College Camps?

If you are truly interested in your son attending that college, it is a worthwhile camp. Make sure the college is a natural fit....academics and baseball. There's nothing wrong with a "reach" school, but you need to be outstanding at something (grades, speed, power) that's going to make you stand out at the camp if that school is above your ability.

The big problem with camps is the disparity between what the camps actually offer and parents really hope to get out of them.

What camps actually offer is high priced, large group instruction and practice.

What parents want from camps is visibility and recruiting momentum.

Camp solicitations feed this disparity by announcing how many players on their roster attended one of their camps.

However, if you do the math and compare the number of rostered players who attended camps (usually single digits) to the number of campers who attended the previous four years (usually around a thousand or more, depending on how many sessions they run), it's pretty obvious that a camp registration isn't a foot in the door.

But you also have to consider that the majority of campers who do end up on the roster didn't get discovered at the camps. The coaches were already interested in them, so they invited them to pay a pro-rated registration fee, come in for what amounts to a quick tryout, and skip 90% of the camp. It's a legal way for them to get a prospect to work out for them on campus. The only camp my son attended was on this basis. Instead of paying several hundred dollars for a multi-day camp, he paid 20 bucks, threw a bullpen, chatted with the coach for a few minutes, and left. Counting that sort of player as a camper who made good feeds the illusion that camps can get your kid on a D-I roster.

In reality, the likelihood of a full-fee not-previously-recruited camper creating a D-I opportunity at a camp is so miniscule that it makes lottery tickets look like a sound investment. They have about the same chance of paying off, but the lottery tickets are cheaper, so you lose less money with them.

If you don't believe me, try looking at it from the coaches' perspective. College coaches are generally very smart guys, but only an absolute moron would concoct a recruiting plan that relied on finding talent by hosting open registration camps and hoping competitive talent will simply show up. You couldn't recruit that way, and coaches don't recruit that way.

I'm not saying not to go to camp. I'm saying that if you do attend a camp, do so with a realistic purpose in mind, such as:
--You actually want the instructional program offered. Funny thing, though, is that I have never in my life heard anyone say he was going to a camp with the purpose of becoming a better ball player or learning drills that might help him improve his practice.
--You want to see the facilities at the school. There are cheaper ways to do this, but okay.
--You want to get a peek at some of your competition. You'll get a better look at them at East Cobb, but okay.
--You want to see how effectively the coaches at the school communicate instruction. In very controlled circumstances, but okay.
--You're a fine humanitarian whose heart bleeds for underpaid and unpaid assistant baseball coaches. This is the one goal you're most likely to accomplish.

Swampboy,

Is that really legal, you invite a player you are very much interested in and reduce his camp fee?

Son had lots of invites from coaches who were seriously recruiting him, not one offered a reduced fee and if so we wouldn't have accepted anyway.

It was strictly pro-rated. The proportion of the fee he paid to the overall fee was the same as the proportion of the time he attended to the total time of the camp. They said that kept it legit.

So they must offer that to any camper?

I do not know if they must or if they do. They offered the option to us when I told them our schedule did not permit attending the entire camp.

TPM,

Yes we did this at one camp where we told them he could only come for one day and they prorated it. My son checked with the coach and was straight forward with him. He told them "I don't want to waist your and my time, so if you are serious I will come for one day and if you are not don't waist my time."

There were other kids prorated also. Swampboy is correct that usually each school is bringing in 7 kids so the odds are low, but if you are serious about a school it is worth it.

BTW the school did not make him an offer...

You can tell to some degree by how personalized the invitation is. The more personalized, the more likely they have genuine interest. If you are uncertain, call or e-mail the coach and see what kind of response you get.

Generally speaking a position player needs to really standout to be noticed if he isn't already on the school's radar. The unfortunate reality is that most of the position players are there to fill in for the camp games.

Pitchers are a little bit different as velocity will show up on a radar gun and upper 80s with movement will get an unkown pitcher noticed. Don't go there and expect a great pitching performance at 78 mph to get noticed.

Sending back a camp invitation in response to an e-mail is a pretty standard practice. If they are serious they'll usually do something to make it fairly obvious.

Given your location I'd recommend sending a PM to TRhit with some objective info about your son's abilities and see what he has to say.

I think Swampboy does a good job of covering why one would and would not attend a camp. I'll add one other situation where it would make sense to go.

