights, I send daily emails through email and you can check that out at yourfirstscholarship. Com. Sign up there and I'll get you one right away. So hopefully you enjoy this. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.