Captain U?

Here he is:

Captain U appears to be a recruiting service that has partnered with Perfect Game. Prior to our 2013's first PG event this year which was held two weeks ago we received email to setup Captain U profile which we did (free). Then received follow up emails stating that a coach had viewed his profile, etc, and click here to see who. When you click on the link it basically says we'll tell you who looked at him when you subscribe (pay). It also came with an automated email service that will send form-letter type emails. I passed on it...

We prefer to send our own emails that are more personal to each school even if it takes more time. If a coach is interested in my 2013 he will talk to his head coach and we'll find out through that channel if there is a need for follow up...

my .02 worth...

I should add that I perceive that Captain U is partnered with Perfect Game... that may not be true and they may just be pulling their roster information off of PG website for each tournament...

Reviving this old thread, as 2018 has started receiving the same "a coach found you" e-mails.  Gotta pay to see.  Prices are high, in my mind.  Anybody have any updated information on this company?  Thanks!

Receiving the emails as well. Just ignoring them, looks like another money grabbing site.

My 2016 signed up for this last summer as they were connected with the first tournament he played in and the coach sent out the option to the team (but didn't endorse it).  He created the profile and has added to it throughout the year and a half - and I paid for the next level up so we could see the emails.  I think it's $19.99 a month.  Looking back at it now after 14 mths or so it was pretty much a waste of $19.99 a month.  You'll get messages that xxx coach found you and check the site where you'll see that player "appeared in a search".  Most messages he received were invites to camps.  

 

Once he started getting real interest from schools (just recently) they just contacted him directly.  They didn't use CaptainU.  Even schools who "found him" on CaptainU didn't message him through it to tell him they were interested (there was 1 school).  They emailed him directly. 

My impression of all these recruiting services (CaptainU, NCSA, FieldLevel, I'm sure there are others) is that they're primarily a way for the service to profit, and only valuable to the players/parents who are paying insofar as they might have to pay to keep up with the competition if coaches are really getting a lot of info from the services (which I'm not sure is actually happening).

 

I'd love to hear that I'm wrong, but I feel like if it were honestly focused on the benefits of the players, the model wouldn't require having to pay to find out who's already following you.

 

If it matters, my son is mostly working recruiting directly with the schools he's interested in (primarily DIII), and through the occasional showcase/school camp, which I suppose are also at least in part money makers.  Difference there being that you know what you're paying for in those (or who you're paying to be seen by, really).

We used NCSA in conjunction with doing camps, showcases, and tournaments. 

 

We actually found it moderately helpful as one tool among others.

 

We mainly used it as a way to upload video, send out letters, search for possible fits among schools.  

 

They had a "rating" service.  Based on your skills videos, they would rate you. The rating seemed reasonably accurate, given  our other experiences on the ground.  They rated my son a good fit for the most competitive D2's and D3's and a marginal fit for less competitive D1's.  They also tried to match you academically,  socially, regionally, etc  -- based on your grades, course work, and a survey you filled out about your preferences.  They also gave you feed back on your skills videos -- which, again,  was consistent with other feed back the kid had gotten, so seemed competently done. 

 

They use that data to generate a list of recommended schools -- the recommended list was constantly updated.  (Coaches seem to send them information about position needs by class. So you would get a notice like University X is look for a CF in your year.) But you'd have to be rated as a good fit for that level of school to receive those.  My son got tons of D2 and D3 notices, for example, but only the occasional D1 notice of a roster opening.   

 

For each recommendation you received, you  got to say whether you liked the recommendation or not.  They seem to use that data to refine their recommendations to you.

 

You could send letters to any coaches from the site.  It gave you templates to work with, which were useful.  And you could track which coaches viewed your profile, and how many times they did it. You could also track which coaches were "following" you -- i.e. got an update every time you updated your profile.  

 

 

It seemed  like the software got better over time.  They were constantly tweaking it.  

 

It was also linked with some college search software -- the name of which I forgot. ( -- Zinch -- I think).   We didn't really use that cause our school was using Naviance and to a certain extent it duplicated naviance.  But the one thing that it provided not provided by Naviance, I don;'t think, was a chance for live chat with admissions officers.  Every time you "liked" a recommendation to a certain college, it seems to have sent a message to the relevant admissions office and you would get a message from the school thanking your for your interest and inviting you, if you wanted, to have a live chat with an admissions officer at the school.  We never used that feature.  

 

Bottom line, it wasn't entirely useless,   It seems like a very sophisticated piece of software is behind it.   I suspect that the software has evolved significantly over the years.

