Player website

I just don't believe that personal websites lead to a few scholarship offers...very often, if ever.

I believe that people mistakenly think that the website they set up led to that, but I believe in nearly every case it was other factors that led to the scholarship.

Coaches need to see a player play. Its really that simple.

I think you might be further ahead creating a free page on the berecruited site and use that site to research schools. Depending on your son's age (mine's a freshman so it's early), it is probably well worth it to spend the $40 (I think) to get the full service (allowing you to communicate back and forth with the coaches). You get the benefit of coaches looking for your kid and tons of information about the schools themselves.

It would be interesting to know how the NCAA rules apply to the communications part. As we are putting our information up to be viewed, does that mean that in fact we are making the first contact and then the coaches are allowed to respond (assuming players younger than the NCAA communication rule deadlines)?

I created a fairly large database of schools (800 records and over a hundred fields) and have prioritized certain ones already and we have years to go. Given our geographic location, we are out-of-state to everywhere.

Creating a website can be over-the-top. I'd start by identifying the schools from factors that are key to your situation. Some of my key fields include: Relative academic abaililties (from US News rankings and College Board SAT ranges), In-State Tuition, OOS tuition, other costs, does the school waive OOS, flight costs if its a long way away, relative baseball strength, make-up of current freshman roster at my sons position (up it a year every year), how many OOS players are on a teams roster, where other Ontario players have gone, etc. Currdently I have D1's, D2's, JUCO 1's and 2's, and NAIA's - I dont put much time into many of the fields on unlikely matches.

Ranking schools is tough. You have to look in the mirror and tell yourself what is realistic financially; what your sons real capabilities are; etc. With as much time as we have in front of us (and it doesnt seem like that much) we can afford to take a few risks with some of the exposure choices.

The big deal is choosing the schools.

I would do things in this order:

Figure out what you want to study
Choose the schools that match up with your capabilities
Load up your information, photos, videos, etc. on a site such as berecruited
Develop a plan to get in front of actual coaches as practical

Must run...

This one?


http://www.masonstidham.com/index.html

That would be the one. Thanks!

justbaseball is mostly right.

In our sons case, he was a nobody that got a highly favorable report sent out about him by a small showcase, to a large mailing list. Right after that, Juniors website got TONS of hits. They look at stats, viewed his video, etc.

It did its job, which was to further or generate interest of prospective recruiters. All that occurred very early in the recruiting timeline, and all interested recruiters at that point made a point of seeing him afterwards.

In short, it is a tool in the toolbox, but neither a major one, nor a deal closer.

FYI, we did get two offers from schools, sight unseen. Both of those offers were the direct result of a pro scouts reccomendation to those schools, and had nothing to do with the website. To take the story even further, both of those offers were pulled off the table later when the coaches got to see Junior (They both saw him when he had undiagnosed Mono and had basically "lost it" for about 6 weeks). So seeing the player was still important, even after an offer was made.

we found that having a website was a very useful tool as well. We included his contact information, coaches and scouts contact info, his HS and Travel statisitics, video, SAT/ACT and GPA information, HS and travel schedules etc...it was a great attachment to our communications and we had great feedback. We chose to make our own using wix.com because it was free and easy to do.

There are a couple of reasons one might want to create your own website versus using one of the recruiting sites. For example, if you cant differentiate yourself on the recruiting site, it might be a drawback - although it appears that a lot of coaches subscribe to these sites - so they're looking at your competition anyways.

My kid is primarily a pitcher. The website creates a convenient way to allow coaches to see his basic mechanics, academic abiities, and stats. As others have said, it's about 15% of the process, so we dont get too excited about it.

Right now, he needs to focus on the school and the baseball.

quote:

In our sons case, he was a nobody that got a highly favorable report sent out about him by a small showcase, to a large mailing list. Right after that, Juniors website got TONS of hits. They look at stats, viewed his video, etc.

OK, I can see this as a way to make it worthwhile. I think the key event in that paragraph was the highly favorable report sent by showcase.

Website link, emailed by player/parent with nothing else to initiate interest (like the showcase report noted above or perhaps a few scouts being high on the player)...just won't do much if anything for you IMO.

I was the one that created the site. What message I was trying to convey is that we had success with the site. It was the tool that administered the dialogue between my son and the schools of interest. Meaning that we sent out 15 letters of interest to schools that he chose. We received nothing back from any of the schools. Then we were on beRecruited for several months again nothing solid. Then I created the site and sent out letters with a link to the site to the same 15 schools. We had 11 of the schools contacts us back over the next week. That led to a few campus visits and a couple of actual workouts with a few teams. In the end was it the website that got it done, no it was the talent of the player. However it was the tool that opened the channels of communication. What works for one individual may not work for other individuals. We were lucky and signed a NLI to D1 school in the pacific northwest.

