recruiting video advice

The best time is when the player has something to show ... solid mechanics and metrics. Post soph summer is for remaining major D1 recruits and the beginning for mid major D1. Post junior summer is for remaining D1 mid majors and everyone else. But if a player has something to show he can get on the radar screen.

A recruiting video should be about mechanics, not highlights. Keep is under three minutes. Impose metrics on the screen. Don’t bother with music.

The best use of a video is having the travel coach make contact with college coaches and presell the player. Then send a link to the video via email. The other option is a blind emailer to target markets. It’s a nothing to lose approach.

Include a link to the travel team’s schedule. If it’s not available provide it later.

 Create a data base or purchase a sales prospect contact program to track all contacts and interactions both ways. 

I started taking videos of son's in-game at-bats and defense his HS junior year after he developed physically and had numbers that would impress (velo, exit velo, pop time, 60 time).  In late spring my son spliced together these clips into a 90 second video that included a few cage BP swings and a few showcase throw-downs (my son is a catcher), but most of video time was in-game at-bats (he wanted to show power to all fields) and in-game backpacks, blocks, steal attempts.  The clips were 5-7 seconds each with no dead time in between (keep it moving).  No music, just game background sounds.  He included this video in email to college coaches with his summer schedule.  He created updated videos throughout the summer and fall to keep it fresh and update numbers, grades and test scores.  The feedback he got from coaches was that they liked the energy he played with and the speed he played the game, so I think the in-game clips made a difference.

+1

We were fortunate to have a dad who did full game videos and I'll pull plays from there and splice  them together, keeping the clips short, for example on a stand-up double there's no need to follow him all the way to 2b.  No music, but the crowd noise on an RBI hit or a great play really adds something. We added some cage swings, as well as a brief clip of my son introducing himself.  He got a lot of positive feedback from coaches.

We did my 2018s first video after his sophomore year. Mine was a RHP, but we used a very specific script — honestly not games because we felt like we wanted coaches to focus on son and his mechanics and not on what's happening in the game.

He was a catcher for a while and that video we shot from either just left or right of home plate,  I think most of our videos were tops two and a half minutes. Catcher ones were slightly longer because we included hitting.

We usually did one to two a year, whenever there was a jump in skills. He emailed them to any coach he was communicating with and posted links to them to his own web site, as well as fieldlevel.com. One school who saw the link on Field Level responded with "We'll give you an offer if you come visit us."

We didn't, but took it as a sign that the video was right.

We used a website that tracked who hit the site and viewed son's videos. It was useful for contact management and had a database of coaches/RC emails. I agree, no music and keep it moving.