Lacrosse Recruiting Tips
One of the purposes of the summer program is to assist your son in attaining opportunities to play lacrosse at the collegiate level. Many factors come into play; desire, ability, interest, and visibility. As parents its very important to understand that recruiting is NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT.
I'll say this again - recruiting is NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT!
YOU have to take an active roll in getting your son the visibilty and opportunities he deserves.
This includes participation in programs like ChicagoLax, summer recruiting camps, gathering and managing film of your sons games (2 or 3 solid games and one highlight reel - DVD format is best), AND actively soliciting coaches.
This means you need a data sheet, the beginings of which are attached. You also need to include statistics if you can...I'll give the guys a printout of my son's data sheet for football. Your job is to sell your son. Stick to the facts, embellishing doesnt help him, but make sure you highlight the postives, particulary honors or awards. For example, being a Soph or Frosh called up to be on the playoff team is an honor and indicates the coaches confidence in your son, you need to play this up.
There are services out there that will do this for you, some are very proactive, like NSCA Sports, others are more passive and are merely a toolset, like ISProfiles (I'll give links below.) They can range from free to 1500.00 or so. Best time to start is Frosh or Soph year as you get maximum exposure.
For this summer you and your son will get the maximum mileage out of the tournaments and camps if YOU reach out to coaches and let them know when and where you are playing.
Here are some basics:
- Write a letter to your top College Coaches. Sending an email is fine, and you should do that, but use it as a follow up to a written letter. Coaches get a bunch of emails, letters show your interest.
- Focus on your grades! GPA, PSAT, SAT, ACT. I know its summer, but you have to keep in mind that academics are very important along with other activites. Lacrosse, or any sport, may open some doors, but the better your grades the more options you will have.
- Use the attached sheet to create a well-rounded picture of yourself. Not just grades and sports accomplishments, but add in extracirricular activities and work experience.
- Per the previous email, pick schools that are a fit for YOU.
- Get film. If you don't have it, get it this summer. If you do have it, send it with "The Letter" you will be sending in the next week or so to the coaches and schools you like. Ideally, you should send a highlight reel and one or two games. The coach may not watch them all, but let them make that choice (with my son some coaches watched the highlight, some watched the games.)
- Play in tournaments and participate in camps. We've got the tournament part down, but you should try and get into a few individual camps if you haven't already. Top 205 has gone from 205 to about 800 kids. The more different ways you get infront of a coach the better. Team tournaments go along way to help with this.
Regarding contacting coaches. Personally, I wouldn't limit myself to 3 or 4 schools. Find 10 or more that interest you and actively market yourself to them. When we hit the active part of the recruiting season for my son (football grant you) we had about 16 schools on the short list. We'll talk more about what to do once you have contacts later. Just consider this, the more schools you can get your name in front of the better. A player that can have a conversation with a coach and talk about who he is talking to creates more leverage when that number is greater than one or two.
Quick aside. Recruiting is a numbers game. Schools will normally have a board with their needs for the next year on it. They might need three attackmen. They might have 20 kids ranked on their board for that position. If your son is one to five, he's in a good position. If he's number 15 for that school, they will actively communicate with him until they fill the three. It might be him, it might not. You need to take the same approach.
Please send us, privately, the list you and your son compile. If any of our summer coaches, past or present, have contacts there we will ask them to reach out to the coach as well.
Regarding Film. Any film is better than none, but professionally done is best. At least in my experience. If your son has some decent games from this past year, contact the coach before school is out and see if you can get those games on a tape, or better yet, a DVD. We haven't contracted for film this summer, but an organization like www.dkhighlights.com can do it for you. It was around 150 bucks for a highlight reel and two games (football) if they have enough players. As parents you might want to discuss this sort of option at the first practice. They might not travel out east for us, but they might also have a contact out there that would come and film in produce these DVDs for interested parents and players.
The key here is, if you have film from the spring, get it on a dvd and send it with your letter. When a coach sees the film AND the letter he knows you are serious. When he sees the camps you are at and the team tournaments, he knows you are serious. From what our past coaches have said, coaches talk. If they aren't at a tourney they may ask someone who IS going to check you out. More than likely they will have someone there if they like your film and your "resume".
Regarding the sheet, take the time to fill it out. Give an electronic copy to us and if we get one from the majority we will add a recruiting section to the site that you can point a coach to in your follow up email. Oh and put a picture in the file.
As always be proactive. Getting this opportunity requires work.
Another quick aside. If your son isnt 100% sure he wants to do commit to playing a college sport, its ok. But if he thinks he wants to then you need to lay the groundwork for him. He can make a decision to pursue the engineering degree at Illinois and not play lacrosse for a DIII school that offered him. However, if the groundwork isn't in place, it's pretty difficult to decide to play in the spring of your senior year of high school and successfully find a fit.
Some links -
www.ncsasports.org - very proactive, pushes your son's name out to schools. Not cheap, but they do a ton of leg work for you. Most likely better for DII and DIII in lacrosse. We had around 40 real contacts (football) from schools through this service.
www.isprofiles.com - moderately priced. Will host films. Less traffic than NCSA, but they have a great tool that allows you to search by region, division, gpa, act, and other factors. The results give the coaches contact info and link throughs to school sites. Very useful to map your son's interests to opportunities. We actually found the school my son committed to via this technique.
www.berecruited.com - free. We actually had a few new lacrosse programs contact him from this, but I'd say its a long shot to get much out of it.
DK Highlights - Film company. Phone: 866 827 0818
