(Please note: This blog post is intended for graduating sophomores. If you're reading this as a graduating freshman or below, use this a education for upcoming years. Better yet, learn this and action it as a practice year for when it counts)
School’s over. The high school lacrosse season’s over.
Hopefully you won state or achieved whatever team goals you wanted to achieve.
Finals are over as well.
Hopefully you aced finals, because combining athletic scholarship money and academic scholarship money is VITAL in paying for as little for college as possible.
But now we’re in this waiting stage of post-high school lacrosse season and pre-summer lacrosse recruiting season.
If you’re serious about your recruiting process, then right now, you should have two main focuses:
Keep getting better
Get college coaches on your sideline
Getting college coaches to specifically seek you out and watch you play is the single most powerful action in the lacrosse recruiting process.
Before I tell you how to get college coaches on your sideline, let’s talk about what happens if you DON’T get college coaches on your sideline this summer.
Imagine This Summer Lacrosse Scenario
Let’s play this out…
You’re a sophomore.
You think you’ve done your job by signing up for a club team going to the events college coaches are going to be at.
The fact is, there are thousands of kids at those tournaments, and college coaches only watch each game for 1 half.
And is our plan to really spend thousands of dollars going to tournaments and showcases and hoping a college coach who's on your college list is on your sideline over every other sideline at the exact moment you make one of your best plays so that college coach notices you over every other recruit?
What are the odds of that?
Do you really want to leave getting attention up to chance?
Now let’s say you send emails to your dream schools, your target schools, and your safety schools.
(Remember, it's your summer after graduating your sophomore year)
In this imaginary scenario, you reach out to 20 schools. Now, let’s say your dream schools didn’t respond, 5 target schools responded, and 7 safety schools responded saying they’ll come watch you play.
Beginning September 1st, you now have 12 schools you have a recruiting foundation with.
They've emailed you.
Called you.
And now you get to tell your club coach, “I’ve have these conversations with these 12 schools”
Fast forward to fall lacrosse, when your club coach does his job and mingles with college coaches, they ask, “What kids do you have?” Your club coach gets to respond with “You have to check out this kid. He’s already talking with (Insert these 12 schools here)”.
And because coaches want players other coaches already want, after the fall lacrosse season, you have a foundation with 23 schools, and those new schools you added are hopefully better than the schools you spoke with around September 1st.
It’s a domino effect.
This is one way to become a coveted recruit.
(Wow, this scenario above was gold.)
But now let’s talk about what exactly you need to do to get college coaches to specifically seek you out and watch you play.
1. Create Your High School Season Highlight Tape
Your highlight tape is the gatekeeper to if the college coach will come watch you play.
Mostly every high school program uses hudl, so hop into hudl, and start creating highlights.
2. Export Your Highlight Tape From Hudl
Why do you want to export your highlight tape and put it on youtube?
Because Hudl ads take 30 seconds before a college coach can watch your highlight tape.
College coaches are WAY too busy to wait 30 seconds to watch a highlight tape.
And think about the last time you got bored on a Tic Tok — How long did it take you to scroll to the next video?
Under 2 seconds?
Exactly.
You will miss out on half of your potential highlight tape views if you don’t export it to youtube.
To export your highlight tape from hudl, you have two options:
Contact your coach, have him download it for you, and send it to you through google drive, dropbox, or whatever means he is able.
Screen record your computer (not your phone, this is too small of resolution). If you have a mac, press Control + Shift + 5. Google how to screen record on a windows. And if you want, you can download loom. Go to loom.com and it’s pretty easy from there.
Take that exported highlight tape and upload it to Youtube.
3. Send QUALITY Introduction Emails To Every Coach On Your College List
Based on the recruits I’ve worked with, a quality introduction email gets a response 45% - 55% of the time.
That’s much better than a template email where every coach knows you’re sending a template email.
Make sure you introduction email is
Personalized
Proves how you can help the program
Shows why you want to attend that school
Has all your contact information
And links to your highlight tape
The more college coaches you send this personalized email to, the better chances you have of building a foundation of being a coveted recruit.
Remember the scenario above. Give your club coach, your high school coach, and whoever else networks on your behalf an opportunity to show you are wanted.
But realize, it’s summer lacrosse season — College coaches want to evaluate you.
Sophomores
What can a good sophomore summer do for you?
Quite simply, put you on the fast track to lacrosse recruiting success.
You’ve read the scenario above.
Getting attention from Colorado Mesa leads to getting attention from Colorado College.
Getting attention from Colorado mesa and Colorado College leads to getting attention from Lynchburg.
Getting attention from Colorado Mesa, Colorado College, and Lynchburg leads to getting attention from Christopher Newport.
Getting attention from Colorado Mesa, Colorado College, Lynchburg, and Christopher Newport, leads to getting attention from Utah.
And so on, so on.
And you’re continuously building ammo for your club coach to help you reach that next level.
Which ends up making you that coveted recruit.
Conclusion
Get your highlight tape ready.
Make sure you're showing the right plays college coaches want to see in the right order college coaches want to see them.
If you’re on defense, show 1v1’s first, then build out your tape from there.
If you’re on offense, show your dodging goes first, not your off ball goals, then build out your tape from there.
Export it to youtube.
Send a quality introduction email and follow up emails that get you highlight tape watched.
Then, watch the fruits of your labor blossom into a successful lacrosse recruiting process.