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Reply to "Recruiting for Juniors and Seniors"

Our experience was a little different.  Doesn't mean our path was right as my son didn't get a lot of offers.  We relied on his travel team for his exposure.  He did go to several PG and PBR showcase.  His travel team primarily play in local PG tournaments (there's a lot of opportunities as we live in Atlanta).  They travel to Hoover AL, Ft Myers and Jupiter for the bigger PG tournaments (WWBA and PG Nationals).  Did just a few PBR tournaments (wished we did more of those).

Unlike the OP, I stayed away from colleges camps and showcases as I was under the perception that those are all money makers with only the volunteer assistants showing up, and that you should only go to those events if you are personally invited by the coach, or your travel coach specifically told you to go (he called the coach ahead, and/or knows they have a need for your position).

I think the PG and PBR showcases are valuable as most (if not all) of the college coach that approached my son mentioned they looked at PG/PBR profile to do further research and flag the kids they are interested in.  But there is no point in going to a showcase if you have nothing to show yet (in fact it may hurt you more), and you only need to do once a year at most.  And don't ever do a showcase in the middle of winter when it's freezing cold (learned that the hard way).  I think we wasted money on 1 or 2 showcase that I believe my son didn't need.  For PG showcase, I find that the half day workout showcase add on to a WWBA tournament the best value.  You only get the numbers updated, no scrimmage.  The idea being that we play in PG tournaments a lot anyway so coach can see my son in real game situation rather than in a scrimmage.

The big PG tournaments are fun (WWBA or PG Nationals).  There's no point going to the small PG tournaments unless you live local like we do.  The coach from the college that my son finally committed to saw him play in WWBA at Jupiter.  As far as I know, there were no contact before that game.  I don't think his travel coach reached out to him either.  Not sure if he looked at the PG profile first and list of uncommitted 2023s and ID'd my son there first and then went to watch him play.  The first college that was very interested in him (and later went cold) told us that one of their coach saw him play in the local end of the season HS all star game.  The other coach from the same college was looking at the list of uncommitted 2023s and circling kids with the metrics they are interested in.  They compared notes and my son was in both list.  So they went to watch him play in one of the local PG tournaments.

We only went to 5 college showcase/camps.  4 of the camps we went to based on his travel coach recommendation.  The 5th camp we went to was the college that saw him in Jupiter and asked him to come up there to attend a camp so that the other coaches can see him.  Nothing serious or meaningful came out of those camps.

Again, not saying our path was the best.  Maybe if we went to more college camps/showcases, my son would have gotten more interests.  It's just that I've always been told that showing up to these college camps/showcases w/o a personal invite or arranged by your travel coach is a waste of money - much like going to all these PG showcases w/ nothing to show, or going to a lot of PG showcases to chase numbers.

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