Some colleges have camps where they invite a large number of coaches from other schools to "work" the camp. My son attended one such camp where there were more than 20 coaches in attendance from schools ranging from JUCO to Top 10 D1. Son had no illusion that the school hosting the camp was interested in him, but by attending he did catch the eye of a school that had not seen him before. That school ended up in his final three.

Interestingly, son is working his college's camp today. He went to that camp a year ago during his senior year of high school because the coaches seemed seriously interested in him. After the camp, they had no interest whatsoever. Six months later, after a good senior season, the coaches changed their mind and offered him. You never know.

quote:

Originally posted by CADad:
You can tell to some degree by how personalized the invitation is. The more personalized, the more likely they have genuine interest. If you are uncertain, call or e-mail the coach and see what kind of response you get.

Generally speaking a position player needs to really standout to be noticed if he isn't already on the school's radar. The unfortunate reality is that most of the position players are there to fill in for the camp games.

Pitchers are a little bit different as velocity will show up on a radar gun and upper 80s with movement will get an unkown pitcher noticed. Don't go there and expect a great pitching performance at 78 mph to get noticed.

Sending back a camp invitation in response to an e-mail is a pretty standard practice. If they are serious they'll usually do something to make it fairly obvious.

Given your location I'd recommend sending a PM to TRhit with some objective info about your son's abilities and see what he has to say.

For one school he sent an e-mail to the link on the website with some information about himself and got an e-mail back from the camp coordinator but then a week or so later got an e-mail from the recruiting director inviting him to the camp. Is this the normal process?

quote:

You can tell to some degree by how personalized the invitation is. The more personalized, the more likely they have genuine interest. If you are uncertain, call or e-mail the coach and see what kind of response you get.

This is good advice. Make the call. When my son was in the process he got many invites. He or I called each one and asked if they had a committment from his class at his position and if they were still recruiting for his position and grad year. In several instances they were very honest and admitted they were done recruiting for the position that particular grad year and "if we think we may need that position we wont pick one up till the spring or summer".

Some other advice is to attend camps that have more than one school working the camp. Many college camps are run by the big Div 1 school but they invite several other div 1, 2, 3, Naia and JC school coaches to work, recruit and evaluate.

ABD Acamedy out here in So Cal runs a fantastic college camp in that upwards of 20 college recruiting coordinators come out and work it. That is the kind of camp you really want. (imo)

He is a 2012 pitcher so would they be finished recruiting for pitchers? He is very interested in this school, even though it's a long shot, so he really wants to go. He wants to go south to school and we don't really know anything about any schools or camps at this point.

It is never too late for quality arms. Until classes start...

I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but a few of his friends e-mailed about this particular camp and they also got a very similar e-mail from the camp director but no one else got an addtional invitation from the recruiting coordinator, so he's going to go. Should he e-mail the recruiting coordinator back?

Time to show up and impress. A confirmation of your son's attendence would not be out of order.

quote:

Originally posted by vtmom:
I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but a few of his friends e-mailed about this particular camp and they also got a very similar e-mail from the camp director but no one else got an addtional invitation from the recruiting coordinator, so he's going to go. Should he e-mail the recruiting coordinator back?

As floridafan said, confirming your attendance is a good idea. It's a two way process, they're recruiting your son, and you have to do some promotion on your own. This isn't uncommon.

Stu

quote:

Originally posted by Swampboy:
It was strictly pro-rated. The proportion of the fee he paid to the overall fee was the same as the proportion of the time he attended to the total time of the camp. They said that kept it legit.

This just happened to my son recently. We were invited for an unofficial visit (2012) on a Friday night and then to the camp on Saturday. My son has ACT's on Saturday morining. I talked to his summer team coach who went to this school and knows most of the coaches there. He encouraged us to go to ACT's and attend the afternoon part of the camp where they just play games. He called the recruiting coordinator and they worked that out and said they would prorate the fee for the 1/2 day and we would talk about an unoficial visit at that time.

I had never heard of this either until it came up in this post, then we actually had it happen.

We had the opposite happen at UNC Greensboro. Son had a tournament one day, could attend the camp the second day. Coach told us NCAA required full payment for the camp.

We didn't go.

quote:

Time to show up and impress. A confirmation of your son's attendence would not be out of order.

Great advice!