what's going on everyone in this video I'm going to be diving into the world of college recruiting and sharing with you guys my three best tips to get noticed by college coaches for aspiring College athletes I'm certain that these tips will not only save you guys time but will also help you get noticed at a much higher rate by college coaches as a division one athlete I saw hundreds of recruits come on recruiting trips weekend after weekend but how did they get that trip to begin with it starts with an email it's always the scariest part of the process reaching out and sending that risky email but it could land you a spot on a team at the school of your dreams alright now so you don't have to wonder any further let's go over exactly what I'm going to be sharing with you in this video so in order to best understand the college recruiting process we're going to start by understanding The Rules of Engagement and email etiquette then I'm going to talk about what I did in my recruiting process and compare it to what I think I should have done and explain my three tips for all aspiring high school athletes I wanted to make this video as I have yet to see another video on the internet at that fully encapsulates the college recruiting process includes email templates and gives advice on what you guys should be doing so I hope to really Bridge all the gaps that are missing in the college recruiting process from what you've seen online thus far so without further Ado let's get into the Rules of Engagement and find out how soon you can begin using these tips alright before we start blindly going and sending emails let's make sure we're not breaking any NCAA rules so as a high school athlete you are allowed to reach out to college coaches at any time just don't expect a response back until June 15th of your sophomore year due to new NCAA rules they moved up the time frame in which college coaches could start engaging with high school athletes from September 1st of your junior year to June 15th of your sophomore year this now allows a sophomore going to their junior year to have the whole summer to reach out contact college coaches and start beginning dialogue back when I was getting recruited the rule was that college coaches could not reach out to you until July 1st going into your senior year so there's been a lot of changes that have been been made even since I was recruited to swim in college it's good before sending an email to sit down and think about what the goal of this email is what do I want this college coach to respond with in most cases the goal of this email is for you to reach out to a college coach and them to respond and offer you an official visit or a spot on a swim team now it's important to check in with each coach as not every university has a recruiting trip option and not every school can guarantee you academic admission take the ivy league for example they have to go through a long process and you don't know if you got into the school as the coaches can only give you assistance not actually guide you through the process like they can at many power five division one schools so make sure to get clarification on both of these items when emailing college coaches now after June 15th you and your family can start dialoguing with these college coaches however you can't step foot onto campus until September 1 of your junior year official and unofficial visit time now you might be thinking what is an unofficial visit an unofficial visit shows where a coach member of the team or training staff tour is he around the university for the day or just for the afternoon and kind of gives you a glimpse into what life as a student athlete at that University is however the difference is that the athlete incurs all the expenses of going on this unofficial visit as opposed to the university paying for it this means that the athlete pays for travel to the university meals while at the University and any other expenses incurred in the travel to this University on the other hand on an official visit when the coaches invite you out there most of the time the university is going to be paying for your travel your hotel and your food so On That September first date your invisible recruiting training wheels are taken off and you are now free to interact or go to campus and talk with these coaches freely now that we know that we're not breaking any rules let's go over a little bit of email etiquette when talking to these coaches when sending these emails to college coaches you're going to make sure to avoid any grammar or spelling mistakes college coaches hate grammar mistakes and it looks super unprofessional the next thing I would say away from is crazy subject lines if a college coach gets some crazy subject line like I'm the number one recruit here's why you gotta get me today I don't think they're gonna open that email make sure that your subject line your email is professional and gets straight to the point to go above and beyond and make sure that you have proper etiquette in these emails start every email with dear coach last name not their first name you're not their friend right now and then finish all of them with sincerely or best not from it's way less personal by doing these little things it'll help college coaches think that you're a little bit more mature college coaches don't want immature 18 to 22 year olds on their team and by sending a proper email with great email etiquette your coaches will know that you're serious about the recruiting process I realized I wanted to be a college athlete in the spring of my sophomore year of high school I'd always had the aspiration of being one but it didn't really become a reality until my sophomore year and I was so eager to send emails to college coaches so eager that I might have started actually emailing college coaches a little bit early you see when I started emailing coaches I wasn't fast in the swimming world and due to this I knew that I wasn't going to be able to compete with the people that were my age who were also sending emails I knew that the best years of swimming for me were ahead for some athletes it might be worth it to wait to send that email if you know that you have the best years of your development left in the sport it could seriously impact if you go D1 D2 or D3 when I started emailing college coaches I casted way too broad of a net and I realized I wasn't even emailing the right people when sending an email to a college coach it's important to have a strong subject line such as introduction and recruiting overview with your name after it this allows a college coach to see from their inbox exactly what you want to talk to them about from there what you put in the body of your email is completely dependent on the type of sport that you play it's important to know which sport you fall into the qualitative or the quantitative Sports quantitative sports are sports like track or swimming where you can actually count exactly how how good you are meaning that your times are measurable of some standard on the other hand sports like volleyball football and basketball are really qualitative Sports as you have to see what you look like