The Student Athlete (part 4): Showcasing Your Athletic Talent
This is part 4 (of 8) in a series of posts to help you better understand college athletics as part of the admissions process.
In this post let's look at a two-step process for telling your athletic story to colleges:
Know your game. Assess your skills like a pro by comparing stats, talking to your coaches, and gauging your competition level.
Communicate your game. Build your athletic social media presence, create killer highlight reels, and ace those coach connections.
Know Your Game: Assessing Your Athletic Talent Level
The first step in telling your athletic story is to honestly assess your talent level. How can you do this? Start by looking at the rosters of athletes at schools you are interested in and compare your stats against the latest recruiting class at that school. This info is available on the college's athletics website.
For time-based sports this can be particularly straightforward - take your times from your best events and then look at the college’s roster.
For team-based sports, look at key statistics (rushing yards, TDs, tackles, points-per-game, assists, etc…) and also look at where those student-athletes went to high school. Through a bit of Google searching you can usually find summary statistics from their high school results, which you can then compare to your own achievements. E.g. how many assists did they have during their senior high school year? Make sure you are comparing like-position to like-position. In other words, if you are a forward, make sure you are looking at statistics for other offensive-oriented players.
Don't forget to factor in physical traits when doing a cross-compare. While there can be one-off outcomes for exceptional talent, you'll want to understand if recruited players for your sport/position are generally like you. For example... a certain height, weight, speed, strength, etc... You want to make sure you are being as objective (non-biased) as you can be. For instance, if all of the basketball forwards at the schools you are interested in are extremely tall or have amazing vertical leaps and you do not possess these traits, you need to take this into consideration when thinking about both what sport division you realistically might match to (NCAA Division I, II, III, NAIA, Junior College, etc...) and what teams within those divisions (some are more highly competitive than others).
Next, solicit feedback from others you trust. Talk to your coaches, trainers, and athletic camp counselors and ask for their input - where do they see you as an athlete?
Keep in mind that those closest in family relationship to the athlete (parents - I'm looking at you) can often times be the least objective. Just because the football team won the state championship does not mean that every player on that team possesses the talent and skill to play Division I NCAA football. Soliciting feedback about your specific abilities from those outside of your family circle can help you gain perspective.
A final way to assess your talent level is by looking at the level of competition of your club / varsity team. Many Division I athletics competitions are national - teams are traveling great distances to compete at the highest level. Division III competition tends to be more local, and Division II sits in between.
In your high school or club athletics, are you participating in local, state, regional, or national tournaments? Are you participating in district, state, or national championships? Where do you sit in the "player ranking" for your sport? Are you a record holder? Answering these questions honestly can help you assess your abilities.
Communicate Your Game: Showcasing Your Athletic Talent
Step two is telling your athletic abilities and achievements story.
Instagram and Social Media
Most choose to start with Instagram and a social media presence.
Create a separate account to showcase your athletic talent. Only use it for this purpose.
Follow college programs you are interested in
Follow the coaches (if they are on Instagram)
Follow college players on these teams
Make sure your account clearly has your name, where you're located, the year you graduate, relevant athletic stats and achievements, perhaps even GPA and test scores in your bio (this tells programs you are a good student!)
Create regular updates over the course of your high school career (this demonstrates to perspective programs your progression as an athlete)
Tag your teammates. This can fan out the reach of your posts and allow coaches already in touch with those other athletes to discover you
Include "skills" showcases (e.g. jumps, workouts, dribble/passing/shooting, etc...) as well as in-game highlights
I’ve found this reference particularly helpful for additional information on social media sports accounts - https://www.ncsasports.org/recruiting/contacting-college-coaches/how-to-use-instagram.
Sports-specific Apps and Portals
Some sports use specific apps and portals (Hudl for football, SwimCloud for swimming, etc…) to showcase talent. Don't overlook these. You may have heard of “star” systems for football or basketball, e.g. “5-star recruit”, “4-star recruit”, etc… In swimming - and its similar for track & field, tennis, golf, etc... you can literally see a profile for all of the top players in the country. These platforms tend to have a ranked list of top performers in a given sport. If you are included on these platforms, it’s a best practice to keep your info up-to-date.
A quick reference list:
Football: Hudl and also there are many player rankings sites (e.g. 247sports)
Basketball: similar to football, Hudl and also there are many player rankings sites (e.g. prephoops.com)
Baseball: ranking sites like Perfect Game and Premier Baseball participation
Swimming: SwimCloud
Track & Field: Athletic.net
Tennis: Tennis Recruiting Network
Golf: HighSchoolGolf.org and JuniorGolfScoreboard.com
Make A Recruiting Video
In quantitative sports like track and swimming, communicate your time(s) when reaching out to programs and coaching staff. This makes talking about your athletic ability pretty straightforward - e.g. I swim a 50yd freestyle short course in X.
For sports like soccer, basketball, volleyball, and football you will want to create a “mix tape” to visually showcase your talent. Think of this as a highlight reel. I could (and should!) do an entire additional post on how to make a proper video, but for now it’s best to imagine yourself in the shoes of a coach - what would they want to see?
Coaches are very busy and you need to present them with the most important highlights and info up front, in a really clear and concise way.
Make sure your video has an intro with your name and key stats
Make sure the video is edited to show just the most important action or parts
Make sure you are clearly visible, and so on.
A little bit of effort editing can go a long way. Videos are typically short - think like 3 or 4 minutes with 20 or so highlights. For some sports, e.g. basketball in particular, you may end up creating a skills video that's separate from your in-game highlights.
There is lots of additional info on how to create a great athletic recruiting highlight video available on YouTube. And the advice differs just slightly based on your sport - so make sure you include that info as part of your search, e.g. YouTube search for "how to create college recruiting video for soccer".
Work With Your Coach
Finally, you can tell your athletic story by building and leveraging strong relationships with your club or high school team coaches.
Athletics programs want to see you, as the student athlete, taking the initiative and driving the recruiting efforts. But… club or high school coaches often have deep networks within college programs and can help with kicking off introductions and getting the communication flowing.
It’s also a bit of a red flag if you do NOT have a good relationship with your coach. College teams want you to be coachable, and a sign of conflict with or distance from your existing coach is a warning. Part of showcasing your talent is proving that you take coaching well.
