What to send colleges

bigheat:

Purposefulness and economy of information in your communications are much more important than quantity of information.

Try to put yourself in the coaches' shoes. What would you want to know about an interested recruit if you were besieged with information from a bunch of players; especially when it's obvious that much of what you're receiving is blasted out in general form to many other coaches, as well?

Well, first of all, they need to know of your interest in them. Try to communicate not only the fact that you're interested, but WHY you're interested in them, specifically.

They need to know some factual information about you. Complete their questionnaire and return it if you have it. If you feel that their questionnaire fails to adequately capture some important dimensions and/or accomplishments, whether on or off the field, don't hesitate to add that information on an additional page. If you don't have their questionnaire, send them a fact sheet that details many of the items that a typical college questionnaire contains.

They need to know where and when they can see you perform. As a result, it's often a good idea to send your game/showcase schedule to them before each season.

With the first two items in hand, they'll begin to know whether it makes sense for them to make their interest a mutual thing by looking at your video and/or coming to see you play.

Best of luck to you!

Prepster's reply is right on. You should be prodcuing a highlight video (about 2-4 minutes) around the end of your junior year. You should also be completing the online prospect questionaires for the schools you are intersted in. Follow these up with an e-mail of introduction to the coach (and ideally a link to the aforementioned highlight video).

A key point in Prepster' reply is also very important: to show that you are interested in the particular school you are contacting. You don't want to look like you are contacting every college baseball program out there. A coach will see through that. If you are interested in ABC University, then add at least a sentence about why you are (that could be because they have the academic major you want to pursue, because it is close to your home or far away from your home, because you particularly like the baseball program (and be prepared to say why) or some other reason.) In other words, present yourself as a real person with real interests, skills and desires so the coach can conclude you have a definite interest in his program and are not just spamming every baseball program in the country.

Prepster definitely has a great response:

College coaches receive countless emails everyday from prospective student-athletes. You definitely want to make an email very personable and let the coach you are interested in that particular school and why. If a coach feels it is a mass email, they will most likely delete it after adding you to the camp database.

Some important items to include:

Summer team/coach
GPA/Test Scores
Graduation year
High School attended
60 time, velocity, etc with a good reference to validate it (scout or coach)
short video of whatever you do well (swinging, pitching, fielding, etc).

Thank you everyone. That helped a lot and also, is there anything else to send a coach once you have been in contact for a while? or should you just wait it out and see if he asks for anything?

Keep the colleges you're interested in updated with HS and summer schedules as they become available...covered by another letter with a BRIEF summary update of you. Thats the stuff you need to 'add' as you go along.