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Volleyball Recruiting Thoughts from Triple Crown, 2026
- Jason
- Feb 23
- 3 min read
Triple Crown is always one of the best tournaments of the club season. It comes every year with a packed house of top-notch athletes, families and of course, college coaches. Wherever the best athletes are, college coaches are usually pretty close behind.
*As you read through this, it's important to remember that every athlete, college coach and program are at different stages throughout the year.
"College coaches are doing more deciding than they are looking."
This is especially when it comes to the 2028 class. I made note of this last year after I returned from the Sunshine Qualifier.
"Here we were, the first week of March, and college coaches were already sitting on courts at 8:00am." You can read more about that HERE.
It's something that I noticed last year, but this club season it's becoming more apparent. College coaches, many of them, have already been watching and looking at athletes. Evaluating and narrowing down their list for months. They have their group. How big that list or group might be is hard to tell. But the talent across the country has already been identified. From the Tour of Texas and club practices in between, college coaches are not "looking" for athletes to evaluate, but they have been evaluating the athletes they already have on their lists.
As I have told several groups of 16s teams this year, "it is extremely difficult to get on that list." It's not impossible of course. There are plenty of athletes that schools miss completely or just haven't gotten the chance to watch yet. That doesn't always make it any easier. At this stage, college coaches seem to be evaluating their list of 10 (or so) athletes. They are trying to decide which of that group is going to get a phone call on June 15th. College coaches do a lot of watching and a lot of evaluating. But with as quickly things seem to be going once we hit summer, they only have so much time to evaluate their list of top athletes.
If you are not responding to college coaches, there is someone else who is
It's not meant to be a cliche or a gimmick; you need to get on a school's radar. If you aren't, the chances of you getting "seen" is extremely low.
I talked to several college coaches the week going into Triple Crown. Many said that they had too many emails for them to go through. As a quick side note, this is why it's important to NOT start emailing schools the week before your first tournament. This needs to be a process you start in January, or even the October before. Yes, you still should send emails. It does help immensely when a college coach is familiar with who you are though. It also helps to know whether or not you are playing this upcoming weekend; or if you are even interested in their program.
Yes, you should send emails.
Yes, you should respond to messages and camp invites.
Yes, you should initiate contact.
Yes, you should let them know you're playing this weekend.
If you are NOT doing these things, there are other athletes that are. Those athletes will be at the forefront of a college coaches mind and there will be an assumed level of interest. "She keeps us pretty updated with everything that's going on" will be how they start a conversation with me. Which is great. I love to hear from college coaches that an athlete is "engaged" in the process. You might be number two on their recruiting board as an athlete, but your interest level makes you realistically their #1.
Triple Crown and these other qualifiers are HUGE recruiting opportunities. Are you making the most out of your opportunities?
Need more insight into the recruiting process? Take a look at our three Triple Crown Prep Videos! Use these to help prepare you for every qualifier this season.
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