Good work, TR....thanks!
Trhit, thanks for the feedback. We checked the site out and found the placement list, in our opinion to be minimal and their emphasis, to date, in Canada. We have been contemplating the services of a consultant so the concept is okay with us. We just don't like the unsolicited emails, and the continued denial of same, as well as their initial presentation on the forum.
I would like to thank all the people that have participated in this exchange of ideas. This subject has been most enlightening. A special thanks to TRhit for taking his personal time to check this out.
I've been following this thread and I appreciate TRhit...taking the time to enlighten us...
we're all looking to gain insight...
Pam
we're all looking to gain insight...
Pam
arizonared
You have a PM
You have a PM
I've been lurking on this one but will make one comment to Cosmo:
Be careful when you advertise giving verbal information on athletes as part of your service. It is a recruiting violation for coaches to receive anything but written info on a player from a service.
Be careful when you advertise giving verbal information on athletes as part of your service. It is a recruiting violation for coaches to receive anything but written info on a player from a service.
Wow, I had no idea I'd start this kind of discussion when I made the first reply to Cosmos! 
I must say this has been one of the better exchanges and an example of how to disagree, sticking to the subject, and not resorting to getting mean, or personal.
Cosmos, no one here means to disrespect your business. Recruiting services can be very beneficial for many families. We all just want to remind our current and new members to always DO YOUR HOMEWORK (as TR did) and make sure that the investment you make (whether in time spent doing your own recruiting and marketing, or $'s spent using a service, or a combination of both) will meet the needs of your player and your family goals.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer. But a lot of those answers can be found right here!
I must say this has been one of the better exchanges and an example of how to disagree, sticking to the subject, and not resorting to getting mean, or personal.
Cosmos, no one here means to disrespect your business. Recruiting services can be very beneficial for many families. We all just want to remind our current and new members to always DO YOUR HOMEWORK (as TR did) and make sure that the investment you make (whether in time spent doing your own recruiting and marketing, or $'s spent using a service, or a combination of both) will meet the needs of your player and your family goals.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer. But a lot of those answers can be found right here!
That was interesting.....
Cosmos,
I think what you will find here is that most people don't necessarily have a problem with companies and services wanting to assist high school athletes with the college recruiting process. Part of the problem is that there are so many services cropping up everywhere promising the world, that it confuses parents and some good services get a bad reputation from other services that are not as good. You dove right into the message boards with basically a text ad and a phone number for your first post and that’s part of the reason that people are jumping on you. Yes, there are many people here who have benefited in one way or another from posting on this site, but most of those people, Rbinaz, TR, myself take the time and make the effort to provide people advice and education on the college recruiting process and our services sometimes indirectly benefit from that.
I know absolutely nothing about your service other than what is posted on your limited website, but let me make some general comments….
The first problem I see is you are based in Canada and most student-athletes are not based in Canada, so I am not sure how you plan to or go about evaluating talent across a multitude of sports for say, a kid who lives in Connecticut or somewhere else that isn’t in Canada. There is no mention of how you evaluate prospects and how you determine what level a certain player for a certain sport could possibly play at?
The second problem is that much of your service seems to involve simply pushing information from one place to the other via mail and email for a fee. I can tell you from experience and working with college coaches that simply faxing and emailing them recruiting material from a 3rd party company such as yours (especially if they do not know it is coming) is simply a waste of time and money, and unsolicited things like that hardly and rarely ever get looked at, unless they come from an extremely credible source of some kind or something that the coach is familiar with. In reality, most colleges at this point have online recruit forms on their team website that recruits can fill out. When a recruit fills this out on their own, it goes directly to the coach and shows the coach that a potential recruit found their team website on their own, took the time to fill out the online profile of their academic, athletic, and physical stats, and is possibly interested in their school. It doesn’t mean it’s a match or that they will get recruited, but it’s a start, and its an inexpensive start at that. And email is the same way. When coaches start receiving 3rd party packages from recruiting services, they know that the kid probably paid money for that package and they can get a little weary of the kids motivation and the companies - and they ask questions like, does this kid know his/her package came to me, are they expecting a scholarship, who is doing the evaluation, and so forth.
