My Thoughts From Lonestar 18s Qualifier

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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.

It had been a few years since I had been to an 18s tournament of that size and so the recruiting piece of it I thought was interesting. You have a few different groups of athletes that are playing in these 18s tournaments.

First, you have athletes that are already signed and committed to play college volleyball. Obviously this group is done and so they care very little about the recruiting going on around them.

The second group is the athlete that isn't planning on playing in college. They have made their decision to focus on academics or other universities that didn't end up being a good fit for them athletically.

Another group is the athlete that is actually a junior (or younger even) playing in the 18s division. Unfortunately for those athletes they are mostly getting overlooked when it comes to recruiting. Most of the college coaches that are coming to an 18s qualifier have specific needs they are trying to fill. Athletes in the 24 class might get marked in UA by a specific coach, but there just aren't a TON of college coaches out there at 18s tournaments to really make your process move forward.

The last group is the group of athletes that are still trying to play in college. They are uncommitted and looking for a college volleyball home. This group is the one that obviously gets the majority of the focus at these 18s tournaments. It's this group that most intrigued me as I was walking around talking to college coaches.

The majority of college coaches I spoke with on Saturday (Day 2 of the tournament) were Junior college coaches and D3 coaches. I met only a couple of D2 coaches and there were no D1 coaches out there because they were on a Quiet Period. The part that I found interesting is that MOST of the college coaches were doing quite a bit of fishing. By "fishing" I mean that they were walking around, seeing who was uncommitted, making notes in UA, talking to some club coaches and recruiting coordinators. In general, the seemed to NOT have a ton of athletes that they were there to actually see. There might have been 1 or 2 athletes they knew about and planned on spending a big chunk of time watching. But besides that, they were going from court to court, just seeing what they could see. There were, to my knowledge, a bunch of athletes still uncommitted and looking for a place to play.

I started to wonder about how many of those athletes at the tournament had actually reached out to college coaches? I wonder how many of those athletes had actually reached out to the college coaches that were there? Even though the college coaches were going from court to court, they all still had questions for me, "Who should I go watch?" or "Got anyone that could help me out this fall?" They were still relying on information to direct them to a team or to a court. I found this interesting because I wondered how different the recruiting process for most of athletes would have been if they had been reaching out to college coaches. What if they had been sending emails? What if they were communicating with these coaches before hand? What if they were able to direct those college coaches to their court, vs hoping they walked by at the right time?

At this point in the recruiting process, hoping that a college coach just happens to show up at your court is wishful thinking at best. Can it still happen? Sure. It's possible to do next to nothing in the recruiting process and still end up somewhere. But how different would that process be for an athlete in January of their senior year, if they had some help or if they had been proactive about the recruiting process sooner?

Don't wait. Start your process sooner. Even if you don't start your process earlier, do ALL that you can to put yourself in front of college coaches as soon as you can. Drive them to your court. Ask for help. Even when coaches are going from court to court looking, we are still in a situation where you have to do something great while they are there. Cut out all the guess work. Get them to spend MORE time at your court by reaching out to them directly and communicating your interest in their university.

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