[Video] How College Coaches Approach the Recruiting Process
As a parent of a student-athlete, you know the recruiting process is overwhelming, confusing, and chaotic. Either you have experienced the recruiting process personally, are experiencing it currently, or will experience it very soon, in which case you have probably heard some stories.
But did you ever think of the recruiting process from a college coach’s perspective? It can be just as challenging for college coaches as it is for parents and student-athletes. Many of the same issues are present.
Here is a short template for how coaches choose who to recruit:
- Evaluate talent either personally (preferred) or by video. Some sports, such as running and swimming, use times as their evaluation tool.
- Create lists from those evaluations, usually for each class of recruit and for each position or event.
- Determine which students will qualify academically.
- Determine which athletes are the best fit depending on the needs of the team and program.
- Get to know each recruit.
- Decide who will be priority recruits and who will be backups.
- Narrow down and continually change the list depending on what happens. If someone commits early, the list changes. If someone chooses another school, the list changes, and so on.
The recruiting process is different for every college coach and program, and, therefore, you can’t always know what they’re looking for unless you ask. If a college isn’t recruiting your daughter, they either don’t know about her, don’t think she is not talented enough, don’t see her as a good fit for their system, or they don’t need her position.
Try not to take it personally when a coach does not recruit your daughter or if the coach stops recruiting her. It’s all part of the process.
It looks simple and easy, but it takes a lot of work, much like that of the student-athletes. When both coaches and student-athletes work hard at the process, the chances of success increase exponentially.
