In talking with parents and athletes who are going through the recruiting process, many feel that their high school coach is not doing much in the recruiting process. While many coaches may be uneducated about how to help their player, if you can get your high school coach helping you, it would be a big boast to the recruiting process.
The reason the coach is essential is because you will need an outside opinion that does not have any bias in the recruiting process. For example, if a dad or a mom starts calling colleges and tells them about their son or daughter, chances are that the coach will not listen.
It is a completely different story if the high school coach would start calling around. This coach carries more weight because they are at least the head coach of a high school program. College coaches don’t want to burn bridges with this high school coach simply because they may have the next big player down the road.
Here is a good story I recently heard about this. A few years back, there was a talented basketball who came off of the bench as a junior but ended up being an All Stater in Indiana as a senior. Because this state has so much basketball talent, getting a high honor like that is a great achievement. But with him really excelling as a senior, it was tough for the coach to get him any looks.
The HS head school coach is a veteran and has been there for quite sometime. He knows exactly what he is doing and knows what players can play Division I. This coach did some calling and spoke with a number of lower Division I basketball programs in the Midwest. Some had already filled up their spots but still talked to him. Others didn’t return his phone calls and a few tried to talk to him about a sophomore prospect he had.
This coach, who sent a player to one of the top five programs in the country recently, decided to pull the plug on the coaches that didn’t speak with him about this player or tried to talk to him about a different guy on the team. This shows that when high school coaches get involved, there is more of an impact if parents are the ones calling.
I heard from a Division I coach that no matter what, he will try calling back a high school coach about a kid. If a tape is sent and then the high school coach calls, this college coach will at least try to take a look at it. If the parent sends a tape and then calls about it, chance are slim that it will be watched. As I have mentioned before, if you are sending out highlight tapes to every school in the country, the majority of them will get thrown away.
College coaches will also call the high school quite often requesting tape and talking to the high school coach about you. If the coach is hard to get a hold of, that does make it tough for the college coach to get any information on you. That includes contact information, grades, stats, and video.
I recently was told that a junior kicker had schools around the Midwest like Wisconsin, Iowa, and others requesting tape. If these coaches had an issue getting in touch with the coach, there is no way that the tape would have been sent.
It is also important to have an organized high school coach. If you have a major recruit on your team, it is tough to keep everything straight in terms of videos sent, letters sent, and then worrying about your own life as well. With teaching, your family, and everything else a high school coach does, there is little time to try and figure out where you already sent highlight videos.
In order to get your high school coach on your side, you need to talk to him or her about what level they think you can play at. If there is a disagreement on that, then you might be in for trouble during the process. But if you are on the same page, then you can talk to him about helping you out and what he has done and seen in the past years. That experience is what could help you eventually earn that college scholarship.
Your Information Sports Network 