What are you waiting for?

I've never been one to tell anyone to "slow down" "back off" or "shut it down" when it comes to recruiting. I honestly think it's some of the worst advice you could give an athlete. Taking a break because you are overwhelmed - sure! Spending some time to focus on the schools you are really interested in and so your'e not communicating with your top 25-50 schools - great! But you want to always stay active.

Now there are a lot of factors that go into our current situation:

Dead Period

Pandemic

No Campus Visits

No Camps

Seasons Cancelled

Seasons Delayed

Athletes Arriving on Campus

New Recruiting Rules

I have heard it often during this pandemic and quarantine that athletes were being encouraged to "just wait" with the recruiting process. Their thought, apparently, was that coaches wouldn't be doing a whole lot of recruiting with the club season basically being cancelled. But in reality, recruiting became the only thing that coaches could do during this time. Coaches weren't "waiting" on recruiting, so why would athletes want to do that?

In the weeks surrounding Triple Crown (the biggest recruiting weekend of the year) my phone calls with college coaches equaled about 10% of my work week. After we went into quarantine in March and leading up to the June 15th contact date for the 2022 class, my time talking to college coaches increased to 20%-25% of my work week. College coaches were certainly engaging as much as they could to find out as much information as they could. They were staying active in the recruiting process and so my advice to all of my clients was to do the same.

Maybe we don't mean the same thing when we say "wait"...I happen to think of this picture here, waiting for a plane. Others might think of the term in a more active way (active waiting) which is an oxymoron, where they are waiting for something, but doing something else while they are waiting. Which I think is fine, but let's not call it waiting. It is certainly more of a reactive approach than a proactive one. Those of you that know me know that I much prefer the proactive approach in recruiting.

So while you might not have any film to send to college coaches, here are a few other ideas:

send your workouts

update your athletic instagram accounts

emails that just say "HI"

find ways to demonstrate your identity

let coaches know more about your personality

So you aren't really waiting! Or at least you shouldn't be. There is plenty you CAN do. So much that goes into recruiting revolves more around volleyball. Think of some of the intangible qualities you have on and off the volleyball court. Which of those qualities are coaches looking for? How can you get them to KNOW that piece about you? Maybe you didn't make a highlight film in the last 3 months, but there is more to YOU than just a highlight film and there is more to you than just volleyball. Spend some of your time and energy in your recruiting process making sure coaches KNOW those parts and pieces about you.

No more waiting...take the initiative.

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