Letters vs. E-mails to coaches

Was standing next to a couple of college coaches, one from an ACC school and one from a Conference-USA school this past week in East Cobb. A parent came up and asked them which they prefer, email or snail-mail. Both, without hesitation said email.

At our recent Norwich Showcase a number of coaches told us that they felt our adding the email addys to the players program profile was a great boon for them-- is it because the players feel more comfortable talking via email rather than on the phone?

I bumped into a high level New England coach last night and we were talking recruiting for about 10 minutes. While he mentioned several things to me, the one thing he did say was that no one ever calls him. He gets lots of letters and emails, but it would be nice if a someone would pick up the phone so he could have a civil conversation with them and find out who they are as a person.

A lot of people will disagree with me but I’m used to that. Put the shoe on the other foot. Which would you rather receive FROM a coach? I have talked to a number of recruits and parents that always point out the coach personally called or they describe how they covet the “hand-written” letter as if were some type of trophy. If you want to make an impression with the coach, make the contact as personal as possible. #1 Face-to-face, #2 Telephone conversation, #3 Hand written letter, #4 Typed letter, and lastly coming in at #5, the lowly email. If the email comes up last on my list, why would a coach say he prefers the email? Pure and simple; he is eliminating your ability to exert any of your emotions on him. He WANTS to make his decisions based on what HE considers important. Recruiting is much like selling and buying. Depending on the player’s talent determines whether you are a buyer or seller. The situations are COMPLETELY different with the blue chip player and an average and the marginal player. If you are trying to “sell” your son you need get pro-active and get personal!
IMHO,
Fungo

Emails are preferred because they get to the intended person immediately. No one sits by their phone anymore - my experience has been phone tag. At least when I email, I know the coach got it and I usually get a response within hours. Snail mail, after it arrives, goes through many hands before it ever reaches the intended person. Hours vs days - just like in baseball, timing is everything.

Fungo - I pretty much agree with you and was a bit surprised to hear their answer re/ emails/regular mail. But their reasons were that they get 30-100 snail-mails a week which get backlogged tremendously, but just a few emails. Maybe after this thread they'll get 100's of both...don't know. I know I respond to email better than regular mail.

In any case...agree totally that a phone call is best. And I also agree with your logic re/ buyers versus sellers.

Fungo,
I've got to disagree with you on one thing. Very few people on this board disagree with you.

CADad,
Thank you, but you're too kind. Hmmmmm, Maybe I was thinking back to the time everyone disagreed with me when I was trying to promote rotational hitting over linear or was it the other way around?

I agree Fungo.

I know many of you do not want to hear this, but I was speaking to a former Pepperdine coach who had told me that he never personally responded to emails or phone calls for the most part from athletes or parents. Many coaches and people involved in higher level sports get too many emails and phone calls a day to respond to everyone. You may be fortunate and get a response but I thought I would just let you know what I was told just yesterday, right from a horse's mouth. Phone calls and emails only take you so far. That's my point.

Some coaches are heavy internet users, others are not. I say cover your bases any which way you feel most comfortable with.
You better believe if the coach gets an email, letter or phone call from a player they are familiar with, they will go out of their way to respond.
Hint, hint....try establishing a relationship with the person who runs the baseball office. I have found that THIS person will give you the best advice on contacting the coach, might even make sure the coach personally gets the letter or phone call.

Cosmos - While I certainly don't doubt your story, I would be a little careful taking its advice.

Our experience was this...IF you are interested in a school, TELL THEM! If you DON'T tell them, they ?may? assume you are not interested and may move onto someone else...even if you're a blue chip recruit.

Schools that return very few phone calls lose out on recruits. There's no doubt they get too many...but that wouldn't stop me from contacting them and giving them a chance to return the call/email or not.

Before July 1st my son and I found Phone calls to be almost useless... Unless we had a coach's HOME number it was almost IMPOSSIBLE to connect with a coach, (most of the calls have to be made outside "school" hours) and since they could not call back and I'd estimate 95% of the time he reached an answering machine. Some coaches gave a home or cell number and that worked better.. but I'd still estimate 50% answering machines....

But by far and away for us EMAIL is the way to go... You can email back and forth... Plus from a parents point of view... I was able to READ the messages... as opposed to asking what was said and getting "nothing" answer.

The schools that replied via email was able to respond within 24-48 hours and developed a relationship and those schools are high on my son's list.... The phones really didn't work.

Now that has change after July 1st... to the point where if a phone call isn't made it is considered a "poor" mark.

If I were a head baseball coach I would love email. In two hours I could have designed a library of boilerplate emails that would cover every situations. My administrative assistant could handle all the emails and allow me more time for the kids and the golf course. I would have a great administrative assistant that could handle everything in ther office but doesn't need to know an RBI from a ERA.
Here is a sample of what might be one of my response letters:

RECRUIT EMAIL RESPONSE #1
Dear (Recruits name),
Congratulations on a successful 2004 high school season. Thank you very much for your email and thank you for your interest in The College of the Shrubs. We at College of the Shrubs are proud of our past record in the Mid-Desert conference and this year’s record should be no different. In addition to our successful baseball program we also have an academic curriculum that is second to none. We are always diligently searching for talented baseball players to compliment our roster and it appears you have the talent to play collegiate baseball. One of the recruiting tools we use is our baseball camp. Our select baseball camp will be October 12 and 13 and will have many talented players in attendance. My staff and I, along with current College of the Shrubs players, are responsible for personal baseball instruction and evaluation of all the players in attendance. Many players on our current roster have attended our fall camps in the past years. I have attached a downloadable camp brochure for your convenience. Again, thank you for you interest in the College of the Shrubs baseball and best of luck to you on the field and in the classroom.
“Techie” Thompson
Head Baseball Coach
College of the Shrubs

Sounds pretty "bush" league to me.

