Trenton Luera breaks down how college coaches divide recruiting by region, typically within an eight-hour drive. Power-5 programs recruit nationally but prioritize their region; smaller schools stay much more local. Find which coach controls your area and build that relationship, or show genuine interest if you want to go further away.
Chapters
So I wanted to talk about a key concept of basically a fundamental of recruiting that just not talked about a ton. There's a couple coaches that have talked about it. They do a great job. They understand it more than me because they've actually like gone through it and seen how it works in their own rooms. But hopefully I can share this, expand on it and just give you guys some insight onto how recruiting actually works from a recruiting board perspective as far as resources, everything like that. So regions are a huge, huge thing in recruiting and it's just how it works because of how limited resources are. And now this applies especially more so to the smaller schools because obviously like at the Power 5 level, they're recruiting nationally. Like you think of Georgia, like, yes, most of the kids are from the south, but they're still going to go snatch kids from California, Florida though. Florida's right there by Georgia, but still they're recruiting heavily in the region and then they're just grabbing some extra kids from, you know, Texas, California, other studs across the nation. So even then it's very heavily in regions and whatnot. But how you have to think about it is generally they're recruiting heavily within probably the, any schools recruiting heavily within the first eight hour, eight hour radius of their school because that's drivable. Kids can make it there easier. And also parents are less scared to send their, their son to that school. And coaches can also drive and make trips out there pretty consistently. So they have connections there, they can get things done quicker as far as that goes. So generally I break it down into, you know, the west coast, the Midwest, the south and then the Northeast. That's kind of how I break up the regions, at least for my thoughts. Of course it, it depends because like, for example, you might have a school in Montana, they're probably going to be recruiting all the surrounding states, while also maybe even some others as well and kind of bridging into those, those other areas as far as the Midwest and the west coast because it's kind of in that weird spot. So it depends, but that's how you can kind of think of it that you know, west coast schools are going to recruit from west coast states and they're going to really focus on that hometown state because it's easier to recruit there and have the connections there and it's going to be a little bit easier of a situation. Now you understand that that's what's going on and they do that because there's limited resources, limited time and there's more there's a higher probability that they're going to be able to recruit kids that are closer to home, because that's just a big selling point that they can capitalize on. Now, outside of that, why that even matters to you in the first place is understanding this gives you that advantage of knowing, like, hey, this is why we reach out to those local schools. They're more likely to respond. And there's definitely like certain, certain schools even at the D1 level that only recruit within certain states. Like, that's happened plenty of times where they're like, hey, we only recruit X, Y and Z states. Like, you know, sorry, that's just what we do. So something you need to understand also, you need to understand this because you need to figure out who is recruiting your area. Now, again, at the larger FBS stage, generally coaches are going to be broken up state by state. So they're gonna. And they're gonna also be paired up with a different local region as well. So like, I remember for some schools, for California, they were just broken up into like different sections of California. Especially for bigger states like California, Texas, each coach is going to have its own area. And even at the smaller schools, it's going to be the same thing, but just probably to a little smaller area than that because like, California is super big, so it's, it's a little bit harder for that. And then also sometimes they're going to have wider. So they might have paired up with a local region. They're also have paired up with a larger region that's going to be at bigger schools. Again, FBS, maybe FCS schools, D2s, D3s, NIS, they're going to be more focused on local areas. So for example, if you have a California FBS school, let's say ucla, each coach in UCLA is going to recruit a certain area of California and they're also going to recruit a more national area. As far as, you know, some coaches might be. One coach might be the, the Colorado and Wyoming coach or something like that. So something to think there, that's probably about an example because California is very talented. So they're just gonna, they're just gonna crush their backyard first before worrying about anywhere else. But like, for example, Missouri would be a good example. Like Missouri's probably. They're. They're probably. One coach is probably a California coach. One coach is probably a Texas coach. One coach is probably a, you know, Alabama and Georgia coach. One coach is a Florida area coach. Like, they recruit out of those areas because they have to, because the Talent in their state is not enough for them to meet the demands of SEC program. So knowing that, knowing which coach is controlling your area, that's who you're going to want to reach out to. That's who you're going to want to get connected with so we can build that relationship. And that's their job to recruit you from that area. On top of that, another kind of caveat is if you're a juco guy sometimes, and this isn't always the case, usually if they're just recruiting by area, then your area recruiter of your zone will be your recruiter. But sometimes they have a strictly juco recruiting guy. So that's something that sometimes happens where it's like, hey, this guy recruits, you know, this state, this state, and then also recruits juco. He's like the juco head of contact. That's something to note, just something to kind of be aware of. But yeah, hopefully this explains like the regions why that even happens in the first place, what you can do to help your case with that. Another side note is if you are like super open about going to different areas. So like, for my case, I was a California kid. I really didn't care where I went to. You need to, if you're going, if you're trying to go to out of reach in place, um, you need to show extreme interest in that school. Otherwise they're not going to take you as seriously. Because, like, think about it, like, a lot of California kids probably wouldn't travel across the nation to Virginia unless like University of Virginia offers them. But if there's a D2 or even FCS program, they might be as not as apt to offer you or spend time trying to recruit you because they know that, hey, most California kids don't really want to go all the way out here. So if you are really like, if this is a school that you really want to go to, you need to show that interest that you're actually serious about it. Otherwise you might just get passed by. So hopefully this helped out. If you guys have any questions, be sure to drop them down below. I'll catch you guys later. Peace.
