3 things you can do to get the recruiting process started… today!

You may have asked yourself at some point, “how do I get the recruiting process started?” You know that you have big dreams, but planning out how to start and what comes next may be a little fuzzy. This post explains 3 things you can do today to get the ball rolling.

 1. Make a short list of local schools

In other posts, I’ve written about the importance of brainstorming and making a list of any and all schools you may be interested in playing for. This is actually quite a big task—so big that some may become paralyzed and never start the list at all. For today, make a list of 3 to 5 of the schools that are closest to you and that you may consider playing for.Why pick schools that are nearby? These are the schools that you will probably know the most about, so they are easy schools to get started with. If you happen to know a lot about a school that isn’t local to you (maybe you had a friend or family member who attended there) go ahead and add that school to the list as well.

2. Gather email addresses and add them to your list

Every school with an athletics program will have an associated website for their sports team. Usually you can dig these sites up via google or the school’s home page. With a little bit of investigation, you can use these sites to find the sport specific page you’re looking for and the email addresses of the coaches for that sport. Add these to your list.

3. Write a form email.

If this is your first time contacting any of these schools, you can write up a form email to send to the coaches on your list. Of course, you’ll want to include personalizing details like addressing the coach by name and mentioning the name of the school. Use the email to introduce yourself and include information they may want to know about you. See my suggestions for what to include here.

If you’ve contacted any of these coaches in the past, make sure that your email reflects your previous conversations and isn’t obviously a form letter.

There! You’ve started! Depending on the number of schools you’ve selected, the above steps could take a couple of hours to complete (maybe less if you’re a confident writer!) Like so many things in life, recruiting gets continually easier and more natural the more you do it. Contacting a coach for the first time may make you nervous at first, but after you’ve done it a few dozen times you’ll feel like a pro!

You can do this!

As with most of my advice, these are steps you can take yourself! If you have an older sibling, a friend, or a parent who wants to help, then that’s great. When I took these steps myself, I went to my dad’s office one day after work because they had a fast internet connection. My dad and I spent a couple of hours looking up schools and making a list of coaches and their email addresses. It was a fun to share with each other what felt like an exciting time.

There is no need to pay recruiting services to do this for you! If you have a little time, some work ethic, and you can stay focused while surfing the web (easier said than done), then you can take these steps and get the recruiting process started… today!

Click here to read more about the overall steps in the recruiting process