The biggest challenge with the recruiting process, (aside of exposure to coaches at the right level), I believe is education - teaching families what is required of them, how the process works, how coaches recruit, how to research schools and select schools that are a good fit, and how to move the process forward. There are very few marketing services that address the issue of education and they rather choose to address the issue of exposure, thinking exposure is all you need to be recruited and that sending emails, letters and faxes to 50 or 100 schools are even more will be the difference between getting recruited and not getting recruited. Yes, exposure is important, but there are 100’s of things that have to happen in between for a coach and a player to find the right fit and for the recruiting process to work the way it should. I am not a huge fan of services that simply charge parents money to fax, email, or mail athletic profiles to college athletic programs, because that’s not really a service, that’s not really something college coaches want to receive in bulk, and that’s something that families could be doing on their own for basically free. Do I agree that all families can handle the recruiting process on their own, well, no, not if they are unsure of the steps they need to take, so yes, there can and is a need for some services to provide assistance, the problem is there are so many companies trying to take parents money for no real service.
The third problem I see from your website is that there is not one shred of recruiting advice, articles, information on there that gives any assistance to any parent or student that comes to your website. There is the obligatory stuff that says how unique and customized your services are, and in reality, there are a hundred recruiting services trying to do what you are trying to do, which is charge a fee to send letters, emails and faxes to coaches. The list of services in your gold and platinum package doesn’t even seem to be for a high school athlete looking to play in college and I have no idea what legal consultation is for??? placement opportunities with free agent camps???? and have no idea what official visits to teams, colleges, universities, tryouts is. Official visits are handled by families and universities, not recruiting services!
On your sign-up form you have a list of players names under a section called Collegiate Scholarships and 3 schools are in the Ivy League and they do not offer athletic scholarships at the Ivy League, and Clarkson is a D3 school, and D3 schools do not offer athletic scholarships. “Collegiate scholarships” is not even a term I am aware of??
Like I said in the beginning, I don’t know anything about your specific service, but I know enough about recruiting and what college coaches are looking for to tell you that between the lack of information on your website and your methods and services, that at least on this board, you are not going to find a lot of people that are excited about what you seem to be offering…
Dave G
www.varsityedge.com
Cosmos,
I think what you will find here is that most people don't necessarily have a problem with companies and services wanting to assist high school athletes with the college recruiting process. Part of the problem is that there are so many services cropping up everywhere promising the world, that it confuses parents and some good services get a bad reputation from other services that are not as good. You dove right into the message boards with basically a text ad and a phone number for your first post and that’s part of the reason that people are jumping on you. Yes, there are many people here who have benefited in one way or another from posting on this site, but most of those people, Rbinaz, TR, myself take the time and make the effort to provide people advice and education on the college recruiting process and our services sometimes indirectly benefit from that.
I know absolutely nothing about your service other than what is posted on your limited website, but let me make some general comments….
The first problem I see is you are based in Canada and most student-athletes are not based in Canada, so I am not sure how you plan to or go about evaluating talent across a multitude of sports for say, a kid who lives in Connecticut or somewhere else that isn’t in Canada. There is no mention of how you evaluate prospects and how you determine what level a certain player for a certain sport could possibly play at?
The second problem is that much of your service seems to involve simply pushing information from one place to the other via mail and email for a fee. I can tell you from experience and working with college coaches that simply faxing and emailing them recruiting material from a 3rd party company such as yours (especially if they do not know it is coming) is simply a waste of time and money, and unsolicited things like that hardly and rarely ever get looked at, unless they come from an extremely credible source of some kind or something that the coach is familiar with. In reality, most colleges at this point have online recruit forms on their team website that recruits can fill out. When a recruit fills this out on their own, it goes directly to the coach and shows the coach that a potential recruit found their team website on their own, took the time to fill out the online profile of their academic, athletic, and physical stats, and is possibly interested in their school. It doesn’t mean it’s a match or that they will get recruited, but it’s a start, and its an inexpensive start at that. And email is the same way. When coaches start receiving 3rd party packages from recruiting services, they know that the kid probably paid money for that package and they can get a little weary of the kids motivation and the companies - and they ask questions like, does this kid know his/her package came to me, are they expecting a scholarship, who is doing the evaluation, and so forth.
