I sat down with a family the other night to talk about their process. She wanted to know what she needed to do, work on and improve in to get recruited by her #1 school. Before we started that discussion, I asked her, "Why do you want to go to school there?" She looked at me with a surprised look on her face. She looked at her mom and then back at me with a 'isn't it obvious?' look on her face. It wasn't obvious. I can understand completely why any 16yo athlete would wa

Whether you're prepping for a phone call next week with a new school, or getting organized for June 15th, it always helps to do research...

The Quiet Period ends today. But what changed from yesterday? As far as the athlete that is trying to get recruited, nothing has changed.

I know club season has been going on for a couple months at this point, but with these new recruiting rules for D1 schools the middle of February always feels like the start of recruiting season. With the end of the Quiet Period coming this weekend, it will be exciting to get out again amongst the masses of college coaches.

I was able to go to the Lonestar Qualifier for 18s last weekend. It was a good tournament from everything that I could see. Not a bunch of teams. There seemed to be almost as many boys teams there and they had the college Men's matches going on at the same time. Seemed like a good atmosphere all around.

If you've ever filled out a questionnaire, there is always one question that seems to stump a lot of athletes. "Jason, how should I answer this question?" Here is my answer and why I give it to parents and athletes, each time.

*Originally Posted 2/1/2023 Since school here in Texas is cancelled for the next two days and most if not all practices have already been cancelled for this afternoon and tonight, let's get some recruiting stuff done.

This is one of the reasons that I encourage athletes, especially early on in the process, to create lists with 50 schools on them. That list of 50 schools is just way too big to rank. Athletes that have smaller lists, in the 10 to 15 range, are typically going to rank those schools in one way or another. The danger of ranking your schools can be looked at in a couple of different ways.

It can be hard to determine which box is more important than others. Athletes will typically cross a school off their list because they...

While you don't want to email a coach that is no longer at the school (something I often catch for my athletes) I'm not sure that there...

I'm always surprised, even though maybe I shouldn't be, at the amount of misunderstood information about recruiting out there. It's usually not the fault of parents or athletes. They are just getting bad information from bad sources. Sometimes it's not even on purpose!

"We haven't heard from her in awhile, so we figured she wasn't interested." I have heard statements like this from college coaches on a regular basis. I even said it at times as a college coach. Communication is key. Consistent communication is just far and above better.

"Where should we start?" Is a question I get asked from parents regularly.

This is one thing that I find plenty of families get wrong in the recruiting process. One of the biggest reason is that NCSA has created these "standards" on how tall an athlete needs to be in order to play at a certain level. These "standards" are misleading and in many cases flat out false. Looking at the numbers, you see that everything trends from tallest to shortest, with the tallest athletes playing at the highest level. This type of "trickle down" idea in recruitin

Creating your list is an important part of the recruiting process in my opinion. There are so many athletes that will send their film to every school in a country and then hope something sticks. It's certainly one way to go about doing it, but it certainly isn't the best. One reason families tend to move in this direction is because they don't know who will be interested in their athlete. But why don't you know that? You should be able to have some idea right? Based on

You are busy. Everyone gets that. I get that. College coaches get that. But what you have to remember is that someone is emailing college coaches. Conversations are happening. If you're "too busy" then you're going to miss out on potential opportunities.

"Why doesn't Suzie have a volleyball only Instagram account?" This is a question I have never had a college coach ask me.

"Court-Time" = How long a college coach hangs out at your court any given day of the tournaments; also, how many matches do they come to.

I am going to hit on one specific topic here, but I do think that it applies to PLENTY of other recruiting factors. Everyone is willing to sit the bench, learn and wait their turn...until they have to sit the bench, learn and wait their turn.

Nervous about the recruiting process? Not sure where to start? When I meet with athletes that are just starting the process or maybe...