Elliot Mark from RecruitFluency was the recent guest on the monthly Soccer Parenting webinars - and it was a great conversation around the college recruitment process, something which many soccer parents deal with regularly.
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Recruit Fluency and Soccer Parenting Video Clips
Here are two videos to give you an idea on what was discussed during the full webinar.
Best Practices for Identifying the Right College:
TRANSCRIPT:
Elliot:I believe that you really don't start with the athletics. You really have to start from the academic side. It's the most important piece of the puzzle. The reality is, as much as we want our children to play professionally, and we hope, and they should be aspiring to, but the reality is that most of them aren't. There's injuries, there's so many things. So we put education first. So the first piece is creating a list of target, reach, and safety schools academically. So once you've started and you've identified those schools, now you can be proactive and you can start reaching out to those coaches specifically and creating relationships with them.
Skye:How many schools should be on a list in terms of target schools, safety schools? What number should parents and athletes be targeting?
Elliot:Sure. I say the more the better. So we try to do anywhere from 12 to 15 of each. So you have at least 30, 40 schools. Now it's a large number, and you're probably not going to get responses from all those coaches. If you are, that's incredible. But we go big because it's really tough to play at the college level, so we want to make sure that we are incorporating schools that we definitely can play at, and then some that are more of a reach.
The Difference Between an Uninterested College Coach and a Busy College Coach
TRANSCRIPT
Skye:How can the parents tell the difference, there's two questions like this, between a ghosting coach, a coach who's not interested, versus a coach that's just too busy. We've had a coach express appreciation for persistence. How do you tell the difference there?
Elliot:You need to be persistent. I think that's the only way, and you need to be direct. And I think a lot of times student athletes and parents are not direct because they're scared of the answer. And if you ask a coach, "Hey, coach, I just really would love some feedback. Am I not at the level to play at your school? And if not, maybe you have five or six suggestions about where I should be looking?" That's a really good direct question to ask versus just sending 15 emails and beating around the bush. So I would say be direct and be persistent.
Skye:Go for the no. Sometimes you have to do that.
Elliot:Yeah. Otherwise you're in purgatory. You have no idea.
