Sports & Hobbies

Coaches Corner: 3 College Coaches Discuss The Recruiting Process

December 11, 2017 by Johny A

Recruiting is competitive. Think of all the other athletes out there wanting a chance to play their sport at the college level. Recruits need to find ways to stand out. College coaches are going to be more interested in athletes who have been actively reaching out to them and are knowledgeable about their program.

The athletic recruiting process is time-consuming, confusing, and very difficult if one doesn’t know where to start. An online recruiting profile is very important to have college coaches view academic and athletic abilities. UnderRecruited Preps connects student-athletes to college coaches and teaches them about the athletic recruiting process.

University of Minnesota Assistant Baseball Coach Rob Fornasiere

“Well, I think the number one way to get recruited is certainly to get places where you can get seen and when you get seen in an event play well. There’s no substitute for playing well and having physical skill. The other filters I’ve talked about whether it be your academic profile, your character profile, or certain things that you’ve done off the field those are all ancillary things to what you bring to the table as an athlete. If you’re truly a Division one baseball player, then you’re a dominant player and that means that even on some of your average or below average days as a player you’re still better than other people in your conference and on your team.

That would be an indication of a dominant player and that’s a way to get noticed. There are very few secrets today and so if you’re a dominant player, in my opinion, you’ll get noticed.”

(College Baseball Recruiting)

Minnesota State University-Mankato Head Women’s Hockey Coach John Harrington

“It’s important that they get that process started early. I think it’s getting earlier now where student-athletes are getting recruited and making verbal commitments to go to certain schools. I think sometimes if you wait and think that sometime down the line eventually, somebody is going to see you’re going to run out of time because there aren’t that many scholarships to go around in all these sports and especially in hockey too. It’s important that you follow through and whether it’s you making contact with them and them asking you to do a questionnaire and not putting that over here but getting on it and getting it back and you’re showing as much interest in them as you expect them to show interest in you.

Concordia University St. Paul Recruiting Coordinator Jake Munkwitz

“There are several different ways at this level. We’re going to reach out to high school coaches in the winter time and in the spring time trying to get a list of guys they feel like can play at the college level, and then we’ll determine how does this guy fit into what we’re doing. Is he going to fit into the schemes and the systems that we try and use you? Another way is we use recruiting services. I could name a hundred different recruiting services that send out emails that we check their sites on a weekly basis. That’s another way for us to get names, to get film, to evaluate, and to check out things that we may otherwise miss from high school coaches that we don’t get the information from.

Maybe a coach is busy or may have a different job and they don’t have time to help their players with the college recruiting process. Those are the two biggest ways is through high school coaches and through recruiting services to try and collect as many names and as much film as we can to evaluate and determine what kind of fit each individual is going to be for what we’re trying to do.”