on film before actually determining if you are good or not for qualitative Sports it might be a little bit harder to break into coaches inboxes as you'll have to tell a little bit of a story about who you are as an athlete and who you are as a student academically as well additionally you'll have to also add a highlight reel or mixtape to this email unless you've already attached a link for a college coach to go find it elsewhere additionally quantitative sports are much easier for international students to break into the NCAA college format as coaches don't have to fly all the way overseas and qualify you as an athlete by seeing you in person in what your abilities are nope it's right on paper this is how fast you are as an athlete however for both qualitative and quantitative Sports make sure that you're clearly and concisely laying out all this information to a college coach it's also important to share some things about yourself to this college coach such as your educational background your aspirations for majors in college and maybe even a high school transcript it's important to do this because you're going to the school to be a student athlete not just an athlete and college coaches want to make sure that they're not going to have you be a liability in the classroom when I sent many of my early emails I think they probably got thrown out by college coaches as they weren't professional enough and they lacked some of these key details that college coaches wanted to know about and even if you do have the details they care about if it's not presented in a proper professional or concise way the coaches aren't going to care if they don't want to read your email you're not going to that school make your email readable so how do you get your emails noticed well here are three things that I would have done to help accelerate my recruiting process alright now that you guys heard my college recruiting story after being on the other end of it hearing so many stories and seeing athletes go through the process I now have a better sense of what college coaches want in their the first tip that I have is to find the right website display your athlete data make sure to build out your profile and have it all nice and clean so that you can send it in emails to college coaches a great example of this is huddle for football basketball and volleyball I think or another example is swim Cloud for swimming I use swim Cloud when I was in high school or as it was called collegeswimming.com back in the day and made sure that my profile was completely built out with an up-to-date photo all my new times and every single meet was inputted so college coaches could see when I was tapering or when I was at my Peak I didn't just have just my best times in there for other sports like football or basketball where it's very film heavy this is a perfect opportunity for you to display your highlight reel or mixtape to college coaches and it won't really clutter up that initial email that you sent to them by having someone else's website do it for you it takes the need out of your emails to send some long fancy email with drawn out data and you know what coaches will say to that too long so by sending a short and concise email with the link to all of your data this will save so much time for you and help college coaches get you noticed faster my second tip is that the perfect email Isn't long many times when I was coming up with emails in my college recruiting process I would draft out these long five paragraph essay emails to these coaches you know what they would say to that tldr too long didn't read a lot of times when you're sending these emails to college coaches they don't have the time in their day to be reading these long drawn out emails what college coaches want is a short and concise email that relays your message gives you a link to go check out that website that I already mentioned and tip one and then they can go on with their day they don't have to go read some long email they can just click a link get the data they need and move on if you're able to send short and concise emails to these college coaches I can guarantee you that your rate of a return email is going to be much higher and they're actually going to go check out your link that you sent them or check out your times and data additionally you're going to save a bunch of time by not spending hours drafting out these emails just make it short and and concise and get on with your day as well I made this mistake plenty of times in the recruiting process and I wish I wouldn't have but that brings me to my next Point who should I have been emailing because I was emailing head coaches and let me tell you that was the wrong idea tip number three is Target the assistant coach when I was emailing all these coaches I was thinking about it all wrong who at the end of the day was going to be opening these emails and doing the recruiting process it was most likely going to be the assistant coach head coaches are really focused on day-to-day operations of the team making practices for their team and looking at the schedule whereas the assistant coach is really focused on the future of the team they're looking at the recruiting process and how they can better the team in the long run while also focusing on those main objectives like practices Etc with head coaches too busy it's super imperative that you email the assistant or the associate coach so many times athletes will reach out to the head coach and really expect the response instantly no that's not the case even if they're going to respond to you at all they have tons of stuff going on in their life and it's really not going to be easy for them to respond an assistant or an associate coach has less experience and thus feels the need to work their way up the totem pole and is going to reach back out to you as a recruit instantly or much quicker than a head coach would this isn't to say that the head coach is never going to respond to your email as I even got some responses back many of them saying to just go email the assistant coach but especially at the D2 and D3 level they don't have as much of a coaching staff built out and so sometimes the head coach will be the one who you're corresponding with about the recruiting process follow these three tips and I know that you'll have much better success in your recruiting emails to all my aspiring athletes who enjoyed and got something out of this video make sure to smash the like button to support the channel I seriously wish there was a YouTube video out there like this when I was a high school athlete as I know it would have saved me a ton of time and effort make sure to subscribe to the channel if you guys haven't already I'm sharing all the best tips for aspiring College athletes so if you guys haven't already make sure to subscribe however I had the help of the internet additionally for this video so if you guys want to go check out some more resources about college recruiting the links are down below best of luck to everyone who's watching is now eager to go send an email make sure it's short and professional and with that I'll see you all next week [Music]