Is there a 'prime-time' college recruiting period?

Our son was never asked for a video, nor did he ever send one out.

I am told that many coaches use the videos as blanks to record their own stuff over, never watching it.

I guess it might be prudent to have one ready if asked...but attending showcases or high profile tournaments like PG and others put on is the best way to get noticed.

I used one home made video-- a coach called and said he would be in the area--can you send me a short snippet of his game play --he wanted to see if there was enough there to warrant his coming by--He did !!!


As for 'prime time" recruiting-- it goes on all year round !!!

I'm with Just on this one...never was a factor, they need to see you in good competition.

We have limited opps for that kind of exposure as these kids are Americans living in Korea. We need all the help we can get, so Skillshow sounds like a good tool for us.

I understand you have special circumstances, being in Korea. My experience has been this. Coaches do not really care about "slick" videos. Make a good quality video with your own camera and that should suffice. It should also save you some bucks!

Make sure that you zoom in on your kid so the coach can see that it is him playing and focus tight enough when he is playing/hitting/pitching etc. to show his skills. If a coach needs more, he will let you know.

What I do is shoot video myself ... I'll just put the camera on a tri-pod and walk away ... don't want my voice on the audio, though I can usually pick out my wife's :-). Then I edit it down on my home PC (I use Pinnacle Studio 9) by eliminating all the 'dead' time ... I can compress 3-4 innings of pitching down to about 8-9 minutes of video. I show every pitch as I think it's important to show how he works himself out of a bind with runners in scoring position or works the count. I then generate a streaming video file so it can be viewed while it's being downloaded, and upload it onto a website I maintain. I create videos by category ... pitching, hitting, fielding. Right now, I've just got actual game situations, no 'training' videos. I keep a record of any of the schools that have sent recruiting letters or e-mails, and I e-mail the coaches a URL to any new videos I update to the site as we move through the season. Nothing to throw away, nothing to get lost on the desk, and the coaches can easily check for new stuff at their convenience.

As my son is also an '06, it's too soon to tell if this is helping, but I'm having fun doing it and at a minimum he'll have some memories to look at ... though I do monopolize our home PC a bit and I did have to upgrade to something fast enough to easily handle a lot of video.

Krakatoa,
Like playersdad says, your situation is unique because of your location so you, or others before you, probably know more about this that most of us. Like most parents I was very active in my son’s recruitment and never felt the need for a video. I was prepared to send one but the situation never presented itself. Some may disagree with me but I purposely would NOT send out a professionally prepared video. Two reasons for this. Number one: You are marketing your son and his talent, not a video. You want your son’s talent and ability to make the impression, not the quality of the video. Number two: The coach, like anyone else, doesn’t want to feel as if he’s the target of a marketing strategy . . . .a professionally prepared video MIGHT send that message..
Good luck,
Fungo

Good points about do-it-yourself. I know what 'shots' coaches want to see, so if I can find someone locally who can edit digital it's certainly not out of the question. As far as 'needing' a video, there's not much of a chance for coaches to see these boys without one. Some of us get back to the States every summer, like me, and can hit a showcase and a targeted school camp - but others don't have that 'luxury' so we're trying to assist any way we can. We've got two '06s that will be able to play college ball somewhere - especially the 6'5" 225 pound LHP. He's going to go places. His dad played at ASU in the Winkler days and has solid connections. The other kid needs a little more help, but is also an excellent player (C). My kid's only an '08, so still time to figure things out....though it doesn't seem like it!

If you're willing to invest some time, and maybe a little $$$, it's not too hard to do this yourself. The camera I use is nothing special, just an old Sony digital-8mm that has a Firewire connection. The video editing software was about $100. Figuring out the video editing part just takes a little time messing around with it to learn what's possible ... it's actually pretty simple to do the basic stuff. The main cost issue for me was the cost of upgrading my home PC ... the absolute worst part of editing video is if you have to wait, and wait ... and wait for a slow PC to crunch the pixels on every little change you make. You just want to give up. A 3Ghz+ Pentium 4 with 1GB of memory and a reasonably fast graphics card makes drag-n-drop of video snippets as fast as you can move your mouse, but you'll also need a sizable HD if you're shooting a lot of games, or archive it off onto DVD with a DVD burner.

The other side benefit: While the video is running by itself, I usually walk around taking a lot of still digital photography. A couple of other dads and I 'pooled' our digital photos of the HS varsity team ... I then selected the best 300 or so of all the players, used the video editing software to build a slideshow, laid down some music tracks with transitions timed to the music track, DVD chapters 'themed' by each music track and burned a bunch of end-of-season DVDs for the varsity team. The last DVD chapter was of the final CIF game, mostly photos of the seniors, their final senior post-game 'meeting', that faded out to Stevie Ray Vaughn's "Missing You", a wailing blues guitar rip. The players loved it.

pbone.....can we just send you our stuff to edit?


Sounds like you have a lot of fun with it!!