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If you are in the 10th grade or older and want to play volleyball in college, please read this article.
Big South uses signuptoplay.com for our tournament registration. Club directors sign in and are supposed to fill out the critical recruiting data about their players that college coaches need.
This information is supplied to University Athlete who takes this roster data and supplies the roster to college coaches along with a computerized playing schedule. If you’ve ever seen college coaches wandering around a convention center staring at their blackberries, iPhones, and Palms, you’ve seen the University Athlete software at work.
It is important for you to know that the information supplied in signuptoplay.com and given to University Athlete could be wrong which makes it much harder for college recruiters to do their jobs.
The only way to verify this information is to request a free account in University Athlete at this link: http://universityathlete.com/new_athlete .
With the free account, you can fill out all the information college recruiters need and lock that data so that bad information can’t be imported if it’s been entered incorrectly or been left blank by your club director. With your free account, you can also upload video to YouTube and link it to your profile at no charge.
We asked the president of University Athlete for some recruiting tips since their company supplies data to more than 2,000 college volleyball coaches.
First, make sure your data is correct in University Athlete. Get a free account and check it regularly. Lock all your data that you know is correct for the season. I think any college coach you asked would agree that if you are not in University Athlete, you are seriously hurting your recruiting chances. Since it’s free, it’s kind of a no brainer.
Get an honest appraisal of your abilities from a few good coaches and figure out what type of program you can make better. Then, write to the programs that you can make better that you have a genuine interest in. They can look at video clips and might ask for more video. Make sure your club and high school schedule is available so they can make sure to come see you. Make sure your academic info is up to date also.
Too many players go to big tournaments to get seen. That’s not realistic. The chance that THE college happens to walk by your court, just as you make a great play is a huge long shot. Instead, write them. Ask them to come watch you. If they think you might fit, they will absolutely get to your court.
Of course, all this is irrelevant if you don’t have game. All the marketing you do for yourself means nothing if you aren’t good enough to play at the level of schools you are writing. Their job is to get players that will make their team better.
If you are a brain, make sure you keep your GPA and test scores current. Many schools need to know if a student is good at academics before they can begin to recruit them. We let coaches search on GPA when they are looking for kids to watch.
Oh, one other thing. Players should write or call coaches, not their parents. Coaches like hearing from the actual athlete. And, we like knowing that they can do things on their own, not have mommy or daddy do it for them.
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