Fungo,
Not quite sure how to decipher your response. We actually never had to email or mail in anything other than the original questionaire. And if contact was made, it was always to the recruiting coach, as that was his job, most Head Coaches (in the bigger schools) give them the emails, letters, etc. That's their job. After July 1, when the Head Coach calls you kind of get the jist the level of interest. I can not speak for the D2,D3 or smaller D1 schools.
At one of the schools my son wanted to attend (not the one he signed with) he would call the office administrator and she would tell him when it was best to get him (not the Head Coach) in the office and 9 times out of 10 she was correct. Just another suggestion on how to go about getting contact.
I can tell you another thing, coaches not usually interested in stats, more like CHP (can he play), velocity, types of pitches and grade GPA's. I am speaking from a pitchers standpoint. Not sure what tehy base their riteria on for position players. JMO

Fungo,

Whoa! My son got that letter, not an email , from the college of the Cactus!

Catchersdad

WE were recruited by the College of the Cactus, too!

Must have been needing catchers the last couple of years.

Wowie!!

My son received a whole GARDEN of those "recruiting" letters!! Fungo, how many did you cut and paste from?

Why not do both. The letter will be a hand signed wp doc mailed to the coach and the email can go to the recruiting coordinator. The only thing that changes is who it is addressed to. I'll bet in many cases the coordinator is younger and more computer saavy and the head coach is more old school. It can't hurt to approach it from each end of the coaching staff with both types of communications.

TigerPawMom,
Going back to my original post, there are great differences in the recruiting game. Many times college baseball is described as a business. I tend to agree with that. If a coach is going after the well exposed, talented player, the coach and his staff are in the selling mode with their goal being to sell their program in hopes of landing this player. Let’s call this high profile player recruit “A”. On the other hand and 180 degrees from that situation is the player who is less talented, or at least not as recognizable, and is trying to find a program that will accept him. This player finds himself having to sell himself to the coach(s). Let’s call him recruit “B”.
The coaches will call recruit “A” on the phone, send letters, newspaper clippings, media guides, emails, official visits, usually everything the NCAA allows. Recruit “A” is in the driver’s seat. Whatever he does in return; emails, phone calls, letters, or visits makes very little difference. His talent and reputation has gotten him where he wants to be.
On the other hand recruit “B” does not get all the attention from the coaches. He doesn’t have the reputation of recruit “A”. While he may be a talented player, his talent is not readily recognized in the coaching circles. He has to make some kind of impression on the coaches. If you were to ask the coach what he wants recruit “B” to do to get noticed he will probably say: “Send me an email.” What do you expect the coach to say? “Please call me on the phone and remind me to drop everything I’m doing, drive 100 miles and come see you play so I can offer you a scholarship!” Yeah right.
I personally can attest to how some of this dialogue takes place. Here’s one instance. About 4 years ago I contacted the University of Alabama coach on the phone after my son had played a tournament on their campus. My son had expressed some interest in attending The University of Alabama. I introduced myself on the phone and the coach acknowledged he knew my son and would take his name and address and would follow with some information from Alabama. He got a small packet with some basic information and an invite to their camp. We attended the camp and at camp the coach pulled me aside and apologized for being too blunt on the phone. He said he didn’t realize who my son was during his “brush off” phone conversation, and they “REALLY” did want to recruit him. He couldn'd call me back because of NCAA regulations.
Fungo

Fungo - Yeah, but he could have emailed you!

I hear what some of you are saying. Of course, you should do as much as you can. I am just making a point that these phone calls and emails that everyone keeps talking about doing to get noticed, doesn't work that well. If a young athlete wants to play at the next level of baseball, then they should find the best way to get noticed, and not simply go through the means which everyone else does. Tiger Paw, you are right. If the coach has heard of you then you might get a response if he is interested in you BUT, what about the other hundreds of athletes he may not know of? You should definetely do what you can, but do know that there are ways to get a better response and an easier route to go.

I understand perfectly well the concept of A, B and C player. Everyone wants to recruit the A player, but in reality there are more B and C players. Coach knows he may get lucky and get one A player and I am sorry if my advice sounded like it was only directed toward A. Bottom line is, as Cosmos says, do what ever you can to get the coaches attention.
Lots of people laugh because they write a letter, call, email etc and then get a letter to attend camp. Coaches have to be careful in recruiting and the letter in essence might say, come to my camp where I can see you play because I cannot call you at this time. It is at that time that the parents and players have to try to decide what to do. I never believed in camps, but I hear more and more from parents that it was the best method, because they actually got to meet the coach in person, as you experienced for yourself. Pretty expensive but worth it if your son wants to attend that school.
I don't think there is one right or wrong thing to do. My son never got a letter, camp invite, zilch, nada from Auburn, then becauseo of his relationship with Coach Chuck (saw him tonight), the recruiting began. This was a situaton of knowing someone who knew someone and maybe that may be an option for anyone as well.
I was going to email son's pitching coach and ask that question, but he relies heavily on the internet for correspondence, so I already know what his answer would be. I also think that he is also an exception to most of the rules, he will contact someone who tries to contact him within the guidelines he needs to follow.
Catchersdad,
Like the thought of the Tiger Paw on your son's uniform better than a cactus!

I agree w/rz1 and justbb. Why not do both? In our experience we found that a combination of phone/emails worked best during the recruiting process, particulary when coaches could only call you once per week. I found that most recruiting coaches (D1)we were exposed to were very savvy about email and used it a lot for communication.

Doing both , snail mail and eamil,covers all the bases and then follow up with a phone call to make sure they got the correspondence

from our experience we did both..some coaches did not really read or do the email thing...

one in particular...actually did a newsletter to recruits....and corresponded that way...weekly

and as yes, do follow up...