(Please note: This 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 there's a chance college coaches only watch your game for 1 half.
What our plan should not be is having your parents spend thousands of dollars going to tournaments and showcases, 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.
What are the odds of that?
Do you really want to leave getting attention from college coaches 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 that you have a recruiting foundation with.
The school have emailed you back...
Texted with you...
Called you.
You get to tell your club coach, “I’ve have these conversations with these 12 schools”...
Fast forward to fall lacrosse...
Your club coach does his job, mingles with college coaches, and the college coach asks, “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.
The more that college coaches know your name, the easier it is to make more college coaches know your name.
(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.
The more professional looking the highlight tape, the more college coaches will give it a watch.
2. Put Your Highlight Tape On Youtube
Why do you want to put you highlight tape on Youtube?
Because Hudl ads take 30 seconds before a college coach can watch your highlight tape.
Because (some) Recruiting Platforms have ads before coaches are able to watch the tape.
I've heard Andy Shay say he doesn't use certain platforms because of that 30 seconds.
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:
Screen record your computer or phone. If you have a mac, press Control + Shift + 5. Google how to screen record on a windows.
Take that exported highlight tape and upload it to Youtube.
3. Send QUALITY Introduction Emails To Every Coach On Your College List
A quality introduction email separates you from EVERYONE else.
College coaches can sniff a template email from a mile away.
Make sure you introduction email:
Is personalized
Set to every college coach on staff, individually
Shows how you can help their program
Shows why you want to attend that school
Linked to your highlight tape
Has your tournament events listed
The more college coaches you send a personalized email to, the better chances you have of building a foundation of being a coveted recruit.
Remember the scenario above...
You need to your club coach, your high school coach, and whoever else networks on your behalf ammunition to show you are wanted.
Conclusion: 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. For some, that's how our process will go.
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.
For others, they've already built the ammo to garner interest from high end D3, D2, maybe even D1.
Even if you're in this bucket, the process is still the same. Your process is now seeing how high of quality you can garner...
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