*Originally posted 7/13/2020 I personally hate the little red dots that appear in the corner of each app. I basically do whatever I need to do to get rid of them. I don't know how some can have a number like "1,499" above their email app, that would drive me insane. Actually, when I came back to ACU as the head coach I had the same email address. I had a years worth of emails that I went through, filed away, watched film and responded to if needed; all so I wouldn't have

*Originally posted 1/21/2022 I wanted to start sharing some more of the behind the scenes conversations that I have with college coaches about volleyball recruiting and the sport in general. Some of these concepts might be different or new to what I have talked about before. I want to make sure that I add as much context as I can or as needed for each of these topics or statements. Enjoy! I'm sure you will find these topics interesting and helpful :)

*Originally posted 10/14/2021 To start, it definitely depends on WHEN you are in the recruiting process. If you are sending out emails to coaches while you are a sophomore, then this isn't a big deal. But for those athletes past the June 15th contact date (prior to the start of their junior year) this is one of the bigger issues I see in emails...still.

*Originally posted 5/19/2020 (Written during Covid, so besides that I think everything else applies here) There are lots of people out there want to knock us down and tell us that what we are doing isn't working. They want to tell us we failed and that we shouldn't even be trying. I'm not sure if any of you have ever had a boss that seemed to enjoy it when you failed, but I have.

*Originally posted 5/5/2020 We read books to our children almost every night before they go to bed and have been doing that since Keagan was born. One book they have wanted to read several times in the last week is a story called Stone Soup .

The recruiting process starts before the club season starts. As athletes switch clubs and join new ones at the start of the high school season, I usually begin working with a number of new athletes and families. Once they starting copying me on emails, I am able to go watch their highlights, see the schools they are emailing and figure out where they are in the process. Typically I will click on the film link they are sending to college coaches, so I can get an idea of wha

*Originally Published on 04/07/2022 I've made it clear from the beginning of these new recruiting rules that I wasn't a fan of them. In general I feel like they are misdirected and do nothing to fix the issues they were set up to fix. Not only that, but the schools and conferences that were the biggest proponents of these new rules because they needed to, "slow down recruiting" have done little to nothing to actually slow down their recruiting processes. I think that takin

*Originally posted 5/15/2023 I think one of the false-premises we start with in our recruiting journey, is that college coaches aren't watching your film. The idea is that you might be reaching out to them, they might be getting your email, but they aren't clicking that video link in your email. I want to push back on this premise a little bit and try to answer the question,

*Originally Posted 6/29/2020 (edited 9/25/2023) This is a question that I heard a college coach ask an athlete this week and I think it's a great question for a variety of reasons. It's one of those questions where you can't just answer "yes or no" and you are forced into giving a "why" to really explain your answer. The question is partially about the answer, but it is probably more about how you come to your answer.

It's never "too early" to start your recruiting process. The flip side of that is also true! It's never "too late" to start your recruiting process. If you're a senior in high school right now and you've done 0 recruiting prior to today, you can start tomorrow and find a place to play college volleyball. That being said, it is important to know and understand that you will have limited options. While you can start "late" and still get recruited, I usually will encourage

*Originally posted 3/2/2020 My short answer is "No, they are Super-Human." I can remember my graduate assistant on the first day of the Tour of Texas Qualifier say "I'm exhausted...you guys do this every weekend you go out recruiting?" When you add it all up - 60 hour work weeks in the office; hours of work at home watching film and making recruiting phone calls; days on the road traveling; no weekends off; being away from family for days at time and sometimes back to back

Here are 3 reasons why you need to be reaching out to college coaches more. Be sure to listen and follow my podcast on Spotify! You can...

It's a great sport and I love it, but the sport doesn't define me and it shouldn't define you.

*Originally posted September 26th, 2022 I have said in many of my seminars that the libero position is one of the toughest positions to get recruited in volleyball. It's probably a toss-up between the libero and the 6-2 setter as to which is actually the toughest. Either way you want to look at it, it's really hard to get recruited as a libero. I think this is true regardless of the level.

I hear this all the time - "It seems that recruiting has gotten really quiet lately" "Recruiting has gotten quiet" "Coaches seem to have gone quiet"

Originally posted on 12/14/2020 Sometimes you just forget to turn the lights on...it happens to me all the time. Not usually with lights, but for me its music. I can sit at my computer in silence for a solid 30 minutes forgetting to turn my music back on. Usually it's after I get off the phone or something else that made me pause my music. But something hits me and tells me "it's too quiet!" and it gets me to turn Spotify back on so I can have that background noise I usual

Now I know that some (a lot) of this is going to change with all the craziness happening with conference realignment right now - I don't think we are done yet! - But I wrote about this back in 2019 and so I wanted to revisit some of these statistics and see what has changed potentially. To get a reference point, you can go read my "Playing In The P5" blog HERE .

I have this conversation multiple times a year with families and athletes. They are going through the recruiting process, have a couple of offers and are close to making a decision. One of the things that is holding the athlete back from making a decision is that they are worried about how their decision is going to affect the coaching staff they are telling "no". They are worried about hurting the feelings of a college coach.

High school volleyball season brings a bunch of extra things onto your plate when it comes to recruiting. One of the more frequent...

One issue that I run into with athletes and families is they want to REALLY focus on just these schools. Maybe it's the 5 schools she had phone calls with on June 15th. Or maybe it's the 10 schools she got a camp invite from. Or maybe it's even 1 a school that realistically stands out as the best option. Regardless of your current recruiting situation, you need to keep an open mind going forward. Understanding the worst case scenario can be annoying and hard sometimes, b