Recruiting Thoughts from Lonestar

It's an ongoing myth that "if you're good enough, college coaches will find you."

Unfortunately, college coaches don't know you exist.

It's quite possible, that if they knew you existed, then they would be able to find out. But since they don't know anything about you (your team, your interests, your GPA or whether or not you even want to play in college) the chances of being found are entirely possible, but just not probable.

In order for this myth to be true, you are depending on a college coach walking by your court, stopping to bend down and tie their shoe and then as they look up to continue you walking, you do something amazing.

You are also leaning on the notion that a college coach at your court is watching you. There are at least 12 athletes playing on your court at any given moment. There are also 4-6 athletes on each team standing or sitting on the bench at the same time. That means, the chance of a college coach walking to your court and actually finding you or watching you is roughly 4%.

One mid-major D1 coach told me that she was there watching 5 athletes this weekend. Assuming all of those athletes are playing Open, that's 5 out of 288 athletes. But she isn't "looking" or "finding" athletes. She already has her list of athletes she is evaluating and ranking.

How many other schools only had a handful or a couple dozen athletes to watch this past weekend? How many coaches in Houston this weekend spent any amount of time "finding" athletes?

Several schools I'm sure were walking around "finding" athletes. But how many? Did they spend any time "finding" while you were playing? Or while you were playing well? Or were they even near your court?

Even if you are able to doing something really awesome at the same time that this coach happens to be on a "finding" mission for his program, during a break from his other evaluations and they notice you...are you even going to be interested in that school?

Let's compare this to posting your highlight reel on Instagram, with the plan being that a college coach will see it and then recruit you. Not only are you hoping that the algorithm puts your film in front of college coaches, but you are also hoping that college coach is from a school that you are interested in.

If you are NOT reaching out directly to college coaches and letting them know you exist, then they just MIGHT find you. But if you want to play college volleyball, I wouldn't take those odds.

If you are an athlete or a parent that played at a qualifier this past weekend and there weren't any college coaches at your court, then we need to do some things differently. We will talk about that more next week OR take a look at some of our resources in our Online Recruiting Program for more info on how to get college coaches to your court.