what's up softball players coach Dan Blewett here
in today's video we're going to talk about when you should start your college recruiting process
all right so if you're new here I'm coach Dan this is snap softball be sure to subscribe the channel
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all that stuff out below and in this video there's gonna be a bunch of other recruiting links so i've
got a video that i've recorded about how to make a good video about how to start your recruiting
process but how to figure out how good you are how to find a college coach's email address all
that stuff is in the in the description below because this is sort of part of a whole group
of recruiting videos all right so number one when are you gonna start your recruiting process that's
a good question it's gonna vary for every player so number one it's gonna depend on your skills and
your physical development so we all know that for any given freshman in high school you might have
a girl who's five nine 165 and super strong and destroys the ball and throws really hard and then
you might have a 15 year old who's five two 106 pounds can barely hit the ball out of the infield
and the smaller girl she might get there she might be at a play in college but she's not there yet
and so a lot of these recruiting companies and there are some very reputable
very caring hard-working great companies there are also some companies that just want to steal
your money you it's it's tough to figure out which i don't know which um but you have to just sort of
like read between the lines when everyone says start earlier start earlier you don't have to
start before you're ready if you're not physically developed and this is my first tip here is start
your recruiting process when you're fully baked or most of the way baked and what this means is a
college coach isn't going to be like oh looks like a nice player is really a good fielder i'll check
back in three years they don't really do that if you're pretty good they'll put you on a list of
like i gotta go see that player this summer right but they're not they're not gonna extrapolate out
for two years from now three years from now they might not even be at the same school two
years from now they might not even need a second basement in two years from now they don't know
what they're gonna need they certainly make charts and college coaches certainly are looking to the
future and they're recruiting for the future but if they can't figure out how good you're gonna be
or even see that you could be a division one or division two or division three or whatever
player there's just there's not really going to be anything that's going to come from it when you're
pretty close so you've got like a couple really good tools that you can really hit but maybe your
fielding is not that great yet or you can really run and your fielding's pretty pretty good when
you're hitting and like need some work you've got a couple good tools so you need to have some good
tools and if you don't know the five tools it's hit hit for power run field and throw so if you
have a canon for an arm and you can really run like college like college caliber arm and college
caliber speed then you're probably ready to start showing yourself but if you don't have college
caliber speed if you don't have a college caliber arm if you don't have a college caliber pat
and you're only a good fielder you're not ready to show yourself they don't recruit players that
can only field or that can hit but are just terrible fielders and super slow you've got to
have a couple of the tools to play in college so the first tip again here is wait so you're pretty
fully baked and you might need someone to tell you so go get a evaluation from a trusted coach
ask your coach your travel team your high school your middle school team ask your parents like be
really honest with yourself and get someone who'll be honest with you about what you need to work on
because if you really don't have like two or three pretty solid tools to play in college
like college caliber tools then college coaches are just gonna look past you they're gonna come
and watch your team and they're going to see the couple players that stick out and the rest of you
are going to be mostly invisible that's just how it is until you're ready and when you're ready
put yourself in front of everybody but again you don't need to start the recruiting process
if you're 13 and you're tiny you don't need to start if you're 15 and you're tiny you don't
need to start if you're 15 you're super duper slow and you can't hit just wait until you've got the
skill then spend the money and spend the time and effort in the recruiting process number two when
you're ready to start your recruiting processes when you're willing to put in the work and email
coaches it's a lot of work and if you have no idea where you want to go to college it's not time to
start recruit the recruiting process then right if you're like oh i might want to do journalism
or i might want to go to medical school or i might want to do political science or i need a
great political science program or i might want to go to the east coast or maybe i'll go to the west
coast if you have no idea it's just not it's not time yet you don't want to waste time emailing 30
colleges on the west coast when you really just want to stay close to home or you know there's
just a lot of variables so make sure you have an idea of what you want out of a college experience
make sure you have an idea of geographically where you want to go make sure you have an
idea of where you might be able to play level wise because there's no good reason to email 40
schools in texas that are all d1s there's sure there's not 40 ones in texas but humor me um
when you can't even play d1 softball right you're not good enough so
have an idea of all these things where you're like okay i'm pretty sure i want to stay in
the midwest i'm pretty sure i'm going to play probably d2 or d3 maybe naia i'm pretty sure
i need a school with a you know a writing or journalism major i'm pretty sure
i want a big campus or a small campus then you can really narrow it down and have a good idea
of the schools that are going to make sense for you then you can maybe email six schools
that are really good fits and now no one's wasting their time so just wait till you have a good idea
and you're willing to put in the work because it's a lot of work you have to really beat the
pavements cast a wide net and put in the effort to do the recruiting process right so if you're
not willing to do that yet if you still just want to run around and play softball for fun
that's completely fine but wait on the recruiting until you're really ready to do the hard work
and my last tip here on when to start start the recruiting process is if you really just want
to if you don't know the answer to all that other stuff you just want a sort of a number it's 15 or
16. it's 15 if you're pretty darn good like you're the best player and a pretty dominant player then
it's probably 15. if you're a middle-of-the-road player at 15 you don't really stick out you don't
really stand out from the crowd then it's probably 16 it's when you really hit the recruiting process
hard but the thing to know is that especially d1 schools that have a lot of scholarship money
to give out they're going to start to give that scholarship money away to sophomores so those the
first players are going to get signed when they get finished their sophomore summer you know they
they play their second year in high school uh softball they play their sophomore summer
a lot of those players play players are going to verbally commit in that sophomore summer and after
that sophomore summer those the best players some players committed as freshmen which is terrible
they're way too young to be doing that but that's part of the process we get it so the best players
are going to be off the board they're going to be verbally committed by the end of their sophomore
summer and a lot of that scholarship money be gone for that class so if you're a sophomore
and they've already signed a bunch of sophomores that school might be out of money for your class
so my point is that's not to say that if you're 17 you're a junior you can't get recruited because
you 100 can but the recruiting process if you're really good and you want to be in that pool of
scholarship money and you rightfully probably can get some of it because you're pretty good then
15 or 16 is when you really push yourself out there so if you're a really good player you're
dominant at 15 16 and people are saying hey you really you've really got something here
that's probably the right time to put some money into getting yourself seen going to showcases make
sure you make a nice recruiting video and send it out and cast that wide net because again 1516 is
the prime scholarship earning period for d1 and d2 schools remember d3s don't give out scholarships
NAIA do and junior colleges can as well but uh d3s don't so that's the long and the short of it
when to start the recruiting process but really it's going to be highly variable it's when you
want to so don't let some company tell you that you've got to start start now don't let
some other person or parent in the bleachers tell you that you've got to start now it's when you're
ready and when you feel like i know what i want i feel like i've got the skills i'm ready to put
in the work then go do it all right thanks for watching again i'm coach dan blewett check out
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