My 2016 has had some college questionnaires emailed to him this past week and on it they are asking for a link to his online recruiting profile. Is this something we should set up? Which website would be best to use? He has a listing on PG with some write ups from tournaments he has attended but that is all.
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Berecruited.com is a good place to start. I've read good things about it on this site . Beware, however, NCAS is a recruiting service and they are connected with Berecruited. They will contact you about selling their services.
I agree with Cav. Berecruited was cheap and has place to upload videos and put information. There are a couple of other comparable sites. You could always build your own site as well if you have a little computer knowledge. Do not waste your money on high end recruiting services as very few people will get information from the site anyway. Remember that these questionnaire are oftentimes not even used by the school other than to send out more solicitations. If they want your son's information they will call high school or summer coach and ask your son to call directly.
Funny you post this today.
This morning I retweeted @BA_PSUBaseball
Brian Anderson is the assistant at Penn St. He's a buddy of mine from his time at Radford.
His tweet was to this link… http://www.gopsusports.com/spo...recruit_central.html
If you check out the Recruiting Questionnaire I saw 2 things that stuck out.
1 - They are requesting the kids social media links… Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.
2 - They are requesting links to your recruiting videos.
Parents & hs/travel coaches may continue to fight technology. But colleges are embracing it.
Carolina Girl - you do not need to spend thousands on a recruiting service. Colleges want to see your kid on film to decide if he's worth a 7 hour drive or not.
Feel free to check out the film on our website. I'd be happy to talk to you about filming him or his entire team. Filming a team is the smartest way to do it. Would look something like this… http://www.playinschool.com/vacardinals2013 And is really affordable.
Feel free to call or email me if you need any guidance.
Rich
These schools have seen him play and talked with him personally on multiple occasions. Some have asked him to call to set up an unofficial visit this spring and all of them have talked to his H.S. coach. The last thing we want is to start receiving a bunch of random solicitations but if it is something the coaches are looking to find online, then it is easy enough to set up.
Aleebaba -
To say a blanket statement like schools don't use the questionnaires for anything beyond camp mailings might be a little naive.
Most decent size schools are all utilizing recruiting software like Front Rush or ARMS. These types of database management system are essential in the communications process. Especially when it comes to compliance issues.
Every kid a coach communicates with will be plugged into the system. You think they want to manually enter that?
The systems I've seen give a coach the ability to dump every bit of information about a kid in there. Including incoming and outgoing correspondence. As well as all the pertinent info that would be requested on a questionnaire.
Now they even have apps so that coaches can enter data (scouting notes for ex.) right on their smart phone and it is synched with the database.
Fill out all questionnaires.
Rich
Carolina Girl,
First, make sure that your son has created an account with Perfect Game, and supplied all of his Profile information. Then add a link to his PG page to any online recruiting profiles. That will give colleges access to all of his personal, coach, summer team, etc. information. My son actually uses the PG profile to copy/paste most of the information requested in the questionnaires. PG does not charge for that type of basic account.
Next, read joemkt's post about setting up your own web site, tracking e-mail correspondence, etc. Great stuff.
http://community.hsbaseballweb...eting-and-recruiting
All of the above suggestions are good.
If we lived in California, Texas or the SouthEast where you are seen often,
we may have gone a different route, living in the North a website seems a necessity if your son wants to go where it is warm.
Our son has had nice success with RecruitMeNow.org the last 2 years (someone told us about it)..
It is reasonable at $49.99 a year,
he uploads his videos and evaluations from PG, Under Armour Pre-Season All-American, Area Code tryout invitation letters, Top Prospect team, NTIS, etc.
Has a section for newspaper and online press, video, stats and academics.
And a coach reference letter section as well.
Today a few ACC and SoCon schools were on his site.
(he sends the link)
Has lists of schools and coaches you can email direct from the site. (this information can of course be found on each schools website, saves some detective work).
For a low budget site he has gotten a nice return.
In our experience,
BeRecruited did not lead to as much interest by schools our son is interested in.
(as the ad says, your experience may be different).
NCSA is much more expensive, they offer details on each school,
environment, academic criteria and average size for positions.
NCSA will 'match' you and send your profile to many schools based on their evaluation of your skills and your stated desired/target schools/regions.
A nice NCSA feature has:
Coach requests,
position forecasting by schools/divisions/years,
and Roster openings.
NCSA is 'independent' and 'verifies' your stats
versus you posting 6.3 60's your own site for example.
Son has gotten nice attention on NCSA no question,
however the cost may be prohibitive for some
(son has a mid-level package, not the top package).
My son has suggested RecruitMeNow to his friends (as I have) as a low cost way to set up a website.
Some people tell us different schools prefer different sites (he sees which schools check which site) so having more than 1 site is something to consider as well.
Note - Schools will still want to see him play, the website and video can get you on a coaches radar and a schools recruiting list
Creating your own is a great option and one that we used in tandem with the perfect game showcase profile and videos (free videos) Our own website we were able to add in schedules, web/newspaper clippings and some you tube videos as well.
I would try to stay away from any obscure sites that would require a coach to create a account to see the info as that could be a turn off.
My son has had a berecruited profile for a couple years. We recently started using FieldLevel. It's much nicer....and gives you detailed reports of who viewed your profile, videos, etc. Neither of them has generated anything other than camp invites at this point.....heck, my son had a D1 coach at a showcase in December tell him "don't waste your time....D1 coaches don't look at that stuff". We have great results and several responses, contacts etc by going to our local field and shooting a 7-8 minute video. We uploaded it to Vimeo and sent an email with links to 30-35 coaches. At least 8 or 9 coaches viewed the video in the first couple days....with several responses that by the way they were worded let us know they had actually viewed the video. Cost nothing...
Aleebaba -
To say a blanket statement like schools don't use the questionnaires for anything beyond camp mailings might be a little naive.
We filled out so many of these questionaires and I guess it was hard to see much benefit other than showing the school that you are also interested in them. I'm not saying all schools use them sparingly, but when you are talking to interested coaches and they ask for your son's information, even though your son has already filled out the questionnaire, it suggests a lack of use for real recruiting purposes.
2014 son had a berecruited profile with some vids and stats. free, hard to complain. Berecruited is where he was first noticed by the university he eventually committed to. well worth the effort.
Be careful of Facebook; character flaws, inappropriate behavior, etc. is an easy way to kill your recruiting efforts. Great players with a bad social media presence better get drafted. IMO
Baseballbuddy
That applies to every kid. Some of the stuff I see some of my nieces share on facebook makes me cringe. Even if they delete it from there it likely will be captured and archived somewhere. I cannot drive it home enough to these kids that once you put it on the web it is public info and can be there forever.
2015 son has a berecruited profile, one thing we found out was when he went to generate and send a letter to that coach or school... that school coach was not even listed on the college web site...had moved on or left the college. He changed the name and then sent the generated letter off...
from the berecruited web site...1.Did the coach get the letter.??? 2.Did he read the letter ???
My son also got interest from schools that he didnt even send a letter too. He is going to be send out more letters via email to the school address and maybe evn a hard copy ( old school )...just one part of the process.
Joe