Hi landarts

I believe the website you developed looks great.

I have to assume that the beRecruited website was torn-down after the successful recruitment. Right now, it has no pictures or videos. Even so, the stats are pretty poor - 21 all time views. I have a hard time believing that if you had dopped the same photos and videos onto this site and had his kind of stats that you wouldn't have had guys banging down your door for a 6'7" RHP.

Right now, my freshman son who is a 14YO 6'1" 193 pound RHP has been up on a free site for a week. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I shot-gun blasted this - we're at a much earlier stage in the process. Realizing that if he took a lot of interest from many different schools, he would build stats that would bring his name to the top on many different search categories (Coach Views, Total View, Connections, etc.) I also had a database with close to 1000 baseball schools in it. I started loading schools daily - one from each state. Therefore, I would pretty much know which schools had looked at my son - and you can get coach contact info from the school and team websites. As they say on that site, incresing connections increases interested coaches.

In one week, my son has close to 2000 connections (not schools) - connections with coaches. He has somewhere between 12 and 15 (I'm still getting used to their update timing) distinct coaches that have looked at him. He has three coaches who have bookmarked him - although I have conversed about camps with a few others. He has 43 total views and 28 coach views.

Now, you could say that that is all a lot of stats that have nothing to do with talking face-to-face. I did make some contact with a number of coaches, including some top D1's.

I'm just saying, if I had the videos and photos and stats that were on that site you made and put it up on beRecruited, I cant believe the traffic wouldn't have been in the 100's of coach views.

In any event, I must run for dinner. Again I think the site looks great and did it's job.

The berecruited site is no longer active....it had all of the same items on it as the website did. So what you are seeing on there now is not a true reflections of what it was when it was active. After he signed his letter of intent I went back on berecruited and toggled the "been recruited button"

quote:

Originally posted by landarts:
I was the one that created the site. What message I was trying to convey is that we had success with the site. It was the tool that administered the dialogue between my son and the schools of interest. Meaning that we sent out 15 letters of interest to schools that he chose. We received nothing back from any of the schools. Then we were on beRecruited for several months again nothing solid. Then I created the site and sent out letters with a link to the site to the same 15 schools. We had 11 of the schools contacts us back over the next week. That led to a few campus visits and a couple of actual workouts with a few teams. In the end was it the website that got it done, no it was the talent of the player. However it was the tool that opened the channels of communication. What works for one individual may not work for other individuals. We were lucky and signed a NLI to D1 school in the pacific northwest.

Congratulations to your son!! That's awesome!

It never hurts to try to get some added exposure with a free-website or to post stuff on recruiting web sites, you never know who may notice something.

Many times it's "being in the right place, at the right time!", that often helps!

Sorry about that... never being one to miss a dinner call...

Your experience confirms a few suspicions I have had about how this site works.

For example, if you go in, load up a free website, aplly to 15 or 20 schools that you have targetted, it would be tough to generate a lot of interest. In the first few days, you're going to attract a certain percentage of the coaches that you were targetting. Without any maintenance though, in all likelihood after that, you are going to disappear to the bottom of the list for good. At freshman level, there are about 1000 players on the site. I dont think a lot of coaches are cruising through that looking for freshmen. Your not going to get found just by being listed.

landarts - did you go for the paid subscription?

We intend to pay for a subscription next year. Being a featured playter is akin to the shot-gun blast. I can see that it would satisfy a number of purposes. Do schools that we are trying to attract find our son worth looking at further? Do similar level programs express an interest (afirmation)?

I wonder just how seriously some coaches really take this website. I sense that about 25% (if that) of them actively use it. I sense the majority randomly scan it.

The one field that I cant seem to find on this site is the field for position. How can a coach sort for pitchers?

In any event, I'm glad your son had success!

I PM'd you landarts.

quote:

it is a tool in the toolbox, but neither a major one, nor a deal closer.

quote:

Both of those offers were the direct result of a pro scouts reccomendation to those schools, and had nothing to do with the website.

The college baseball community is a very active fraternity; a network that includes the coaches, scouts, operators of player development programs, and showcase officials to name a few. In other words, baseball people.

The members of this fraternity are in constant communication with one another. This communication frequently involves conversations about individual players. They value and trust this communication process, and they place a great deal of reliance upon it to lead them to players who are appropriate for their programs and schools.

Baseball people have credibility among one another. Websites do not.

Websites have meaning to the people who create them, profit from them, and enjoy looking at them; often because they're related to or know the player featured in the website.

If you want to have a website to which you can refer someone in correspondence, fine; but, don't expect it to to do much, if anything, to advance your son's cause in a meaningful way.