How To Stay In Touch With College Coaches This Fall

Want to stand out to college coaches this fall season? Staying engaged doesn't have to be complicated. Here are a few simple, effective ways athletes can interact with staffs across the country and make strides in their recruiting process this fall.

1) Do what you can, when you can, but you don't have to do it all at once.

You should 100% still be sending out emails to college coaches through the fall season because it's one of the best ways to stay in touch with schools. College coaches do LOVE hearing from athletes they are interested in. They watch a bunch of film, including your highlights. They don't always respond, that's the hard part. It's important to realize, however, they DO notice when you reach out and sometimes when you don't reach out.

One of the mistakes that I see athletes making throughout the recruiting process that creates more stress and anxiety is that they try and do ALL of their emails in one sitting. 2 hours or so writing unique, personalized emails will be on drain on just about anyone! My suggestion has always been to spend 15-20 minutes at a time and send out emails. If that's 2 or 3, great! If you can do 5-10 quickly because they are more of a generic email, that's great as well. You (athletes) have 20 minutes a day free to send emails. Trust me. If we were to take a look at your phone and saw how much time you spend on TikTok each day, it's safe to say you have some time to dedicate to this whole 'playing volleyball in college' thing. This also creates short gaps in your work that's really helpful! The dreading of sitting down and spending 2-3 hours sending out emails is what pushes back your weekly round of emails to next week..then the week after and before you know it Christmas is about here and you only reached out to schools once in 4 months. That doesn't show interest. Short bursts of work and energy are the most beneficial way to stay consistent in your communication.

2) Engage outside of sending emails throughout the fall

Email is great, but there are other ways to show college programs that you are interested in them. Social media is a big one! Not only can you reference social media posts in your emails to college coaches but you can ALSO comment on their posts, like, or even DM college coaches. Depending on where you are in your recruiting process with a school, this might not have any benefit at all. If Mizzou is done with their recruiting in your class, sending them a DM about how interested you are isn't going to change the idea that they are less interested in you. The schools that have some mutual interest however, they LOVE hearing from you regardless of the how you are communicating. If sending a school one of your posts from media day is easier then doing that same thing in an email, then go for it!

Whenever families ask me, "can we / should we reach out to..." my response is almost always, "Of Course!" You almost always have nothing to lose by reaching out. My one reservations on social media is when athletes start "tagging" other schools in their posts as a way to get their attention. If you go to a specific camp and want to tag them in your post with that coaching staff, that's not an issue for me. But, when you post something on instagram and tag 20 schools in the post - that I have an issue with - and I think it almost does you more harm then good.

My reason for thinking this is first, those schools you're tagging better be really interested in you or that's not helping. Second, if I am a school that isn't tagged in your post and I somehow happen to come across it, my reaction is going to be, "Well she didn't tag us!" and I'm going to move on to someone else. Social media can be super tricky, but there are ways for you to engage with college coaches this club season using the various platforms.

3) Quick messages that are simple totally count :)

Some of my favorite messages that I got from athletes as a college coach were after a win.

"Congrats!"

That's all they need to say. They are paying attention to what we are doing as a program. Maybe even watching live stats. Even this message in an email, "congrats on the win last night vs..." is huge.

College coaches want to know you're interested.

They want you to engage.

Make an impact in your recruiting process by doing some of the little things that will make SURE you stand out this fall.

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