When to send out cover letters?

There are exceptions for kids who are absolutely gifted or on high-profile teams but I think sending out letters before your son's sophomore season is too early. Schools will respond by sending you information about their camps and asking you to fill out a questionnaire. During his sophomore season, you should get in the habit of videoing all of his at bats so that you can edit together the best ones into a highlight video that you can provide to interested coaches. This summer your son should probably go to a camp or showcase. Stanford has a good "Future Stars" camp. There are also Perfect Game, Top 96, Headfirst Honor Roll, and Showball events, just to name a few that come to mind. This way, when he will be more relaxed when he goes to camps and showcases in the summer between his junior and senior years. He should enjoy his sophomore year, improve his skills and strength, and try to get good grades. 

sending you a PM, see dialog box

Hopefully your son will be sending out emails to coaches, and not hard copy cover letters.

Don't start sending out introduction emails until he has made the varsity team (Otherwise, what is there to say?  Hey, I am a good JV player?)  Once your son get's his summer travel schedule, that is a good time, and a good excuse, to start sending out emails and let the coaches know.  You can then send out follow up emails of the team's schedule for individual weekends.  Every week when the schedule comes out.  

Make sure your son sends out the emails and proofs them carefully.  I recently heard of an incident where a mom sent out an email to the coach under the son's name, but put another school's coach's name in the body of the text.  Oops.

Very good info so far. Once it is time to communicate with coaches, i'd recommend this website/service:

www.recruitmenow.org is a low cost website and has a national database of coaches and you can blast 20 emails in one shot to schools of interest. They have form letters, and every email has your son's webpage link attached. You can also build a profile to included awards, academic info, newspaper articles, stats and videos for those coaches to review/watch. If the college or a coach clicks your link and visits your page, then they are logged via their IP address and you can see how many times they visit and how many pages they view. It's a great tool at a bargain price of $49 annually and it will augment what you do independently to get your kid exposure/land your kid a scholarship. I used this after talking with several friends and it helped us get my son a D1 offer and he accepted. It just so happens the school who looked at his profile the most is who landed him. Good luck!

AnotherBaseballParent:A Top 96 is coming to the area soon, do you know about those? Website seems pretty convincing.

Keewart: Yes, he will sending emails! I didnt realize the word "cover letter" was a little out of date. And he goes to a huge school, with about 20 kids on 3 levels of HS play, it is a  goal of his to make varsity but we will see. It seems to me as after the HS season ends would be a good time to at least introduce ourselves. His travel team is doing pretty high end 16u tourneys, do you think there will be coaches at least there to watch?

Shoveit4Ks: We will look into that website. I have seen online to not use blast mass emails out to tons of coaches at once, is this true?

Thanks for all your help guys!

Happens. When applying for law schools I sent a Personal Statement to Washington & Lee that stated SEVEN TIMES how much I really wanted to attend William & Mary.

When my son sent out his emails, we personalized each with the coach's name.  We copied and pasted the body of the letter...then added/subtracted a few things if needed.  We always had a line that said "I look forward to hearing from you if you feel I have a future with the (mascot name)"  You don't know how many times he was ready to send it...then realized he still had the mascot name from the previous school still in the letter.  I think there was only one time where did he let one slip and sent it with  the wrong mascot.

Maybe "blast" was a misuse of ways to describe the emails. There are several pre-made templates in the website that are very professional and courteous for you to use. I edited those and added a custom template, it just takes the email and Coach "Last name" and puts it at the top of the email. I thought about sending a hard copy at times thinking "not many people do that anymore' but never did it.  The site gave me access to coaches emails all over the country and made it easy, all for $49 annually. The fact that you can track the views is cool and lets you know who is either interested...especially if you dont get a response and they look at the profile alot. The key is video...you must have video. edit them without music or anything like that, at bat per bat, or pitch by pitch so its efficient. They like that.