 

One other thing.  There are also lots of "coaching sessions" offered through NCSA.     These sessions in our experience were conducted by very knowledgeable people, who know the ins and outs of NCAA regulations and recruiting practices.  Many seem to be former college athletes and/or coaches. So it's a pretty big operation.  You can also talk one on one with an advisor   They more or less repeat the kind of information that you get from the wiser heads here.  You could join them live and ask questions or you could stream them afterwards -- they have an archive of them.

  

Whether it's worth the cost, is an individual decision.   You could certainly do a lot of leg work on your own and compile a database of likely matches, send out letters, without using their services.  Plus there are lots of other ways to get "rated." And again, the advice from live people that you can get through them is about the same level that you can get on this site  (but there's a lot more software working behind the scenes on NCSA).

 

 As one tool among others, it was marginally useful, in my opinion.   Wouldn't even think of making that my main tool.   

 

 

In my experience with our 2012 and now 2016 there is nothing that we couldn't do ourselves.  We found these "services" to not be worth the money. 

 

There are a zillion kids with berecruited or NCSA or something else profiles.  In our experience, direct contact with the coaches by your player was overwhelmingly what coaches preferred. 

 

Unfortunately, once on the CaptainU mailing list, the spam will start.  If a college coach truly had interest in my 2016, he would call him.

 

Don't spend the time or money.

I'm with Slugger dad in that I would not lump NCSA with all the other recruiting services. In addition to the coach conversations and the webinars, son found the Kaplan SAT material useful in prepping for the standardized tests. Found it useful finding out about the different baseball programs geographically and by level. Thought more than most services, it did help inform the uninformed and having a lot of info at our fingertips.

 

As for captain U, son got a "free trail membership" based on a tourney he participated in with his Legion team. Most of the "coach has seen you" messages are generic camp invites. If you are really interested you can pay the $20 a month for one month and then cancel. Son is now in his first week at college---we are still getting e-mails from Captain U, even though he indicated on his profile that he committed to college.

via Imgflip Meme Maker

I did not realize that "the" Captain U, was feline in nature.  Literally did laugh out loud when I saw that.  Thanks! 

My 2015 daughters softball coach signed all the players up for captain u. We never paid for the service. We received a lot of "a coach has found you!" messages. When you clicked the link you were invited to pay to see who the coach was.

 

Fast forward. When my 2018 son did the BC baseball camp it included a brief recruiting seminar for parents. The BC (d1) head coach spoke to us, as well as jayson king from Franklin Pierce (d2), and a a coach from a New York d3 school whose name eludes me. I specifically asked abt captain u, ncsa, etc. All three coaches dismissed these services, and said they did not use them.

 

I imagine these coaches have enough players banging their doors down that they do not need to use these services. 

 

I am a 2018. I have recieved emails from a d1 college. I recieved an email saying I was added to their recruiting list on CaptainU. I was wondering what this means.

Reviving this thread - 2016 has been "added" by several schools the past two weeks.  Does anyone know what that means?  I assumed it meant he'd be getting an invite to a camp at some point but nothing seems to happen after he's added.  He is essentially ignoring anything from CaptainU.  I was as well until the third or fourth "add" and now I'm curious. 

My 2016 gets "added" at various sites pretty much daily, but also gets camp invites about that often.  We've never paid for the upgraded access at any of the sites, so I can't see if there's a direct correlation.

 

Somewhere out there there's a database with his name misspelled though, since he gets a bunch of invites to that "version".  I could probably figure out which site he's getting noticed through for that, if I wanted to.

 

He's basically done looking (barring some problem getting admitted), though, so we're mostly just file-13ing everything at this point.

Read a blog post, somewhere, that told a story of a softball player who received notification that a certain coach from a certain school reviewed her profile and put her down as a "recruit". The mother had a friend who knew this coach, she asked the coach if this was true and guess what, the coach had never heard of the player and said that she doesn't use Captain U. Buyer be ware.

If you have to pay to get basic information, then that in itself is something to avoid.  I refer to the real Captain U picture above. 

Waste of money.  I consider myself a sucker.  Paid for several months.  Got zero from it.  Any interest has come directly from schools, nothing from Captain U.

I 100% agree - and I also paid for it for some time.  I was just curious if anyone know what it meant when a coach "added" a player since it's happening every day now.  I assume they are just adding him to their mailing list.  

Here is their explanation (PS use the site to help you in your journey, but realized they are there to make money.  They can make it easier to get organized, you have to do the rest):  http://learn.captainu.com/athlete/help/notification/

 

Also, we used the site and found that we were talking to people associated with college baseball camp fund raisers.  The actual coach delegated authority to the volunteers to correspond with you as the coach in an additional attempt to get you to the camp.  Once we talked to a few of them and figured out what the deal was, we unsubscribed and used the additional organization templates as a basis to attack the recruiting game.  The captain u site did help us become organized and work smarter towards our goal.