The biggest challenge with the recruiting process, (aside of exposure to coaches at the right level), I believe is education - teaching families what is required of them, how the process works, how coaches recruit, how to research schools and select schools that are a good fit, and how to move the process forward. There are very few marketing services that address the issue of education and they rather choose to address the issue of exposure, thinking exposure is all you need to be recruited and that sending emails, letters and faxes to 50 or 100 schools are even more will be the difference between getting recruited and not getting recruited. Yes, exposure is important, but there are 100’s of things that have to happen in between for a coach and a player to find the right fit and for the recruiting process to work the way it should. I am not a huge fan of services that simply charge parents money to fax, email, or mail athletic profiles to college athletic programs, because that’s not really a service, that’s not really something college coaches want to receive in bulk, and that’s something that families could be doing on their own for basically free. Do I agree that all families can handle the recruiting process on their own, well, no, not if they are unsure of the steps they need to take, so yes, there can and is a need for some services to provide assistance, the problem is there are so many companies trying to take parents money for no real service.
The third problem I see from your website is that there is not one shred of recruiting advice, articles, information on there that gives any assistance to any parent or student that comes to your website. There is the obligatory stuff that says how unique and customized your services are, and in reality, there are a hundred recruiting services trying to do what you are trying to do, which is charge a fee to send letters, emails and faxes to coaches. The list of services in your gold and platinum package doesn’t even seem to be for a high school athlete looking to play in college and I have no idea what legal consultation is for??? placement opportunities with free agent camps???? and have no idea what official visits to teams, colleges, universities, tryouts is. Official visits are handled by families and universities, not recruiting services!
On your sign-up form you have a list of players names under a section called Collegiate Scholarships and 3 schools are in the Ivy League and they do not offer athletic scholarships at the Ivy League, and Clarkson is a D3 school, and D3 schools do not offer athletic scholarships. “Collegiate scholarships” is not even a term I am aware of??
Like I said in the beginning, I don’t know anything about your specific service, but I know enough about recruiting and what college coaches are looking for to tell you that between the lack of information on your website and your methods and services, that at least on this board, you are not going to find a lot of people that are excited about what you seem to be offering…
Dave G
www.varsityedge.com
Why do you criticize someones service... when you havent even used it! Its like saying something sucks and when you havent even done it or used it. Oh Well.. I just thought I post this thought of mine. 
Why?
Because over 100 college coaches told me they are seriously troubled by the fact that hundreds of companies are charging kids thousands of dollars to send out letter, emails, and faxes to schools all across the country in the hopes that some coach is going to offer some kid who has no knowledge of their school or program scholarship money based on a paper resume of stats and descriptions of their ability.
Because I have researched this topic and there is a wrong way and a right way to go about the recruiting process.
Because parents and students can send out their own information in a targeted manner, build more personal relationships with with coaches, and save money.
Because bad services give good services a bad name and then college coaches become skeptical of anything sent from any service.
Because there are no athletic scholarships in the Ivy League or at D3 schools.
Because there is no governing body that oversees recruiting services or monitors their practices.
Because many parents are clueless and end up throwing money at any service that claims to know more than they do about recruiting.
Because parents think mass exposure is the best way to get recruited.
Because coaches usually throw away unsolicited emails, letters, and faxes.
Interesting post for your first one?
Because over 100 college coaches told me they are seriously troubled by the fact that hundreds of companies are charging kids thousands of dollars to send out letter, emails, and faxes to schools all across the country in the hopes that some coach is going to offer some kid who has no knowledge of their school or program scholarship money based on a paper resume of stats and descriptions of their ability.
Because I have researched this topic and there is a wrong way and a right way to go about the recruiting process.
Because parents and students can send out their own information in a targeted manner, build more personal relationships with with coaches, and save money.
Because bad services give good services a bad name and then college coaches become skeptical of anything sent from any service.
Because there are no athletic scholarships in the Ivy League or at D3 schools.
Because there is no governing body that oversees recruiting services or monitors their practices.
Because many parents are clueless and end up throwing money at any service that claims to know more than they do about recruiting.
Because parents think mass exposure is the best way to get recruited.
Because coaches usually throw away unsolicited emails, letters, and faxes.
Interesting post for your first one?
ghouse---
That's because it's NOT ANDY'S (Dibble) first post...
That's because it's NOT ANDY'S (Dibble) first post...
Who is Andy?
Is this one of those people who creates multiple identities to support other posts they made under another name?
Is this one of those people who creates multiple identities to support other posts they made under another name?