You are now well into the recruiting process. You are informed, you know what lies ahead, and you are busy preparing for your opportunity to contact college coaches and seek exposure. Step 4 is packed with important information. Most recruits will spend most of their high school career in steps
✅Conduct a social media check and make sure you have the appropriate settings on your accounts and that your social media is representative of the way you want to be portrayed (coaches will think your profiles represent who you are)
✅Create an email draft of essential information that you can tweak and personalize for each individual coach or school that you decide to contact (use this PDF checklist to be sure you include everything you need!)
✅Create an easy to remember email that you will use for recruiting purposes
✅Use this PDF checklist to help you make a low budget skills/recruiting video to send to college coaches
✅Have your skills video in a user-friendly format so that you can email or text a link to a college coach upon request and it can be viewed from a variety of different devices
✅Keep the video updated as you improve so that it reflects your current abilities
✅Have physical and electronic copies of your upcoming schedule ready to share with college coaches on request
✅Create a document with the contact information for your coaches and other baseball references to share with college coaches on request
✅Have a physical and electronic copy of your transcript and standardized test scores that you can share with coaches upon request
✅Continue to get stronger and focus on your development so that when you seek exposure, you have the physical traits and skills that college coaches want to see
✅Learn about the NCAA contact rules so that you know when coaches can and can’t contact you back and what the best forms of communication are
✅Learn about appropriate ways to contact college coaches
✅Learn about what should be included in an introductory email to a college coach
✅Learn about the best timing for you to contact college coaches
✅Learn about ways to handle the rejection and disappointment that are inherent in the recruiting process
✅Learn about what to expect from coaches responding to your interest
✅Learn about what college coaches will be looking for when they evaluate and interact with you
Did you know that academics are an important part of contacting college coaches? Many coaches have told us that they like recruits to include transcripts when they email them for the first time. Even if you don’t, transcripts and test scores are likely one of the first things that an interested coach will ask for.
So what should you do during this step of the college baseball recruiting process? Get everything ready for contacting coaches. This means that you should keep updated copies of your transcripts and test scores on file to email to college coaches when they request them. You will also want to have hard copies on file to bring for campus visits. This may seem like something simple, but being able to get your transcripts and test scores to coaches quickly shows that you are serious about your academics and have nothing to hide. College coaches will love this, since you have been working hard to make your transcript something they will be excited to review. Keep up the good work and keep your grades up!
This is the most important time of the recruiting process. Not because of what you ARE doing, but because of what you are NOT doing. You are exercising patience and waiting to contact coaches when you have developed the skills that they want to see. By not contacting coaches and chasing exposure early, you are saving money and giving yourself a better chance to be recruited. This doesn’t mean that you have nothing going on. Of course not! You are learning more and more about the recruiting process, and you are continuing to improve your development plan. Patience is a key, and your patience and focus on development will pay off.
As you prepare for your big moment, here are a few important things to do to continue to improve your development process:
✅ Seek honest and objective feedback from those who know college baseball.
Ask them where you need to improve? What level they think you can play? The more brutally honest constructive criticism you receive the better. Being told you are not good enough is one of the greatest gifts you can be given because it tells you where you need to put in work.
✅ Continue to improve and evaluate your current development plan.
Are you getting the results that you want? Are you reaching your goals? Are you following through on your daily standards and expectations? Are you focusing in the right areas? If something is not right, fix it. The best players know that there are always ways to get better. Keep improving your development plan. Use the objective feedback to help prioritize what needs the most work.
✅ Continue to spend your time and resources on improving rather than seeking exposure.
Wait until you are ready to show coaches what they want to see. When you are, then you know it’s time to move to the next step!
