letters

Hand-written anything conveys personal interest in that program. The last thing you want coaches to think is that they're part of a bulk mailing -- even if they are.

Thank you for your input. I will suggest he hand write his "priority" schools...

my only input would be.........

How do you feel when you get a form letter?.......


There is a lot to be said for hand writing the envelopes and a real signature on the letters.....

then as an aside.....

Come back and tell us how you feel when your son gets a hand written response back from a college coach!........

(pretty special I bet).....

or it was in my sons's experience......

Just my .02

In our case, each letter was typed, but my son signed every letter and hand addressed every letter....and as piaa says...when you get that handwritten note from a coach...well, it's pretty special.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to reply--I just heard so many different sides to the story....of course I believe all of your comments are valid... I believe he will now be handwriting all the envelopes!

What we did to personalize;, On your top choices, end the letter with something personal about the program.

Go to their website you will find something.

For Example:

btw..congratulations on winning the ACC

btw..congtrats on winning the SEC batting title

btw..congrats on your 1st CWS appearance.

btw..looking forward to seeing the new baseball facility.

Look in the press clippings you will find something.

Son's first letter response rate is almost 100% so far. Some even were personalized.

Son is 09

Of course this time of year, you will get some camp invites.

We sent all letters via e-mail to head coach and recruiting coordinator(Asst. Coach)

We did not use their online recruit form. Sent the letters to their email boxes with BIO attachments.

Thats what we did to start, we were going to go the snail mail route if that didn't work, but it seems to be working. As far as response rates go.

We are new at this too, so other advice here might be better. Just letting ya know what we did.

I have a question - My son is a 2010 and we are receiving letters from schools. My question is do you respond? All of the letters talk about how they cannot call you, but you can call them. Do they want to hear from you and what kind of conversation is appropriate at this stage?

4leafclover,
Respond to every letter as soon as you get them, usually this first letter has a questionnaire fill it out, keep a copy and send it back right away. I always kept a copy in case we needed to refer to it or update it as tests were taken. Always follow up and make sure they received it, this is a good excuse to make contact, by email, phone or another written correspondence. If any are really on his list, I would initiate communications. Coaches are easy to talk to and they really want to know more about you it is good for both of you to find out if you a possible prospect, this recruiting process takes up a lot of time, if you find you dont' like a school for whatever reason, cross them off your list and move on. JMHO

Also, check out the 'recruiting questions' and 'recruiting timeline' on main web page, or click over to the left of the screen the little green strip will pop out and you can choose from there.

bballlove - Welcome to the site!

We also used the email route vs snail mail. We had the form letters but personalized them with key events as others had stated. It seemed to work well.

Enjoy the ride!

Thanks for the info. This process is unchartered territory, and we are not sure about anything!We have filled out quite a few questionnaire's, but have not thought about following up on them. The letters with no questionnaire's are the one's that we are stumped on, like should my son email the coaches back and tout his accomplishments or just call him and hope he can think of something to say.

Ok, how about call. He can just say he is following up on the letter and would the coach like more information that he would be happy to send.
If he is not comfortable with the phone call, then do it via email.
Thank the coach for the interest. Would he like to hear more about you? If you are interested, I would like to send more information about myself.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Something like that. But he should start to get familiar with talking to coaches, the more you do it the easier it is.