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The only recruiting service you need is hsbaseballweb. Get your advice here. Do your own work. Control your destiny. Why have a service fling dung off the wall to see what sticks? Build a business plan and execute it.
There are a ton of posts regarding NCSA on this site.Just search NCSA and read all of the points of view.I know people who have used their service and believe it was worth the dough.I also know others who feel it was a waste of money.
Personally, I did not see any value of their service for my son.Instead,as RJM pointed out you can learn everything about the baseball recruiting process on this site for free. Everyone here is more than happy to help you with their advice and experiences as you and your son navigate the baseball recruiting process.
Remarkable. A day after someone begins a thread entitled "Late to the ball game" and starts out wondering if NCSA is worth the money, someone else wonders the same thing...when it's been discussed here thousands of times.
Here are the search results:
http://community.hsbaseballweb...amp;queryString=ncsa
I typed "NCSA" into the search box. Remarkable.
The NCSA's home page says: "Build a free recruiting profile in the only network trusted by 42,000 college coaches."
That's a lie for more than one reason. First, there' aren't 42,000 college baseball coaches. What NCSA likes to do is toss around the fact that they recruit to multiple sports. The 42,000 figure results from the multiple sports they claim to cover.
Second and more significantly. college baseball coaches don't trust recruiting services like NCSA. Why? For more than a few reasons: (1) Coaches are fully aware that recruiting services are being paid by players' families to send the canned crap that they send to them. As a result, the vast majority of it goes directly into the trash can or is immediately deleted. (2) Baseball coaches trust "baseball people's" opinions, if they trust anyone else's other than their own. Recruiting services...particularly those that cater to a variety of sports...are not considered "baseball people." (3) If there's any soft spot in a college baseball coach's heart, it's for the player who really desires to attend that particular baseball coach's school and program. Services like NCSA love to tout their extensive data bases of college coaches'' email addresses and the blanketing of those addresses that they do...the exact opposite of what a college baseball coach wants to see from a player.
The bottom line: Actively-recruited baseball players don't need recruiting services. All players who are at the margin need to do is figure out a way to get in front of the coaches who represent schools and programs that they think are pertinent to their skill level and college interests.
In some instances, recruiting services appeal to the vanity of players and/or their parents. Vain parents like to go to the high school game and say that their son is being "represented" by such-and-such recruiting service...as though the recruiting service were the same as a professional agent. If that is, in fact, the case, go to the recruiting service and tell them that you'll pay them 6% of the value of the baseball scholarship they'll procure for your son...after the NLI has been signed. Nothing to be paid to the recruiting service until then. After all, that's how it works with professional agents.
Don't be surprised if you stop hearing from the recruiting service after you propose that.
We passed on NCSA when I googled the "scout" that was going to talk to us and discovered that his last job was at Applebee's and he never played college baseball.
We have had a great experience with fieldlevel.com.
We use NCSA but only for the website functionality and search tool and some learning content. We do not use them for recruiting. That is done by BucsFanSon direct along with his summer program director. Some of NCSA's content for specific sports (baseball, in this case) is very good...I'm talking about webinars that can be viewed after the fact, articles, slide presentations, etc. Nothing earth shattering, but confirmatory and adding some valuable advice around the edges for specific topics. Most recent presenter we watched was former D1 recruiter and played in PAC 10. A good example: they have a webinar with slides, preso and Q&A that focuses only on Ivy League recruiting. I know NCSA is expensive and not for everyone, and I certainly don't advocate using them to reach out to schools for a player (want to be 100% clear on that), but do think it can be a useful piece to the puzzle.
JJD, we have used Recruiting Edge Baseball with tremendous results. Based in Mass. A lot of connections at all levels of baseballthroughout the country. Worth a look.
http://www.recruitingedgebaseball.com/