This is what keewartson did, too; the personalized email letters.  He had several templates of letters (one for first intro, one for 'thanks for the visit', another as a follow up for the questionnaire, and then the follow up emails with team schedules) with what you had to change in each letter in red so he would remember what needed to be changed each time.   He also had a saved spreadsheet of all the coaches, emails, mascots, etc.  It was a matter of cut and paste (and final proof).  Free.

Playing on 16U too early to send out letters?  No.  The 16U WWBA in GA is heavily scouted now, probably just as much or more than 17U.  During keewartson's sophomore year, there were about 15-25 pro scouts at his hs games watching a very good pitcher. After one game a scout asked the hs coach where the ss (keewartson) had committed.  He was just an uncommitted sophomore, but through that transaction he had his first unofficial visit lined up that next weekend.  "You never know who is watching" applies here.   

Shoveit4Ks,

How do you know?  Did you get this as feedback?  I've seen lots of discussion on this point over the years and many have taken the view that video doesn't matter.  Just curious if this is an opinion or if you've gotten some data on this.

Butch Thompson, Associate Head Coach at Miss State told me that directly on a visit. He analyzed my son's videos that i filmed and edited for over an hour before our visit and personally thanked me for having them online on youtube. Now, after they offered he did come watch my son in a live game and what he saw there was the tempo, which isnt translatable on the video. Just about all of the 8 schools said the video was very helpful. Having it accessible is critical when they want to collaborate on a kid wiht other coaches or the head coach was crucial.  The recruiting coach at the school (D1 ACC) who ultimately landed my son had seen video of my son and then saw him live at Lakepoint while relieving....and that sealed the deal..once again the tempo was something they recognized.

At a minimum i would create your own channel on youtube and film, edit and add them there and link that in your emails. My son is a pitcher and i added a side view bullpen video with slow motion so the coaches could pick apart his mechanics etc as well.For instance Coach Thompson said my son drops his ball hand straight down by his hips from the glove break like CC Sabathia (typically not a great mechanics) but because my son has a quick arm, he gets his elbow up and is on top of the ball when delivering it. He also said my sons hips were flexible and due to his athleticism he was able to compensate for closing them at times upon early delivery while squaring up to the plate. He maintained the ability to complete the torque required because of that athleticism and it radically change his his velo or location. All things i could see but didnt understand until he said something.

With youtube, you can see how may visits you get, how long they watched certain videos etc but not necessarily who or where they came from in regards to schools.

I hope this helps.

Shoveit4ks,

thanks, that's great feedback.  

Shoveit4ks - what program did you use to edit your vidoes?

Shovit4ks - What program did you use to edit the videos?? Thanks.

There are a lot of different video editing software packages out there.  If you are on a MAC use iMovie.  Its free.  I believe Windows Movie Maker is included with Windows.  Either of these will work fine to edit these type of videos.  You really don't want to do anything fancy with the video other then show a few different angles of a couple of pitches/hits/fielding/etc.  At most you may want to put a title screen or overlay on the video showing the date and time it was filmed along with contact information but thats it.

You can also use vimeo online to upload and edit videos if you want but I think its something like $200/yr for a subscription.

My 2015 had similar feedback from coaches. One told him he had watched hundreds over the summer. I can't imagine anyone still thinks that video doesn't matter.

My tips would be:

- keep it to 3-5 minutes

- quick edits (e.g. 4-5 seconds per swing)

- include "skills" and game action

- include title with year, position, ht/wt, contact information

- no logins (use your own website, youtube, vimeo, etc)

Put yourself in the shoes of a coach who's getting 100s of videos, most of which he can dismiss in the first 10-15 seconds. Post longer videos in the same location (channel) so they can see more if they choose.

Keewartson provided a link to a video at the bottom of each email.

PIS on this site provided the service.  Check his website for samples of videos.

I filmed with a FLIP 1080P pocket recorder and used Microsoft Movie Maker. Good luck with the process....and have FUN!